Since this tutorial was about simple period ships, why not extend it to another simple ship of that time, the fluit. It's a ship type that keeps intriguing me for some unclear reason. I can understand why many people prefer men-of-war with a lot of guns, nice carvings and impressively high masts. Still, this simple work horse, of which so little is left is something that keeps me puzzling. So let's build a fluit!
1 Painting by Ludolf Backhuyzen
The ship I will show here is a typical example of a Dutch 17th century merchantman, used for transporting grain, wood, iron, copper, leather, fur, wax, pitch, tallow, hemp and alum from the Baltics. In turn other products were brought from Holland to Scandinavia like: butter and cheese, herring, paper, linseed and hempseed, rye, wheat, woolen goods, yarns, linen, wine, brandy, guns and many more products, even spices, fetched from the Asian trade. For transporting goods to the south of Holland other fluits, bigger ones, mostly armed, were used, distributing Scandinavian goods all over Southern-Europe and bringing back many popular southern products like wine, luxurious goods, fruit and.... silver and gold.
2 An earlier effort to build the Ghostship in paper.
For who didn't know: The fluit was a characteristic ship: wide lines enlarged its loading capacity as much as possible, and on top of that a very recognizable stern with a narrow top, causing the bulbous 'hips' aft. Perhaps the peculiar shape of the ship is one of the reasons why many of the fluits shown on forums like this never reached the finished stage. This post might bring some light for who is interested in this iconical ship type.
3 Picture of the Ghostship, taken at 120 meters deep in the Baltic Sea.
The model described here is loosely based on a small ship, which almost untouched rests on the bottom of the Baltic Sea, 120 meters below the surface. It is known as the 'ghost-ship', due to the carved heads of the knights and bitts, which seem to stare upwards in a sort of spooky way. It's a small ship, maybe 90 feet long and the fact that all the woodwork seems to be intact is due to the brackish water of the Baltic Sea, which does not host the teredo navalis, the greatest threat to wooden shipwrecks in salt water. On the other hand, iron does rust in water and many parts of the ship that were nailed in place (like for instance the carvings of the stern) have fallen off. Nevertheless the vessel looks miraculously intact. Good drawings, based on many hours of footage shot by a submarine robot, were made by Niklas Erikson, a Swedish archaeologist. Apart from his pictures I used the knowledge from the Dutch shipbuilding literature, mainly Witsen and Van Yk and many prints, drawings and paintings, done by the marvelous Dutch artists of the era. As always, my good Belgium friend Rene Hendrickx with his remarkable skill to work with the free downloadable shipbuilding program Delftship helped me to work out the shape and construction of my small model on 1/77 scale. I did this ship before, but with different lines. (
A 17th century Dutch fluit) This time I wanted to improve the underwater lines.
4 Drawing made by Niklas Erikson.
5 Delftship rendering of the new lines plan by Rene Hendrickx.
6 t/m 9 Draughts.
To be continued.