My thoughts on the guns were that with the sides of the ship being straight, and mounting them on a second deck, that deck could be hinged near the side of the ship. The lines feeding the guns can be tubing. From my understanding the hulls have plenty of depth and beam for something like that. Magazines can be straight too. I personally was working on top loaders with a sliding feed sleeve and two o-rings to seal. Flexible tubing at the joint there would work fine. Imagine it as the port gun deck being separate from the starboard side and independently hinged. With the hinge point near the muzzle, the gunports should be plenty big enough but I understand the worry about having to be slotted. I'll have to mock it up and see for myself. I see double thread too.
Fire on the upward roll? Fire on the UPWARD roll!? I don't want to hit rigging, I want to hit hull. Specifically, I want to hit hull below the waterline, so I can sink the other guy. So I will fire on the downward roll, from upwind of my opponent, at point-blank range. If I have room to open the gun ports, it's too far away I am not entirely sure how important elevation control will be. At first glance having adjustable, or at least auto-leveling, cannons seems very important. But then I remember my experience sailing torpedo-cruisers. None of those ships had controllable depression, and some of them were heavily affected by the wind, sometimes listing 45 degrees on the more blustery days. In lighter breezes, I could take advantage of the wind-induced heeling, to fire a long-range shot from downwind or an even closer-range shot from upwind. In heavier winds that heeled the one set of torpedoes above horizontal, I would simply have to attack from upwind. My own torpedo-cruiser's torpedoes were set at about 25 degrees down-angle, but others had between 5 and 40 degrees down angle and I got to try them all out. Just a little food for thought. To answer your question, captainponderous, Foster Breech cannons (the basic ones) have a single 1/16"ID air line feeding each one. That air line is fairly flexible, so as long as you provide enough slack, it should be able to handle whatever depression/elevation mechanism you use. I am not sure how to do a depression mechanism for weather-deck guns. I was planning to place all my guns on the middle deck of a three-decker like HMS Victory. I would put the pivot point as close to the gun ports as possible, to maximize range of motion without cutting slots, and then space in the upper and lower decks would provide room for the long back ends of the cannons to move up and down a decent amount.
Well I gotta say the slots in the side are worrisome to me. Maybe I had too great a press of sail, but I often buried my lee-rail into the water, and open gun ports would have caused the same concern as they did back in the day! I'd rather have out of scale sail-combat in that situation (with my weather deck guns) - how would you ensure you didn't sink yourself?
Fit a 1/2" tube about 1" long behind your gun port. Cut the finger off a rubber glove. Cut the tip of the finger. Slide the end of the rubber tube over the gun and cable tie in place. Slide the other end over the 1/2" tube and cable tie in place. Viola! Watertight gun ports.
Is this rubber-finger idea tried and tested seamanship, or lubberly wishful-thinking? I don't suppose there are pictures anywhere?
My thought is to build a two decker and only arm on the upper deck. Build as light as possible and float to waterline design by putting all ballast in the keel bulb, to keep it from dipping the ports.
As long as it's one of those re-usable "dishwasher" gloves, and not the disposable latex/pvc type, it should, I would imagine it might even survive bb hits.
I agree with Daemon. Bonus points to the first to have hot pink gun condoms made from dishwashing gloves
I can think of several different ways to prevent or reduce flooding through open gun ports. 1) using a rubber barrier, as Darren suggested. 2) build a two-deck or three-deck warship, or set fewer sails. (hard to do, sometimes) 3) fix the guns, without depression, and build a watertight barrier around them. 4) it is also possible to duplicate the effect of the rubber barrier using solid materials like wood, plastic, or metal, but that requires a lot of machining. 5) if you're really crazy, you could build closeable gun ports, so you can lower the hatches and seal up the gun ports. Because if your guns are underwater, there's not much benefit to firing them... Personally, I'd like to do a combination of methods 1 and 2. The multi-deck warships have much more room for gun depression and elevation, which is important when you know your ship is going to be heeling most of the time, and setting the right sails for the weather means your gunnery will be more consistent and you'll also be better able to survive sudden squalls.
Tried and tested in real life. Have a look at any warship's gun turret, and there's the boot, at the base of the barrel.
