Thanks for #3 Vol. Gave me much info on Turkish SOL's & Frigates.
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I hoped it would be useful to someone. I use it quite a bit.
Can anyone recommend a book or site with technical commentaries on design of various ship classes, what evolved from what, like how the late M.J. Whitley covered warships of WWII?
Diamondback,
Try searching the book catalog on http://www.sea-room.com/
Maybe like:
"Construction And Fitting Of An English Man-of-war 1650-1850" by Peter Goodwin,
--A delightfully authoritative study that provides precise and detailed information on hull frame construction, hull planking, bulkheads and internal layout, machinery, beams, knees, and internal stiffening., H, Pages 288. 100 Photos, 300 Illust., Hull Frame Construction., 9.75X 12.
http://www.line-of-battle.de/
Here a link to a german site, with a complete rule-system ..
Here is a link to a site called the Dictionary of Vexillology (the study of flags). This site will be useful to all genre of miniature wargaming and modeling, not just naval.
http://www.crwflags.com/fotw/flags/vxt-dtoc.html
Uh, guys, when I say "design commentary"--while I appreciate the referrals :)--I'm looking for things like "HMS Such-and-such was basically the design of HMS Other Ship chopped in half with a ten-foot plug spliced in", like did a given class's design start from a clean sheet of paper, or like the supermajority of Sir Thomas Slade's 74-gun SOL's was it an evolution of another design? (Almost all of the Slade 74's were basically improved and refined versions of his basic HMS Bellona design. Slade was also a big fan of enlarging or reducing existing designs... Someday I'll post what I've pieced together from Wikipedia about the development of the RN's rated ships.)
Sorry Diamondback, I've got nothing. It sounds like you have already explored all of the avenues I use. James has abstracts of all UK vessels from 1792 to 1820, catagorized by a reference letter system not a name. A named ship would be classified as an A, B, D, F, etc. depending on the layout, location and type of guns, and crew compliment. If a ship was modified from one of the normal categories, it receives a new reference code. The difficulty I have found is trying to match a specific named ship to a category. James is pretty good about identifying an RN ships category within the book text, but not 100% of the time. He also includes tables in the first volume for many of the French categories and refers to the tables when discussing a specific ship. I am constantly flipping back and forth to get the information I am looking for.
Wikipedia is also another source I use, however I have found numerous errors. Understandable when anyone can input or change the data on Wiki.
Bottom line is that William James is my main source, but I don't think you will find everything you are looking for there.
Diamondback,
I just ran across this little paragragh in James while looking for my historical post for today. You might think it interesting.
"The Sibylle had been a French 40-gun frigate, until captured by the Romney 50, in June, 1794. On being fitted out in the British service, the Sibylle, a fine Toulon-built frigate of 1091 tons, was armed with 44 long 18 and 9 pounders ; but, subsequently, 10 of her 16 nines were exchanged for fourteen 32-pounder carronades. This gave her 28 long 18-pounders on the main deck, and six long nines and fourteen 32-pounder carronades on the quarterdeck and forecastle, total 48 guns ; which was the precise force of the Sibylle on the present occasion. Her net complement, as originally established ; was 297 men and boys ; but the ship, at this time, accidentally had on board a greater number, as we shall presently show.
Frigates, mounting 24-pounders on the main deck, have always been rare. The British possessed none until the three 64s, Indefatigable, Anson, and Magnanime, were reduced ; nor the French until the Pomone was launched. The capture of the latter by the British gave birth to the Endymion ; and, about the time that the Endymion was launched, the Americana set afloat three of the largest and heaviest frigates that the world had ever seen. The second 24-pounder frigate built by the French was, we believe, launched at Rochefort, in the summer of 1795, and she was very appropriately named La Forte. The Pomone was about 1270 tons, and mounted twenty-six 24 pounders on her main deck. The Forte measured 1400 tons, and carried, for which she had ample room, one gun more of a side on her main deck than the Pomone ; making, with 14 long eights and four brass 36-pounder carronades on her quarterdeck and forecastle, a total of 46 guns.
These, we have no doubt, were all the guns which, with e complement of 480 or 500 men, the Forte originally carried. But subsequently, when perhaps Rear-admiral Sercey hoisted his flag on board of her in the beginning of the year 1796, four additional brass 36-pounder carronades were added to her armament ; and, subsequently again, two long English 24-pounders, taken out of some prize probably, were placed in her two maindeck bow-ports ; thus making her guns amount to 52, exclusive of eight 1-pounder swivels mounted along the top of her waist hammock-nettings. After this, it is hoped, not profitless digression, we return to the Sibylle, whom we left hastening towards the Sand-heads, which lie off the mouth of Bengal river, in the hope there to meet this same truly formidable French frigate."
Here is another link to Late 18th, 19th and early 20th century Naval and Naval Social History. You will find William James' Naval History of Great Britain in it's entirety here.
http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb....tyc/Naval.html
Diamondback, I believe I may have found the site you need: http://threedecks.org/
This site is the culmination of several years of collecting naval data from the age of sailing ships.
