Pirate Ship computer lofted ready for build

Schooners like the BlueNose were, according to Herreshoff, built with sapwood and haphazardly fastened with trunnels.

 

Yup--most paid for their build cost on the first three voyages --them cod were there for the pickin -- weather the biggest challenge. Today it's much the same --staying out long enough --sustaining the weather-- to find those last two fish.

 

I'm going to weigh in here because possibly my specific training and experience are relevant. Trained as "Historic Rigger" at Mystic Seaport in the early 70s. Rigging crew on CHARLES W. MORGAN and JOSEPH CONRAD in big re-rigging jobs. Personally responsible at that time for entire rig of the 123 foot fishing schooner L.A. DUNTON, one of the few surviving actual large Gloucestermen. Just the main topping lift span wire alone was 300 pounds. After that I crewed extensively on schooners CALIFORNIAN (99 tons), LYNX (99 tons), GOVERNOR M.B.M. (40 tons), GASLIGHT (50 tons), WANDERBIRD (80 tons) and others in the charter and sail training business when not otherwise employed as a repair shipwright, mast maker and rigger on large and small wooden workboats, Baltic traders and yachts, seeing and fixing what deteriorated, and learning why, for 30 or so years.
So if my opinions are opinionated, it's from hands on experience, usually involving pain, fright, near-death, and/or large, expensive broken things.
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Pirates used what ever vessel was at hand. Fast was best to catch and avoid being caught. The Blackbeard ship QUEEN ANNE'S REVENGE being excavated currently was originally a French slaver, and Sam Bellamy's WHYDAH was a 300 ton English built slave trader also.
These are actual pirate ships, both about 300 tons, or medium size for the time. Both also Galley ships, with lean, fast lines and rigged for rowing.
The BLACK PEARL, from the recent series of films, is a fantasy on this theme designed by the Disney art department, as you can see from the model of her I'm holding onto, that our team built and for which I designed and built the rig.
Howard Chapelle was our leading chronicler of maritime material history and a wonderful researcher and draftsman.
He was however, a lousy designer, something I realized after trying to sail two different schooner yachts he designed and found them cranky, tender, wasteful of space and had too many "so cute" details that did not work on the small yacht scale.
At Mystic when I worked there we heard a good bit about how many things he just made up and to always check anything we used of his as a reference, since there is no material on some of the subjects he could point to for confirmation, while we had to document everything we did, every time, in incredible, nagging museum detail.
In all fairness, since he covered so very very much early stuff historically and well, there's no way he could get everything right about detail for which there is so little material.
When he documented the fishermen he had a fleet still sailing in the late 30s and many many living men to go to for answers, so that book is pretty impeccable I think. "American Fishing Schooners" is the absolutely best reference for fishing schooner history and gear, but you aren't designing a fishing schooner, you're designing a yacht which carries no cargo, and that's a very different thing, much more like a pilot boat than a fishing schooner.
We forget today that these things were trucks, nothing more. It's a box that floats on the water, is pushed by sails, and is designed to do a specific job.
The social class of men who crewed, owned and ran them was that which gives us long haul truckers and trucking business owners today; no-nonsense, practical, hands-on, experience-taught, very competent and with little respect for theory, always trying to stay solvent and make a buck.
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At times the job was carry 100 pirates and their food and water as fast as possible somewhere before they used it all up and starved, for the others it was carry 20 fishermen and a deckload of dories to the Grand Banks and come back with 100 tons of salted cod, not necessarily fast, though that later became important in the market fisheries, creating unsafe designs in the 1880s that were prone to capsize and loss.
The only job you seem to be designing for is "looks cool and old and Pirate-y", with no messy reality in the way. In other words a vague nautical fantasy of what a generic late 18th century schooner should be like.
