Spanish pirate galleon "Neptune" 1:100 (scratch build)

[RdK]

Hi!

It is time to revive this thread from the 5 years winter sleep as the Mayflower project nears its end...Since the last post I've made some templates for the gun deck and the main deck, but it is still the "pizza-box" version. It needs to be trimmed because the width is too large.

I also decided to include some light in the model, since the winter days are so dark here in Finland... For that I get help from a brilliant young student - just graduating - from my work place who is eager to help me and is very well acquainted with electronics. I will explain the schematics here, once it is ready. And since I want to incorporate the light, I will need to adjust the frames accordingly so as to make space for the lights and cables.

So much for now, more will follow soon...

Rgds,
RdK

...Enero anno domini 1669...
"....Señor Radék de la Sol de la Santa Cruz de Brazíl !! ... Señor Radék de la Sol de la Santa Cruz de Brazíl !!!" shouted the servant from outside the little wooden cottage in Olinda near the center church (Pic. 1 - historic center) which has become a temporary home for the ambitious shipwright. Radék woke up from his slight nap where he dreamed of distant lands in the European North covered with a white blanket of snow. Even though he passed away for only a few minutes, it felt as if he was gone for five years!...
"A young boy is looking for you, claiming he's the son of an acquaintance of yours."
The 14 years young boy's name was José Antonio and he was the son of a Basque sailor named Francisco de Gaztañeta, indeed an old friend of Radék. With him he had a letter from his father, expressing the wish his old friend might be as kind and teach the boy in the science of ship crafting, as the young boy is very keen on the secrets of sail ships and travelling on these.

After seeing the shipyard (Pic.2 - Location on old map) and inspecting the construction of the Neptune he even had some interesting ideas for making her "...the Illumination of the Oceans !" (Pic.3) by placing some lanterns in certain places - Not bad for a small boy! His help will be certainly valuable!
"...But before you continue, you have to understand the regulations of the design and tonnage of the Navíos. For that you need to study the Ordenanzas from 1618. There you will learn for instance that the location of the main deck in relation to the maximum breadth between both merchant and naval vessels disappeares from the previous descriptions and Ordenanzas, and is now set for all vessels at half a cubit above the maximum breadth to improve their stability because of the heavy weight of the artillery pieces placed there...."

...And so Radék de la Sol de la Santa Cruz de Brazíl started to introduce the young boy into the mysteries of Spanish galleon building. Little did he know at that moment that José Antonio de Gaztañeta (Pic.4) will be remembered throughout history as a master ship builder and Vice Admiral of the Spanish Mediterranean fleet....

[Don Boose]

You begin with an exciting illustrated story!

This sounds like another well-researched and interesting maritime project.

Don

[Michael Mash]

It's nice to see this thread come back to life.
I look forward to more of your work Radek.
Mike

[RdK]

Hi there!

First of all, my apologies for having everyone wait for the sequel of this build, but life matters have to come first...


...It has been a while since I could continue my work on this build. But with The MAYFLOWER finished I can focus again on this trial with lights and sculpturing...

As mentioned, I plan to incorporate some light into this build. The idea is to have some flickering light, imitating candle light. I bought this candle-LEDs and used four of them to create four lines of LED-strips, that flicker all in the same way, but result in four different random flickering sequences. For that the bright student I mentioned before (meanwhile making his Doctoral thesis) helped me with a schematic, that runs on 6V and is using a LM324N chip to distribute the circuitry of the four flickering candle-LEDs to the four LED-stripes. Each stripe should have 11 LEDs, but one line had only 10, as I figured out when it was already too late...
The following parts are needed for that circuitry (they all cost cents):

-4x LED with in-built random flickering circuit
-1x long LED stripe with 40-50 LEDs (now during christmas time everywhere available... )
-1x LM324N chip or ic (and a socket for it, makes soldering life easier)
-8x 5 kilo-ohm potentiometers
-4x 2.2 kilo-ohm resistors
-4x 270 ohm resistors
-1x 100 nano-Farad capacitor
-1x 100 microFarad electrolytic capacitor
-1x ON-OFF switch
-2x 3V batteries and battery-holder

The schematics are presented here in picture 1 and picture 2. My father is an electrical engineering technician and helped me with getting the schematics onto a circuit board . So I took the soldering iron and did my best to put all together. Last time I soldered components like this was in the 7th grade, so the result was accordingly with cold solder, shortcuts and did not work at all (pic. 3 & 4)...
....Back to the video conference with my father and consulting, what I did wrong. After some measurement sessions his advise was of course to use a "bread board" first and see if the circuitry works (pic. 5)! So I bought some new components and tried again. With success! It works!

