Ships w/ Sails

Some of the cannons 

The first parts ready for assembling 

Endeavour and Victory 

The first parts glued together 

A replica of the Endeavour visiting London 

The beautiful stern of the Endeavour 

Endeavour in Greenwich 

The figure head of the Victory. Note easy to paint something like this in such a small scale. 

The original figurehead, now preserved in a museum in Portsmouth 

Airfix indicated that the gunports should be painted red and this really looked nice. Until I realized that this was incorrect. Beacause Airfix only provides gunbarrels for most of the cannons and the have to be fixed to something. So Airfix closed the gunports and suggested to paint them red. But in reality, the gunports are open and you could look into the shipif you wanted. So they should be dark/black instead of red, so I changed them. 

The two boats in place. I painted one of them like the original in the museum: white with a green with gold board. When I fixed the boats, I noticed that one of the guns had come loose and dropped inside the hull. With a lot of shaking, I managed to get it out again, I put a tiny rope around the barrel to hold it in place until the glue had settled, as this was already the second time that one of the guns disappeared inside the hull. I also noted that the lower deck had come loose a bit, but you won't see it 

The bow of the Victory with the figure head in place. When I wanted to glue the knightheads in place (the two black poles under the bowsprit) had gone awol, so I decided to revert to some old craftmanship and made them out of wood! (Later I found the missing one back again) 

Two of the masts testfitted.
 

All masts in place 

Sitting on her final resting place, together with HMS Endeavour, the ABN Volvo ocean race ship and a souvenir Viking ship from Norway. 

Making the shrouds. This was a real.... Airfix provided two bobbins with thread, but didn't say what to to use for the shrouds and what for the rigging. After making the first shrouds, I already ran out of thread, so obviously, I made the wrong choice. But making the shrouds wasn't easy. The bobbins are too thick to go between the wires on the rig, so I wound some thread on a piece of plastic. 

The first result. You have to glue the threads together with Crystal Clear. Almost invisible, until you decide to paint the shrouds black: the drops of crystal clear show up 🙁 

The gun doors in place and the red stoppers in the canons painted. 

The first shrouds in place. You can see the blobs of crystal clear, which don't really look nice. The shrouds are too short, so I added some horizontal threads to make it possible for the crew to reach the crows nest. 

All shrouds in place. The result could have been better, but I'm satisfied with it. 

And suddenly it is a ship w/sail! Glueing the sails to the masts turned out to be easier than I thought and the result is quite nice. Now some miles of rigging to do! 

Twenty-one miles of rope on the real one, so that mean a lot of ropes. I've done the first part of the standing rigging. I've used elastic thread, because this is less vulnerable. The problem is to get all the ropes tight. But the masts and the bowsprit are too flexible so they bend a bit, 

The last sails added, the two jibs. 

It's amazing to see ow many ropes there are. Even between the masts there are a lot of connections. 

Most of the standing rigging done 

Some of the running rigging. They are the ropes that control the sails. I used a thinner thread for this. The problem is that it isn't easy to run the wires like the original. The shrouds get in the way but I managed more or less to get them in place. 

A quick picture to show the complexity if the standing rigging. 

And the Victory is ready and this is the last picture of the battle field with the tools I used for the rigging. I will shortly post some pictures of the finished model 

In the meantime I started working working on the second ship of the project, the Mary Rose, which remnants still can be seen in Portsmouth. It's a small model 1/400 

Not too may parts but the detail is nice. You can count all of the 72 canons and the rudder also looks quite nice. 

The gundeck with all the canons 

The sails painted white and masked to paint the wooden parts brown. 

The sails after painting and the hull has been primed. 

And the third ship the bark Endeavour. I started this model about 45 years ago, but never finished it. So I dusted it and removed the cobwebs and to my surprise it survived remarkably well. Only one of the anchors had lost its blades. No idea how this happened. And now I have to decide how to finish it: the way Airfix suggests it or the way the replica looks, which I saw quite some years ago in Greenwich 

The replica Endeavour 

The beautiful stern
 

Most of the parts removed. Fortunately I didn't use a very strong glue 

All the parts from the deck, ready for an update 

The masts. I found a long black piece that looked like a yard from the rear mast, although the shape was a bit different. But when I had removed all the parts from the deck I held the ship upside down and suddenly a piece of plastic fell on mu table. The missing yard! I had been stuck to the railing. 

A first coat of primer 

After a lot of masking I first applied yellow, followed by a small line of blue 

Quite some leakage, as was to be expected since the hull is very uneven. So some touching up to do. 

All the deck parts with there new red paint. Because one of the anchors was damaged, I ordered a metal replacement. It was smaller than the original one, so I decided to combine the plastic old one with the metal new one. 

The railing painted black 

The lower part of the railing is red, so again some masking. The deck needs a lot of weathering before it looks a bit like the original 

The stern with the windows. Still some work to do, white for the window frames and black for the hull 

The masts with a new cot of paint 

Almost ready 

The decals in place. Looks good. 

The finished model 

Not bad for such a small model 

Before...... 

and after the restoration 

All the deck objects in place 

The mast in place 

First rigging done 

Some of the shrouds in place. The Endeavour had unlike the Victory, ready-made shrouds, so I expected that they were a lot easier to install. How wrong could I be.
I found that one of the sets of shrouds is too short. Or did I do something wrong? And it's still very hard to get them taught. But we'll move on!
 

The final result: HMS Mary Rose 1/400 

 

 

And HMS Victory 1/180 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And bark Endeavour 

 

 

 

 

All three together