This is what I've always called "boat in a bottle", in that it looks so cool sitting there all static, the sails set and the swivel guns ready to fire, you just wouldn't want to actually sail it because the realities of that bowsprit and mainboom are a little too real in a squall with a reef to leeward.
An actual fishing/pirate schooner of this size and rig needs more than a couple of casual yachtsmen trained in marconi racers to handle. It takes a great deal of experience in the type, no matter how simple it all looks, and it's so much work to just sail it, that you need a reason to do so, like carrying a cargo or pirating. Lousy day sailer due to size and weight of gear, poor downwind with no square topsail and the huge main that blankets all forward sail, I won't go on.
1. Design.
Looks like a "Marble Head" fishing schooner 1790s like the POLLY hull photo below (POLLY's rig is greatly modified from original in this late 1800s photo), with a different and later late 19th century rig drawn by someone with book experience of the type only.
I am guessing from looking at the sections and hull depth, that it would require a great deal of ballast with the rig drawn, usual for the historic type, and commonly consisting of 'shingle' or small beach rock you can move with a shovel.
Say 10 tons ballast for a starting guess.
More on design below the fold.
2. The hull.
Light sawn-frame yacht-construction with Essex style "long and short floors" but missing some parts, like keelson and structural ceiling. A little cute and not as stout/rough as usual. Frame spacing too great, commonly same as frame siding (6" frame, 6" space etc). Shows compass timber in the ends, why? Design for straight grain wood. Rabbet amidships is wrong, should be no back rabbet and much closer frame spacing, which is how the long and short floor system works, no limbers, concreted to the top of floors for drainage and permanent ballast. Were you thinking of ballast lying on the planking? What's the ballasting details? Did you work these out?
Entire backbone is too light, especially the ends, and don't give me smoke about superior hardwoods.
No ceiling. This is a structural component, quite necessary, and usually caulked for strength. It also makes putting in the interior very simple and keeps the bilges clean and makes ventilation chimneys between the frames for long life. Why is this missing?
Where's the keelson? That's what the mast steps go on, not the floors, that's yacht BS. Cant frame spacing too great at heads (just try and bend and fasten the plank and you'll get what I'm talking about). My 23 ton, 40 foot yawl BERTIE has 6" frame and same space, 6" sided ends and keel structure, 3/4" galvanized steel bolts and drifts in the backbone and no cant frames, even though she is much more bluff than this boat. Nothing moves, no seams ever open, and everything I have ever collided with I have destroyed. If you're building a workboat schooner for the first time, follow the way others have done so thousands of times before. They had reasons.
Can't comment on Eucalyptus but know some varieties are used successfully in Australia like Stringy-bark.
Strapping is fine, but steel hanging knees in the region of the mast partners, especially of the foremast with its much greater loading, are a good plan also. Timber knees are great but take a lot of space.
Plywood bulkheads suck. They don't last as long as they should. Double-diagonal with felt between and copper-clench nailed together is stronger since half the material is always loaded in compression, and it lasts a lot better.
Extensive bosom and lodging knees stop the deck from racking and must be used with the large rig.
Sheathing over carvel planking may cause expensive problems.
Deck must be minimum 2" thick on close beams to stay tight if no ply sub-deck.
Mahogany is a terrible material for decks, sorry, bad experiences.
What's wrong with teak?
Usual is white pine or old growth fir or even red cedar.
4" is too wide a deck plank for the tropics unless deck is painted.
2"x2" allows you to always use the best and most vertical grain and narrower planks don't shrink as badly.
Recommend oakum and putty in seams and white paint on deck for tropical use.
A bare deck is fine if your crew of 6 is on their knees at dawn with holystones every morning before breakfast.
3. The rig.
The lowers are a little too tall. You have the pole length of main mast at about 60 feet if the hull is 50.
Is that main about 1000 square feet? Great fun to reef at night in a hard chance.
Mastheads too short, gaffs raised too high.
Topmast too heavy and tall.
A schooner's foremast is always heavier than the main by at least 5 percent, due to it having to resist the pull of headsails at masthead along with peak halyards.
