Yeah I knew length was going to be an issue. I've known that Fletcher was the largest destroyer of it's time and there's no way Farragut was gonna be longer.
I might've just scaled it wrong, spacing certain objects to far from each other, and therefor extending the length of the ship
this begs the question, how exactly do you work when drawing an real world vessel? it sounds like you scale the ship from the parts, which is extremely hard to do and should only be done when you have no alternative whatsoever (and possibly not even then).
there are excellent sources for the general arrangement of these ships. I have not looked for actual builders plans, but there are quite a few sideviews on google image search. Friedman's us destroyers has an general arrangement drawing as well on page 82. might those not be an better option?