Kotori and I went out sailing today. We were at a different pond this time, with decent wind. Last time, we had only a whisper of wind, and were often stuck without any motion. This time, we actually had to remove the top royals from Constitution, leaving her with mainsail, topsail, and top-gallants. Victory sailed with her full spread of canvas: mainsail, topsail, and top-gallant (her rig doesn't include top-royals). It was a blast to sail these boats, and quite different than sailing a powered ship. It takes some practice and skill to properly maneuver these ships. It is also easy to make a mistake and end up somewhere other than your intended destination, especially with squirrelly winds due to the trees lining the shore. Still, it was quite interesting to try some combat maneuvers. I can tell that position relative to the wind will be important. Kotori and I had a head-on pass, and I was able to cut just upwind of him. Not only did the maneuver surprise him, it put me at close range, with the wind pushing my guns lower to smash his lower hull, while his guns would have gone high or into the upper hull. Unfortunately, it seems I made a mistake when rigging Constitution. The lower yard of the fore course got caught on the lone to one of the jibs, and so one of the running lines snapped when I tried to shift the foremast while tacking. It's a simple matter to fix, but will have to wait until next build session, hopefully next weekend.
I agree with gascan, today's sailing adventure gave me the greatest hope yet for the Age of Sail. With a decent wind, the differences between the massive battleship HMS Victory and the sleek frigate USS Constitution became very clear. Connie was slightly faster overall, much quicker to accelerate, and pointed into the wind a little better. Gascan mercilessly used these advantages to seize and maintain the weather gauge for most of our 45-minute "duel". However, Victory's greater mass made her better able to tack; this, combined with my greater experience at sailing, allowed me to return the favor to gascan, plus interest. After that head-to-head pass gascan talked about , Victory tacked while Connie wore ship (away from the wind) rather clumsily, giving me the weather gauge temporarily. As we closed again I wore ship much faster than gascan could, and pulled up alongside and upwind of him. This robbed the wind from his sails, giving me a good 30 seconds of close-range broadside slugging with the bigger ship also having the gunnery advantage due to the wind. Methinks if we'd been firing real bbs instead of imaginary ones, Constitution would be in a very sorry state indeed. But gascan is learning fast. He was doing much better by the end than he did at the beginning. Sailing square-riggers is harder than sailing electric boats, but learning the basic skills is easy. It takes hours to learn and a lifetime to master.
unfortunately, we were too busy sailing to take pictures. One stick controls the foremast and the main and mizzen masts, while the other stick has the rudder.I had to keep my hands on both sticks in order to stay as close to the wind as possible. If I had a third hand I would have loved to take some photos and video for you all to see.
Question- What would a 20 gun brig get armed as? Classification Rating Historical Guns Armament Ammunition Post Ship* (see note) 6th Rating 20 to 31 8 400 Brig, Sloop, etc. Unrated Under 20 6 300 *any ship with 20 to 31 guns is called a Post Ship, regardless of its rig. Were I to become interested in this aspect of the hobby. The following type of ship would be my preference. I do realize in an age with such a vast number of ships and subclasses that there could be many ships that fall in a wierd place. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_brig_Mercury Das Butts
Funny you should ask about the brig Mercury. I'm poking through my plans collection, and there it is. Four pages with good resolution in 1/100 scale. Cross sections of all three views, not just the ribs, so you can make accurate ribs at whatever point you need. Two of the pages are all about details, such as precise dimensions of the cannons and details of the stern gallery and the ship's boat and how to make various blocks and even some details on how the blocks were used in the rigging. It's all in Russian, but I think we can figure this stuff out well enough.
I'm of the opinion that if the ship was built as a warship, 20 guns makes it a 6th rate and a ship converted to war with 20 guns would be an unrated ship. I'm no expert, but that's what makes sense to me.
I like it for the fact that it's crew took on and disabled 2 different Ottoman? ships 1 at a time when being pursued, then made their escape! The other ship I like is Dvenatsat Apostolov. Another Russian, this time a first rate ship with a 210ft long gun deck and 120 guns. See: http://www.shipmodel.ru/Plans/12_Apostolov.htm and http://threedecks.org/index.php?display_type=show_ship&id=10511 threedecks.org is a neat website. Lots of numbers on ships. Like the fact that the ship I just mentioned had 28- 8.75" shell guns. Makes me wonder if it is more fair to rate firepower by type of ship and number of guns or the size and number of the guns only. The ship type does provide in a sense the defensive toughness of a ship. Constitution had fewer guns than some contemporary ships but was alot tougher than many. Just some rambling thoughts... Das Bütts
