General Hunter

Dave Stevens (Lumberyard)

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a reconstruction of a historic vessel or an attempt to do so.

Aside from actual building of a model it is also the thrill of tracking the vessel through history and trying to reproduce the model as close to the real ship as possible and leaving room for the "best guess" option. A historic model involves far more than taking a drawing and start building, plans of ships are very general and often the final ship built and the original plans may or may not match. You have to take into account the time and the place the ship was built and the people and circumstances in which the ship was built.


We are all familiar with the movies Matrix, there are a large number of people actually believe we are all living in a computer simulated reality and you will find hundreds of examples on line of references to “a glitch in the Matrix”.

This is the story about the war of 1812 shipwreck the General Hunter where the wreck matches two historical accounts which support two different ships. So we have one shipwreck with a matrix glitch of two historical accounts.

The vessel itself, fashioned out of oak, would have originally measured about 54 feet long at the keel by 18 feet wide at midship, with two masts. Buried in the sand with it were a small cannon, four cannon balls meant for larger cannons, military buttons from the likes of the Royal Newfoundland Regiment, parts of a musket, a bayonet, an officer’s walking stick, a wooden deadeye used in the ship’s rigging, and pieces of a shoe. Spread among all that were 194 ceramic shards from plates, cups, saucers, soup bowls and a tankard, along with these artifacts was a small swivel gun lying next to the keel. Stripping the wreck of all the iron it seems odd a swivel gun would have been left behind. The artifacts discovered, and additional research at the U.S. National Archives in Washington, D.C., eventually told an epic saga of war and peace. Though outnumbered, the British had sailed with six ships, including General Hunter, to engage their nine American counterparts in September 1813, in a decisive battle for control of the lake. But the wind, which initially favored the British, started shifting almost as soon as the battle began, and after three hours of carnage, the Americans had won the day. General Hunter was now in U.S. hands, and while it’s unclear whether the ship saw further action, what is known is that after the war she served as a transport vessel, her name shortened to Hunter. According to documents that only came to light in 2005, Hunter was sailing from Michilimackinac to Detroit in 1816 when a violent storm on Lake Huron threw the ship off course. Fearing for their lives, the crew of eight opted to “put the helm hard a weather and run her in head foremost” toward the sandy beach of Southampton, according to the crew’s affidavit. Everyone on board survived, including two passengers. In an 1816 letter, a U.S. general reports that two boats were later sent to salvage what they could, then set the wreck on fire. Whatever remained was eventually submerged in sand for the better part of two centuries.

What we have here is the research and actual artifacts that identify the wreck on Southampton beach as the General Hunter. As a standalone research it is solid and supports the identity of the wreck as the General Hunter. History also documents another version of the same General Hunter which will be explored in this thread. The goal here is not to prove one General Hunter or disprove the other or if research was skewed to fit. I am calling it a glitch in research; it is left up to the reader to decide.

The starting point is a site drawing of the wreck. This was brought into CAD and scaled, once scaled measurements can be taken of the drawing
So far so good right?


wreck drawing.JPG


a glitch is there is a drawing of the General Hunter done by the builder William Bell in 1802ish so when the scaled wreck drawing is placed over the historic drawing there is a glaring problem, the two do not match.
This is where the research story begins and the question attempted to answer is WHY?

plan6.jpg
 
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there is also another drawing done by John Stevens

This one does have a date of 1805 and it does say General Hunter and it has the builders name William Bell
This drawing is a contemporary drawing and is a tracing of the original one shown in the last post. There is one modification to this drawing and it is the cap rail which runs the length of the hull. The plan does state as a reference in the lower right corner of what the drawing is based on which happens to be the original drawing in post #1.

Who is John Stevens?

stevens original.jpg
 
John Stevens was the curator for the Museum of the Atlantic, an author, draftsman, researcher, maritime historian so John is quite qualified to have drawn the plans for the General Hunter.

He just did not decide to use the original Bell drawing out of a whim, Even though there is no name on the drawing it was identified as the General Hope. William Bell was the Provincial Maritime master shipwright at the Amherstburg shipyard at Fort Malden. When Bell arrived at Amherstburg he built an unarmed transport named the General Hope. We can conclude the drawing is the General Hope because Bell did submit a drawing for a transport in 1803 and from correspondence the recommendation was made to close the bulwarks the lengh of the ship. That may or may not of actually been done, we will never know.
The General Hope was short lived and met with the untimely demise on Oct. 21 1805 when her captain James Fleet was drunk and ran the ship into a shoal the ship, the cargo and one crew member were lost.
William Bell was given orders to replace the General Hope and he built the General Hunter on the same plans as the Hope and launched the Hunter in 1807.
This is why John Stevens used the General Hope drawing for the General Hunter
 
going deeper we find John Stevens did a drawing of the General Hunter traced from the original drawing of the General Hope done by William Bell but not to stop there the General Hope drawing was traced from a plan drawn by Alexander Munn who drew a plan for a transport in 1802 or earlier.

final plan.jpg

so who is Alexander Munn and how might William Bell get the transport design from Munn? Bells Drawing does have modifications from the original Munn plan. But the design is the same.