Study Chesapeake methods of dealing with a one-topmast schooner. On those constantly used vessels all the masthead work was iron with no wood trestle trees, the topmast very light (sail only used in very light weather), and the heel not fidded, but tapered into a socket on the lower band, and was lifted and swung to the side a few inches to house or strike.
Everything possible is done to reduce scantling and weight aloft, as these boats had to sail for a living and did not have motors.
The photo book "Chesapeake Sailing Craft" shows this well in many photos, one of which I include below.
Doubling of mastheads should be longer. Short masthead is highly loaded. Remember the peak halyard pulls very hard and the gaff jaws push harder.
If you let out the sheet with the gaffs that high the jaw gets jammed between mast and shroud and breaks.
Also need room to drop peak halyard only (scandalize the sail) in a squall. This is very important in a schooner with a big main as a strong prolonged gust can give the boat uncontrollable weather helm, forcing her to round up, and easing or dropping the peak of the main takes this away totally.
Raked masts are from the 18th century and hemp rigging.
A plumb mast is much easier to sail as the boom doesn't keep swinging inboard in the lulls.
In actual use, the masts have a good forward bow in them with the sails furled.
When hoisted, the pull of peak halyard and thrust of gaff, boom and luff straighten the mast and bring it into column.
Boom tables should be parallel to waterline, not 90 degrees to axis of mast.
Boomed foresail with gallows is nothing like historic practice.
Long jibboom necessary to balance the huge main, but needs real sailors to handle that single jib. What do you do when it blows? Set a smaller one? To sail without the jib, you'd need 3 reefs in the main.
A schooner of this rig, without sail set, will turn and go downwind immediately due to the windage forward, in other words the boat naturally has lee helm, and needs the main to counteract it. The main that is drawn is real purty and all, but actually reefing it, in real wind with the lee rail under water and the boat half out of control, is another thing entirely.
Are you going to hire professional crew? Because sailing something like this gets old fast.
First photo is POLLY, built 1805. Notice she's lost her jibboom and fore topmast, as she originally had a square topsail and flying topgallant. Boomed foresail, springstay between mastheads and wire rigging are all later modifications. Originally would have had a doubled shifting mainstay and overlapping boomless foresail and a crew of 8 or so.
Second is AMANDA F. LEWIS, a Chesapeake Pungy schooner. Notice the extreme forward bow in topmast and noticeable bend in main mast. These are not caused by lens distortion, but are how the rig is actually set up in practice.
Last one is the very typical 19th century coaster STEPHEN TABER with a load of firewood, showing what these things are actually designed for.
If you want to build this vague nautical fantasy you've put on paper, I recommend you find something comparable and sail it a lot first before you make mistakes from ignorance.
Experience in modern steel design and vessel use really has little bearing on the archaic and subtle points of concept, build and use of these old and obsolete vessels. You can wring numbers endlessly out of set of lines and scantlings, and this is essential if designing a crane barge or super yacht out of aluminum, but 18th century schooners were a product of the time, technology and materials, and the limitations of those.
The hull type is however, tremendously seaworthy with her full ends, if you have a rig that does not need a bunch of brass-balled tattooed tobacco chewers willing to go out on the bowsprit in a gale and deal with a headsail.
A horse on the jibboom works great, but you run off the wind to down the sail so it's in the lee of the rig, otherwise it flogs and can take the jibboom out.
CALIFORNIAN and LYNX and PRIDE OF BALTIMORE all have lost their jibbooms more than once, and it's not fun.
Reefing the main in a hurry (shallows to leeward!) in a squall at 2 am in the rain with the overhang of the boom necessary for adequate sail area is again a job for sailors, rare persons these days. I know the idea of getting it in the gallows and secure before you reef sounds great, but try it on a wildly rolling deck with shifting gusts jibing the boom repeatedly.
This thing is long enough and that's what I think about this preliminary design concept as a professional schoonerman.