There are currently 19,543 ships, 20,922 seamen, 721 actions/battles and countless other items listed on this site.
There are categories for Ships, Seamen, Actions, Classes, Captures, Shipwrights, Source, Glossary, Rates, Types, and Definitions.
If you can't find what you need here I give up!
Vol, thanks--I already hang out at ThreeDecks a lot, and while they give you the technical numbers there's a lot of room for variation on "X feet over gundeck, Y tons BM, 32 guns". And once I get the other laptop booted, I'm going to start a thread that should knock some socks off with data I've assembled... :)
EDIT: It's up.
New link
http://www.hazegray.org/
Really good site for history of military ships primarily US. Although mainly "modern" ships predominate it has a nice historical section on all US ships including our period, some links to other sites including AOSail, nice stuff on modern ship building and details on todays fleets and in depth on Canadian fleet.
Not sure if it's already listed, but there's a veritable treasure-trove at http://www.history.navy.mil/ --they have the complete Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships while last I knew HazeGrey only had a partial, and they were a big help to me when I was researching ship histories to do custom cards over at Forumini and for my research on aircraft-carrier capacities to fix a systemic but easily-repaired flaw in Axis & Allies: War at Sea.
Also, check out http://www.ourflagwasstillthere.org/ .
:thumbsup: Daniel and Vol I thank you both for sharing such exhaustive links to resources and information. This whole week I've been meaning to log off and get to bed at a reasonable hour without success. so much to read never enough time. :sleep:
I must come here more often. Thanks for all the tips
Be safe
Rory
Thanks to this info I took the first step and dipped my toe in waters of 1/1200 minis. Looking forward to giving it my best. We'll see how long my patience and eyesight hold out.
Daniel,
This is great stuff, lots of material to go through. Appreciate yours the folks that have added to this list for the work in putting it together. Bravo Zulu!
Bob
Thanks Bob, the early days of SOG forum were pretty quiet so we had to fill our time in somehow!
Been looking at the links page and I think it needs re-organising to get all the various links from the various posts grouped together and sorted by type but not sure how to do that. Any suggestions guys?
I'm ordering some custom bases for upcoming ship builds and came across this news.
Litko Game Accessories is offering 20% off all purchases this weekend and it includes custom items. The sale runs through Monday.
http://www.litko.net/news/75/Our-201...l#.UpuWgMRDtAI
I didn't want to start a new thread and seeing how this concerns the hobby side of SoG I thought this might be the best place to post the information. If this information is not appropriate for the Anchorage please delete the post. Thanks.
Thank you very much for these excellent resources!
Gustavo,
Keep doing what your doing. There are resources on you list that I will have to investigate. :envy: More stuff to do.
Happy gaming, :cannonboom::takecover: :cannon:
Bob. :salute:
I found this great thesis on Eighteenth-Century Colonial American Merchant Ship Construction very interesting indeed though I have only read a small portion yet!
http://nautarch.tamu.edu/pdf-files/VanHorn-MA2004.pdf
I just had a dip into this and found some very interesting points, especially on the attempt to reduce crew to a minimum by the development of easy to use equipment. Also the way in which timber availability effected the constructional methods, and avoidance of wastage. it will certainly influence my play with Merchantmen in the future. Most ships obviously ran on what we would call a skeleton crew. No wonder they got into difficulties if a Man of War's Captain impressed his 10%.
We could really do with a similar work for warships.
Thanks for posting this Airbourne.
Rob.
Glad to post it! It makes me think we should rate merchant ships as starting out with only 2 crew actions. There guns might be loaded before the fight but they would have a tough time reloading, sailing, and doing damage control at the same time.
Quite agree, unless it was an Indiaman who could afford to run full crew.
On the strength of what was read, I was just chatting with my son about the use of timber and construction methods used. Inevitably the conversation moved onto crewing, replacing spars after gales etc. When we got onto crew sizes. 150 plus for Frigates, against say 30 for a well found Merchant ship leaving Portsmouth. With the losses incurred on a voyage,deaths, illness, impressment by Warships, etc. we got onto developments in ship handling and how the Merchant Fleets improved technology through sheer necessity. A loss of 10 % crew in Gib, and then another 10% by the next warship you meet say at Capetown, and with say three or four crew lost to accidents, disease etc, you could be down to say 20 men before you even hit the hurricanes in the Indian Ocean. Hardly enough to man the pumps, let alone steer the ship and make good the leaks. Manning the guns! Better hope some of the passengers were Army Officers.:wink:
Rob.
Thank you for all these valuable links, Daniel.:thumbsup:
I agreed with this, and put it on my provisional designs for merchantmen! - they are on my album at: http://www.sailsofglory.org/album.php?albumid=370 - I hope you agree with my stats?
Rob,
I just happened upon a similar document for the HMS Pallas Frigate!
http://www.academia.edu/1397649/HMS_...l_Navy_frigate
Another superb find AB.
The appendices are particularly informative.
I will read it all in depth later, but from the snippet I have read so far it looks as if the narrative also contains a wealth of information.
Thanks for posting this.
Rob.
Glad you found it useful Hannah.
Rob.