Alexander Munn is a shadowy figure. Since his personal and business records have apparently not survived. But the broad picture that emerges clearly indicates he was a leading Quebec shipbuilder in the beginning stages of that highly productive sector of the city’s economy. Munn undoubtedly learned the “mysteries” of shipbuilding from his father before immigrating to Quebec in or before May 1793.
Munn first appears in Quebec records in February 1794 when he described himself as a “ship carpenter” by 1803, however a short time later, he was calling himself a “shipbuilder.” These descriptions suggest that he rose from journeyman to master craftsman within the craft hierarchy. The change in Munn’s title is explained by what appears to have been a well-observed unwritten rule reserving the use of the appellation of shipbuilder to those who operated ship yards, as Munn did by the later date.
Beginning in the mid 1790s, as proprietor of an extensive shipyard at Anse des Mères, Munn frequently launched two large vessels a year, one in the spring and the other in the fall. In addition, a certain amount of repair work seems to have been turned out from his yards. A conservative estimate of his new production, based mainly on the certificates of ship registry, would be 17 vessels built between 1798 and 1812 inclusive. Munn’s ships and brigs were constructed for the British market. His known production indicates that he built primarily on his own account, or under contract with a British agents. Since contract building appears to have involved a flow of capital from the future owner to the builder at specified periods during construction, Munn’s registration of ten vessels in his own name testifies to his strong financial position; he possessed, or had access to, sufficient capital to avoid the dependence usually imposed by contract construction.
Alexander was one of at least five shipbuilding Munns, four of whom established themselves in Lower Canada and were probably of the same family. The fifth, Alexander’s brother, James, was a shipbuilder at Troon, Scotland, in 1800 when, following the death of their father, Alexander gave him power of attorney to look after his shipping interests in Scotland. A John Munn, who may have been Alexander’s brother, began building at Quebec as early as the fall of 1797, and within a few years he had brought his young son into partnership to run a shipyard in the faubourg Saint-Roch, the area of the port, bordering the Rivière Saint-Charles, which later in the century was to have the largest concentration of shipbuilding in North America. David Munn, who may also have been Alexander’s brother, operated a shipyard in the Montreal suburb of Sainte-Marie from 1805 to about 1820, and much of his construction may have been financed by the Greenock merchant Robert Hunter, with whom he registered 14 of 17 vessels. David also had business interests at Quebec; in 1812 he guaranteed the performance of John Munn and Son in a contract to build a ship for a London merchant. The same year he was one of two shipbuilders who valued the vessels in Alexander’s estate, and two years later he rented Alexander’s shipyard from the latter’s widow.
Apon Alexander's death he left his wife well established. She lived in a newly built, substantial stone house. The shipyard was leased on an annual basis to various individuals, including David and John Munn, and finally sold in 1839 to James Bell. I know William Bell had a brother John who had a shipyard in Quebec and William also had had four sons. It is possible James Bell could have been related to William.
Munn’s only public position took place around 1807 when he became acting surveying officer of the port. Certainly he was a privileged member of Quebec society, enjoying advantages that clearly stemmed from being a shipbuilder, there are signs of gracious living in the inventory of his estate including money for the education of the children, Munn had employed a tutor who lived in. These luxuries were beyond the reach of the average citizen.

The Provincial Marine was the navy at the time of the building of the General Hunter, when the Provincial Marine wanted a ship designed they went to the biggest and most influential family of ship builders, the Munn brothers! and Alex was well connected. William Bell who worked in Quebec yards the odds were he worked for the Munn family. Connecting the dots the powers to be at the Provincial Marine handed Bell a drawing of Alex Munn and said build something like this.

and the dots of 6 degrees theory are connected
 
I remember you started a build log for this model about 15 years ago, then abandoned it. Glad to see you are back at it.

yes it is true i did start this years ago and did a set of drawings, a kit and a video series on the building of the prototype kit.
This thread will lead the reader to why i abandoned the project.
 