 

It seems this structure is a unusual mix of materials and systems. The frame consists of relatively large sawn hardwood timbers bolted together, diagonally belted with light steel strapping. The planking and perhaps the deck is thick (1.5") solid timber nailed and screwed to the frame. Finally the planking is sheathed with "nylon/epoxy", perhaps only under water?

I suppose 1/8" steel strapping is fine in tension, but useless in compression, also the system puts all loads on very few fasteners. I would highly recommend a two layer ply sub deck, far stiffer in both tension and compression, and lots of fasteners to spread point loads.

As for the sheathing, I have no idea never having come across nylon as a hull sheathing. I've seen and used Kevlar, Vectra, Dynel, Xynole, and fiberglass in many forms, but never nylon so I don't know what it's structural properties might be though I think Nick claims it adds to structural stiffness.......

Anyway I would have real concerns over trying to epoxy sheath a large structure that is designed to flex (traditional bolted and nailed plank-on-frame) and solid timbers which will move with moisture content.....I think the combination is an experiment......

 

Wow --good stuff--Bataan-my compliments on the sharing of your knowledge--There's another guy over on the wooden boat forum SEO, I'd pay $100 bucks just to sit down and listen to you two talk. I'd even supply the beer and Dark Rum.--Geo.

 

Will work for dark beer and darker rum anytime, and have.

 

You and I must belong to the same union

 

We both learned the job the same way, from grumpy old guys, so yeah, and it's a damn good union.

 

Very nice with the patterns the computer spits out these days.
Back when we used pencils instead the usual thing was loft it on the floor and ink in all structural detail needed in red. This was a half-frame for each frame showing all futtock overlaps and three bevel points per futtock, the backbone parts, transom pattern, the rudder, a deck mold and not much else.
Then buy a roll of 'butcher paper' made for wrapping meat.
This is about 30" wide and does not absorb water or distort if you treat it with a little respect.
You can see through it well enough to trace all your structural parts from the lofting.
Roll each one up and put it away in a safe place and whenever you need the next thing and want it to fit, staple the paper on the wood and go over it with a toothed tracing wheel being sure to transfer all bevel points and if it's a port or starboard futtock, as they are the same with opposite bevels. The paper isn't wide enough to do the whole frame, so just do it twice with a big overlap in the middle and it's easy to figure out.
Do not make the bulwark pins the end of the top timber, as you have shown. This is a wonderful way to rot your frames and break your topsides apart if the ship rolls hard into a pier against the bulwarks or is hit hard there. The pins should be smaller than the frame parts and in between the frame and not fastened to them, but held by a tapered drive down fit at the covering board and one accessible bolt buried in the planking. This way the bulwarks are a little more sacrificial and are much much easier to repair, since in the event of accident they break off flush with the covering board and don't even leak (don't ask how I know this).
It's very seductive to look at a slick, colored-in, computer aided design and think you are finished and it could not get any better because you're 'ready to build' and print out the patterns.
Don't get process confused with product as you have to live with the result, and all will know you by it, forever.

 

It's easy to get seduced by pretty imagery, but I've always remembered something from my early days, which is simply anyone can make it look good in color, particularly with modeling software, but does it look good as a line drawing. If it can't cut the mustard as a line drawing, you're just kidding yourself with a fanciful color rendering.

Apparently it wasn't just me, as I thought my initial comments were possably over the top, but I see countless "things" I wouldn't ever do on a craft of that type, size or build method.

 

I totally agree about the color drawing. Color is what you paint on the finished hull.

 

You know I felt like I was being a little harsh on the poor guy too. Then again I considered whether I would take on designing one of the type he is proposing. Nope...these babies are so specialized that there are only a few guys alive now that I would trust. Someone like Melbourne Smith would be one. I'm not necessarily talking about stability and hydro here. I'm talking about structure, structural detail, sail handling, rigging, and safety.
Don't be fooled, these babies are radical and can be dangerous...this is not a knockabout fishing schooner! At least half of the crew need to be experienced with half of those being expert in the type.
So in the end I suggested he take a look at the great images of Lynx's rig and make comparisons Maybe he could get his hands on the drawings for structural detail as well. That would be a good place to start.

 

I'm afraid I was brutal, but arrogance annoys me, and saying he had the patterns ready to go was arrogant given his ignorance about what he's trying to do.
Modern interpretation of war of 1812 privateer LYNX, Master Mariner's Regatta, San Francisco, 2007.
The vessels that Melbourne designed have outside ballast, reduced rig, water tight bulkheads, verified stability etc to be legal in US charter trade.
They are quite different than the historic vessels that they are based on, and much more expensive to build.
LYNX is for sale I believe, due to lack of business for her.

 

PS, Melbourne got many small things wrong on paper too, which become apparent when you sail his boats. LYNX's foredeck is well designed to funnel water down the focsle hatch due to the layout of the catheads for instance.

 

I thought I'd post the photos of the scaled plank on frame hull model of my G G Grandfathers heeltapper. (typical eastern atlantic fishing schooner of that time, Refer to Wanderer registration prev. post for general info.) Keep in mind I had only 3 days to build this for a big family reunion (last minute request) however i did keep fairley strickly to scale so it will give a good indication of the hull shape. One can see the cods head mackerals tale immediately but even with that the underwater lines are just beautiful ending in that nice clean run aft. The broad beam's inital stability is what gave these craft sail carrying ability. From family and other history of their encounters with storms no mention was ever made of a knockdown and they were always praised as a good seaboats.