Shipbucket

Astonishing work Craig!

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My Worklist
Sources and documentations are the most welcome.

-Koko Kyouwakoku (Republic of Koko)
-Koko's carrier-based aircrafts of WWII
-Koko Kaiun Yuso Kaisha - KoKaYu Line (Koko AU spinoff)
-Koko - Civil Aviation

I am not in any way trying to detract from your research or the finished product (regardless of how jealous I may be that you have the talent to draw this and I don't (and I have tried)). The 1803 sail plan doesn't apply to when the ship was built. The topmasts were replaced every 3 years, or as needed, or whenever the CO wanted to modify them. The rig was different as commissioned in 1798 than it was in 1803 after a shakedown cruise, a couple of wartime cruises, and a period in ordinary followed by a refit. Plus ships like this had never been built before, much less operated by the brnad new United States Navy. There was a learning period associated with rigging these ships. They started out severely undermasted, spent the Barbary Wars and War of 1812 moderately undermasted, and finally were appropriately overmasted in the 1820s. It is not a problem that plagued the more conventionally sized public subscription frigates that come onto the scene later on, it is specific to Constitution and United States in 1798-1799.

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"All men dream, but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake in the day to find that it was vanity, but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act their dreams with open eyes, to make it possible. This I did." Thomas Edward Lawrence, The Seven Pillars of Wisdom

Syzmo,
Any chance of having good data to pass on regarding spars, sails, etc. "as launched" or "as designed" I have no problems with making changes if there's solid period info available.

I've been working with on-line data on this one while talig a lot pf care to not use model kit info...that's mostly incorrect or postdates the 1812 war.

Craigh

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In active progress
More Ships with Sails
Early Torpedo Boats in SB and FD Scales
Some railroad stuff
More random stuff that strikes me!

Did a little digging regarding Consti's original rig.
In "Anatomy of the Ship: Constitution" found here:
http://books.google.com/books?id=GgkTn0 ... ig&f=false

Note that the preview is missing the bulk of the book and from what I can see on-line, it focuses on the appearance of the ship in 1812.

Pages 30-31 TABLE 4 and then TABLE 5 there are spar dimensions from the designer's surviving papers. Along with weasel clauses.

Continuing on there is Table 6 with 1803 dimensions and list. There were actually 2 lists which more or less agree. Table 7 has the "official" list through to 1815.

The lists obviously don't reflect field breakage and replacements. That's possibly available in surviving Ship's Logs.

CraigH

_________________
In active progress
More Ships with Sails
Early Torpedo Boats in SB and FD Scales
Some railroad stuff
More random stuff that strikes me!

Sorry, I've been trying to find some documentation all along but I have read so many books on the old sail navy since I started work aboard USS Constellation at Historic Ships in Baltimore that I couldn't find what I was looking for.

This isn't the best scan but it is Josiah Fox's original sail plan for the 44 gun frigates from Thomas Truxtan's book System of Masting published in 1794.

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"All men dream, but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake in the day to find that it was vanity, but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act their dreams with open eyes, to make it possible. This I did." Thomas Edward Lawrence, The Seven Pillars of Wisdom

More Fact Checking notes:

Found an interesting pdf from the following Thread:
http://modelshipworld.com/index.php?/to ... -question/

Truxton's notes regarding sparring for the frigates during the construction/planning stages. As a general statement he generally recommended British practice at the time.

At the time of construction, there was yet to be established any sort of standards for masting, rigging, or sails by the US Navy...That didn't start till the somewhere around or after the Barbary conflict.

All the sails shown on the drawing were known to exist in the 1790's. These have been documented on the HMS Diana, a frigate built at the same time period as the "Consti". It's known that there was also a big crossover of British seamen with the US and one of the 2 key members of the design staff was trained by the Royal Navy.

I did a quick check of the main mast form Truxton's notes on my drawing, it's within a couple pixels of what's drawn. I'm still not convinced that the actual masting and spar dimensions used were recorded or have been transcribed to a format available on-line.

If anyone can show me a solid and verifiable reference, I'll gladly redo the masting/sails/rigging (it's a big time commitment).

CraigH

_________________
In active progress
More Ships with Sails
Early Torpedo Boats in SB and FD Scales
Some railroad stuff
More random stuff that strikes me!