Getting back to the transport built by William Bell i am calling it a transport and not a war ship because in 1803 to 1807 there was no war and Bell was given the orders to build a transport vessel not an armed war ship.

keels2.JPG

what we have here are CAD drawings (red) is the wreck (black) is the General Hope and (blue) is the Munn transport

taking Munn's transport and overlaying it on the General hope we see the length is the same, what is different is the angle of the stern post as far as the stem i am calling it close it is about the same shape and angle. Munn intended to have a figurehead and Bell's General Hope had a scroll.

keels3.JPG

Taking the wreck and over laying it on the General Hope WOW! it is not even close. This is a red flag historical data says the General Hunter was a copy of the General Hope.

keels4.JPG

next taking the midship for each the wreck, General Hope and the Munn transport and laying them one on top the other and we have a match for all 3 same shape and deadrise of the floor.

mid section1.JPG

now watch this i took the wreck and cut it in half then moved the stem and stern out to line up with the General Hope. Oh my! i did not expect that the stern post angle and the stem are an exact match up.

keels5.JPG
 
The story can end here and we can jump to the conclusion that

in theroy this is what happened

Amherstburg around 1800 was a French settlement and the shipyard was not what we think as a shipyard where ships were built it was more of a shore side repair shop and landing point for supply ships. In February of 1799 it was reported by the commandant at Amherstburg carpenters at the boat yard were busy repairing the schooners Ottawa, Dunmore and the snow Chippawa. These repairs used up a greater part of the materials in the yard, especially the timber. By 1801 Fort Malden became an important base for the Provincial Marine ( the navy of Canada at the time), the deputy general at Quebec sent orders to Kingston naval yard to send to Amherstburg all carpenters judged worthy of employment. The carpenters were to build and repair small boats. William Bell now comes into the picture he was assigned foreman of the Amherstburg yard and instructed to build a transport to replace the Francis and Maria which had a combined tonage of 115. Bell submitted a drawing for a 90 ton transport which will become the General Hope. The problem faced by Bell was the lack of ship building timber at the yard, what was there was used up for repair work. Ship building timber was not as easy to obtain as you would think, The land around Amherstburg was privately owned and there was no open and free land to cut timber what land that was not owned by the people of Amherstburg was owned by native americans. It was at a great expense to purchase standing timber, cutiing it and hauling it to the ship yard because of the long distance and poor roads. When Bell was assigned as foreman he was given a one room cabin with a dirt floor and that was it, it was up to Bell to get the work done at the yard with little to no help from the navy.
As it were, lumber was obtained and the General Hope was built and launched. Then the unexpected happened after just one season or so the General hope was lost. Orders came down to replace the General Hope, holy #$%$% exclaimed William as he looked around the yard and saw no timber it was all used to build the General Hope. As if it wasn't hard and expensive enough he had to do it all over again. William took inventory of what he had on hand and what he needed then he figured it is not enough to build another 90 ton vessel so he opted to build a smaller version of the General Hope with what he had on hand and what he can get from contracting locals. This explains why the wreck and the General Hope plans match up at the stem and stern posts. Bell removed part of the mid section and shortened the hull. This practice was well known and used where ship hulls were lengthened or shortened by removing or adding to the mid section thus preserving the shape at the bow and stern.
Mystery solved the wreck of the General Hunter is a smaller version of the General Hope and all the historical accounts fall in line.
we can accept the above story, it does sort of fit

or is it the end of the story?
 
Are you planning on reviving the project? Or is there too little known about the General Hope to move ahead with a model?

there is a possibility the General Hunter can be reconstructed i would not rule out the possibility of reviving the project AFTER i finish the current project which is well under way the hull is done and i am about ready to build the deck. This will be an entire different build log of the reconstruction of a historic ship which will include 3d modeling and drawing plans and building the prototype.

DSCN3304.jpg


does anyone know how to figure the tonnage of a ship?

the General Hope was length of keel 54 feet, 18 feet breadth, and 8 feet depth of hold at 93 tuns

the wreck was 41 feet length of keel, 18 feet breadth and 8 feet depth of hold so what was the tuns? i am taking a wild guess at around 60 tuns but that is a guess because i do not know how the tunage is figured.

When i worked with the national parks on the canal boat project there was a system called "add measurements" where the cargo capacity of a canal boat was figured out. Kind of like the tuns measurement which was to figure out the cargo capasity. This might of been why Bell was instructed to replace the two transports which were a total of 115 tuns so he came up with 93 tuns for the Hope which was around the same as the other two vessels.
 
