Galleon From Scratch 16 Months Later

Well it's been sixteen months since that first post, and my personal goal of quarterly contributions has long since expired. Over this hiatus I have moved all the way across the country from Atlanta, Georgia to Portland, Oregon with only the Harvey suffering damage despite all three models being packed in giant cardboard boxes filled with styrofoam popcorn. The Harvey's casualties I blame completely on myself, as the majority of the suffering was limited to loose cannons breaking free. Idioms and cliches existing on a relatively microscopic level. Only the helmsman's shelter above the fantail broke loose on my still unnamed English galleon, but thanks to rigging it took me awhile to even realize that a few millimeters now separated a few of the four support posts to the deck. The only real loss resulting from the move was two missing sails I'd sewn as an experiment and eventually approved for the actual model. Each had my trademark brass wire embedded into the hems along the sails to give the final installation the illusion of being full of wind. This is the reason that many modelers, including my late grandfather from whom I've gained appreciation for the craft of wooden model ships, leave the yards bare to avoid limp sails from hiding all of their rigging work. I presume my missing sails escaped lost in one of the giant popcorn boxes in our haste to make our new apartment livable.

In some regards I was dead on in assuming that the details would be my undoing in both completing this model in a timely fashion and not letting it drive me crazy. Other than bisecting an endless amount of toothpicks for added detail, using a shearing plate to reduce bamboo skewers to tiny oar handles, and trying to stick to my rule of no new wood leaving me literally saving centimeter long scraps knowing they would find use elsewhere while discarding them would leave me with many a gap, the detail that got to me the most was the ratline ladders. The Harvey was my first experience with them and boasted three lines from the main deck to both of the crow's nests with two additional lines from one of the crow's nests to the next highest level. All together that was sixteen lines to be connected by countless clovehitches. The English galleon's plans call for as many as eight lines going from the deck to a single mast on both sides with two of the four masts crow's nests continuing with fewer lines to the next level. My compromise was to reduce the number of lines at each location leaving me with only five instead of eight lines as the maximum width. This leaves me with 38 lines to connect rather than the 16 present on the Harvey. If that wasn't enough, I've also been tasked with doubling the amount of cross-ties due to the scale of the ship being half. This leaves me with four times as many tiny clovehitches to tie, but I'm almost there except for the lines extending beyond the two crow's nests.

The second area I previously overlooked was cost. Though certainly I've kept the budget well below the price of any other model I've purchased and it certainly has been no strain on the wallet, I knew from the start that I seriously lacked most non-wooden fixtures needed to complete the galleon to my liking. For a much less ambitious project I might have adequate pulley blocks, but that was really the only non-wooden item with which I'd found myself with any excess (and these parts were actually made from wood). Without any good supplies from any good hobby stores, I began to frequent the craft stores as I'd done in the past for fun buttons and beads that could substitute for the specialty brass fixtures one would find in a regular kit. Countless trips to Michaels with their weekly 40% off any single item coupon finally yielded the necessary components for the items which simply could not be made from wood at that scale. The final purchased item did come from a real hobby store: brass tubing for the cannons. From the beginning I cringed every time I considered using painted wood for the 42 cannon ports around the hull, and no craft store stocked any kind of bead that could simulate the appropriate dimensions of a cannon.

The last item for which I've actually searched for all my wooden ship models, even back when they were just made from cardboard, is a bowsprit. The production and popularity of pewter figurines has diminished with a Darwinian tendency leaving only Warhammer 40,000 as the remaining stock. Searching for a female warrior or wizard or a simple animal like a lion or horse has left me with only mecha-infantry toting chainguns and shoulder mounted rockets. My compromise has been to get as creative as possible with the bow with this project, so the bare balsa now visible still has a long way to go before my English galleon is christened. In other creative outlets, I've learned that back in the early 17th century from which this ship is derived, sails were still adorned with the ensigns and emblems of their monarch and country. Anything from red crosses to lions could be painted on the main sail or fore sail complete with the Union Jack rounding out the topmost portions of the mast.

Union Jack prior to 1801 - note the lack of red diagonals indicating the inclusion of Scotland but not yet that of Ireland