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Hi Ab;
Admittedly this thread is the first of your entries which I have read. Perhaps some of this information is material that you are already aware of, but some of it may be useful. First, the further back in time you go finding and gathering information becomes more difficult. You are mostly forced to rely upon contemporary paintings and drawings, which are unlikely to be accurate even when done by the same hand. One corrects his work as he learns more about the vessel. This is even a problem when the sources are supposedly authoritative, right up to the present day. I'm much more familiar with later vessels, such as The USS Constitution, for which there is abundance of data. When researching for accurate models, even of contemporary vessels, you quickly find that two sets of data rarely agree. Ideally you have to pick a particular moment in a ship's career and build to that. The further back in time the harder it is to do. The modeler is forced to do a great deal of extrapolation. It takes some nerve, but the alternative is no model. The good news is, if you are making sense of the project no one can really refute you choices.
A couple of things to keep in mind are that sailors, in the time you are researching were shorter in height, lighter in weight and had a much narrower body mass index than current people have. They were more sinewy and muscular. Their life span due to the ardors of their profession was on the average half the average life span of modern man. Arthritis could cripple a helmsman by age twenty four. In those days one could build a smaller ship and cram more people and equipment into it.
Another matter was that merchant vessels were generally much lighter built than warships. the frames were further apart and the planking thinner. Ninety feet for length can be misleading. Is it length over all, waterline length, length between perpendiculars or other? The length to beam ratio is very significant to the ship's characteristics. Since cargo space was the lifeblood of merchant vessels, they tend to be rounder and wider below the waterline than warships. In any case the frames would necessarily be fair.
Stability was a significant problem. The vessels depicted here appear somewhat shallow draft, and very lightly framed to carry eighteen cannon along with a cargo load, especially with such a small crew. It was common practice to adorn the hull with false cannon ports and cannon. At a distance it could deter an approaching vessel. Up close, not so much. Draughts men usually showed cannon apertures in side views. It does not always reflect the number of cannon actually carried at any given time. In that time artists tended to portray what they saw, thought they saw, or remembered. That was not always a reliable representation. Even if the cannon were very small of bore, that's a lot of weaponry for a merchantman. The concussion of a broadside would really overstress the timbers, and the weight would strain the center of balance significantly. Even on small warships, it was a common cost cutting measure to carry just enough crew to man the cannon on only one side of the ship, moving the gun crews to the other side as the ship came about. Even so, the moving of so much weight from one side of the vessel to the other would make sailing a very tricky proposition for a merchantman, especially in a rough sea. A significant number of guns meant powder and shot, which would take away cargo space. There was also training of gun crews to consider. Time training meant time away from the sailors primary purpose, running the vessel. In short, it cut into profit.
The bottom line consideration is that you have to give it your best estimate if you want the model. However, they certainly are attractive. Hope at least some of these considerations are useful in your endeavors.
Regards, rjccjr
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