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Figuring the tonnage of a vessel or its cargo capacity seems to change from place to place and time to time. I thought the best way was to find other ships built on the lakes around the same time by the same shipwrights and compare measurements. First problem was tons were based on keel length and you will see on some plans it says length of keel for tunage. When you check historical records the length of keel is not always listed but the length of deck is. If this is what your working with it is a bit difficult to measure the length of the deck when it is not there.

cjos-general-hunter.jpg


This is how i came up with the lengh of deck for the wreck. It was 54 feet 9 inches. going back to post #9 when i cut the wreck drawing and matched up the stem and stern post a perfect match. This time i went in the other direction and took the General Hope and cut it in the midship and brought the stem and stern post inward to match the length of the wreck. That is what you see here.

wreck draw1.JPG

Now lets take a look at the historical naval records

ANGELICA sloop keel? length of deck 52 feet breadth 17'6" hold 8 "3' tonnage 66

FELICITY sloop keel? length of deck 57'6" breadth 16' hold 6 ' tonnage 55

FAITH schooner keel? length of deck 56' breadth 15'6" hold 6'4" tonnage 61

WYANDOT sloop keel 37' lenght of deck 44' breadth15'6" hold 6' tonnage 47

these ships were built on lake Erie there were more ships built on the other lakes but this gives enough information to the approximate size of a ship and it's tonnage.

the wreck measurements

keel 41'3" length of deck 54'9" breadth 18' hold 8' tonnage? looking at the above list the wreck falls so neatly into the range of tonnage from 47 to 66, Facturing in ships built on the other lakes and averaging out the dimensions and tonnage the wreck is a vessel of 55 to 60 tonnage.

as you can see by the drawing everything is fitting a smaller version of the General Hope even the deadwood seems to fall within it's proper place. The stem and stern post match.
 
Bryian and Dave are aware of this project that never got finished and perhaps why i dropped it and walked away.

The reason is the glitch in the matrix

sure i could have settled for the reconstruction of the General Hunter based on the wreck data and as i explained the reason the General Hunter was based on the General Hope just a smaller version. Lack of timber, time, man power whatever, maybe William Bell was a bit besides himself over the loss of the General Hope and just slapped together a replacement.

OR
who or whatever is doing the data entry for the matrix messed up the numbers, maybe there are parallel universes and there are two General Hunters in two parallel realities.

We could have accepted the smaller version hypothesis and left it alone. But did i? nope i had to mess with it. Historical records from the Amherstburg shipyard recorded the General Hunter as a 80 ton vessel much bigger than the 60ish ton wreck. Ship yards were very particular about keeping records. Just look at this
it is a record for the repairs of the OTTAWA

pine planking 2 inch 4,100 feet
pine timber for waterways 140 feet
oak plank 4 inch 210 feet
oak plank 3 inch 420 feet
nails 8 inch 150 pounds
nails 6 inch 280 pounds
nails double deck 400 pounds
nails sort 100 pounds
pitch barrel
100 pounds of sorted iron
oakum 100 pounds
white paint 196 pounds
black paint 50 pounds
yellow paint 60 pounds red paint 100 pounds
linseed oil 24 gallons
workmanship 170 days

so if the records state the General Hunter was a 80 ton vessel it just might of been, the yard kept track of every nail every board foot of timber, every pound of paint. It is a big difference between a 60 ton ship and a 80 ton ship.
Is there anyway to double check the size of the General Hunter?


when the General Hunter was captured by the Americans it was towed to a harbor. Danniel Dobbins went to survey the captured ships and assess the damage. In his report he put the General Hunter at 73 tons just shy of the 80 ton shipyard record. Who is Danniel Dobbins and why believe his measurements? Dobbins was a ship captain and ship owner also a shipwright who starting building the Erie fleet before Noah Brown and Henry Eckford arrived to finish the job. If Dobbins recorded the General Hunter as a 73ish ton ship it probely was. The General Hunter was sold and registration records stated the Hunter at 71 tons. Going through newspaper articles of the time ships were published when they arrived and left port again the Hunter was mentioned as a 71 ton vessel.

how do you fit a 73ish ton vessel into a 60ish ton wreck? i don't know but something just does not add up.
what i need to see is the records of the sale of the General Hunter and if the dimensions and tonnage is on that bill of sale.

remember that plan of a transport by Alex Munn of 93 tons as built it was the Earl of Moira and recorded as 168 tons so anyone who thinks they have the plans of any ship and think they are building a historical model think again as drawn and as built are two different things.
 
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in the end it comes down to two General Hunters and there is enough research to backup both of them. It comes down to which one do you believe is the correct General Hunter?

and that is why i abandoned the project because the key piece of the puzzle is still missing.

two general hunters.JPG
 
it is possible to hire researchers or go do the research myself and dig deeper and deeper into the General Hunter. The problem with doing that is the time and money.

lets take a look

sale of Hunter.JPG

we know who bought the General Hunter and where he was from. The next step would be to take a trip to Erie PA and search the local arclives.

erie ship tonage.JPG

the offical naval listing of the ships i would have to make a trip to the National Archives or hire a resesrcher to find the original documents. The General Hunter is listed at 75 tons.

ghtonnage3.JPG

gh tonnage.JPG

historical records the General hunter at 75 to 80 tons

report1.JPGreport2.JPGreport3.JPG

what i would need to do is track down all the original sources, find the bill of sale and search all the records. It appears the Hunter was regestered at 71 tons at various ports around the Great Lakes.
It was a common practice to game the system and slightly reduce the tonage of a ship to lower cargo tax, port fees etc. and the fact figuring the tonnage of any ship was a little iffy. This is why you see the registered tonnage at 71 and not 75 to 80. It would be blazing obvious to reduce a ships tonnage from 80 to 60 but shaving off a few tons does add up cargo after cargo saving a few bucks.
 
this just might be a prime example of why you see the same subjects done over and over by different companies.
if you are going to produce a kit of an original or historic ship you better have a top notch research team willing to turn over every stone to find the facts. Just having a set of plans will not cut it.
To slap the statement on a kit "historical ship" you better be prepared to invest a lot of time and money to back that statement up.

yupper dude that is the queen charlotte i am sure of it, ya i agree looks just like the drawings. Should we dig deeper? na lets just go with the Queen Charlotte.

Discovery.jpg
 
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it is common knowledge when someone drones on and on and on about the same old stuff people stop listening and wonder what the heck is your point?

There is no reason to abandon the work that went into the shipwreck and research. So to step back and take another look there is no reason not to reconstruct and draw a set of working plans of the "shipwreck on Southampton Beach"
there is a lot of construction information that can be gleaned from them old bones.

Keep in mind shipyards were not like modern day coffee shops, one on every corner. They were far and few between Master Shipwrights were even harder to find maybe a small handfull. Carpenters were easy to find if your were skilled in timber (post and beam) construction you could build a ship, a barn, a house, a canal boat. The wreck seems to have the design and construction finger prints of William Bell right now i am doing another ship he built.

WRECK.JPG

so this can morph into how these drawings were created.. oh i did put General Hunters guns on the wreck i just wanted to see if they would fit.

like i said we do't want to bore the crowd with constant droning.
 
John Stevens was the curator for the Museum of the Atlantic, an author, draftsman, researcher, maritime historian so John is quite qualified to have drawn the plans for the General Hunter.

He just did not decide to use the original Bell drawing out of a whim, Even though there is no name on the drawing it was identified as the General Hope. William Bell was the Provincial Maritime master shipwright at the Amherstburg shipyard at Fort Malden. When Bell arrived at Amherstburg he built an unarmed transport named the General Hope. We can conclude the drawing is the General Hope because Bell did submit a drawing for a transport in 1803 and from correspondence the recommendation was made to close the bulwarks the lengh of the ship. That may or may not of actually been done, we will never know.
The General Hope was short lived and met with the untimely demise on Oct. 21 1805 when her captain James Fleet was drunk and ran the ship into a shoal the ship, the cargo and one crew member were lost.
William Bell was given orders to replace the General Hope and he built the General Hunter on the same plans as the Hope and launched the Hunter in 1807.
This is why John Stevens used the General Hope drawing for the General Hunter
A bit of a side question to your interesting story: I have a John Stevens drawing also (of the Great Lakes schooner St. Louis, 1961) and after some research I assume it was drawn by the John Stevens that you are referring to. How did you definitively connect that drawing with "that" John Stevens? I'd like to do the same, but all I have is a name on a print, no copyright, no organisation name, etc.

Edit: never mind. I just zoomed in on the hand lettering on the Steven's drawing. It is distinctive and the same on my laker as on the Hunter drawing. That is sufficient for me to link it to "that" Stevens".

You are presenting a fascinating detective story by the way.
 
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"Amherstburg around 1800 was a French settlement". How do you mean? It is a pretty little town, I wish I knew more about it, but it was part of the Brutish colony of Upper Canada. Do you mean that there were largely French speaking (francophones we call them in Canada whereas French implies nationality) people there?
 
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