Now I needed to figure out how to place the LED-strips in the model so that two LEDs that flicker with the same frequency are not next to one another. So I developed a small colorful plan (pic. 6 & 7).

The next step was to prepare the frames, cut holes into the bulkheads and the frame, where the LED strip will be going through (pic. 8 & 9). The frame was painted black, the bulkheads as well as the roof of the gun decks covered with tin foil, or more precisely kitchen aluminum foil to mirror the weak flickering light off the roof and bulkhead walls (pic. 10 to 13).

Then I somehow managed to pull the wires through (pic. 14 to 16), had to "extend" the space between some of the LEDs in the middle part and put everything together. I used this time two 6mm aluminum-rods to strengthen the frame lengthwise.

I have to figure out how to post a video here, or a link to one, so you can see the "candle-light" result "in action" I had to make that light installation work before I can continue on the build itself. So far the frame is not glued, yet still quite robust and tightly fitting together...

So much for now. I will wait with soldering the circuit board a bit until I figured out a good setting for the eight potentiometers, which control the amplitude and the amount of the flickering signal. Meanwhile I will focus on continuing on the decks, hull and planking...

Rgds,
RdK

...Febrero anno domini 1669...

"Señor Radék de la Sol de la Santa Cruz de Brazíl progressed with the build of the jewel of the Caribbean with the help of his young apprentice José Antonio de Gaztañeta so that by the end of February all the frame work was set in place. In order to make her the great Illumination of the Oceans!, much candles were needed.

"..So we order a lot of candles, señor Radék?" asked the young José Antonio.

"...Not just candles, my young shipwright. You see, here in the tropics the candles easily bent and cannot withstand the heat of the equatorial sun! The standard candles made from tallow, or the stinky fat of cows and other animals are not good enough for this ship. We will need the exotic product of bees wax with an additional secret ingredience, which will make the candles harder, brighter and producing a smokeless flame."

....As it so happened, the father of señor Radék was a very skilled chandler (pic. 17 - The workshop of the father), named Jorgé de la Santa Cruz, and used an old family recipe to make his candles. This recipy used the oil from the Brassica Rapa of the cruciferae family, commonly known as the rapeseed, yielding the much better colza oil (pic. 18). Unfortunately this secret ingredient remained secret for another 130 years, before it was re-discovered as a cheaper solution to the spermaceti wax extracted from whales in the 1800s....

[Michael Mash]

Nice to see work with your "Neptune" revived.
And your candle story was fun and interesting to read.
Mike

[Papierschnitzel]

Wonderful thread. This will be a great inspiration for me as I am also planning a Galleon ship model. Looking forward for more to come!

[RdK]

Ahoy!

I managed to pull the wires through the frames and out of the keel, with the (-) ground leaving from the back and the four (+)-lines from the front keel (Pictures 1 & 2).

Then I continued with the underwater hull and the decks. The hull is constructed with the same method as the Mayflower with only one pizza-card layer. A little bit of sanding was unavoidable and I used an old, almost dry white glue as “filler, where needed (Pictures 2 to 6). Then I made a huge mistake by covering the hull with a fresh white glue for wood to smoothen it from the “furry” appearance after the sanding down – the glue soaked into the card and some of the panels between the frames collapsed, leaving a clearly visible “rib-effect”. I had to apply a lot of the “filler” to fix that problem.

Meanwhile I did some research on the sizes of galleons of that time. The Neptune galleon replica is not exactly historically accurate and was made wider for the camera team to have enough space to work on the decks. I wondered how much wider it is so I did some research about the Ordenanzas, or regulations, and collected some deck length to width ratios. The regulations were the result of the defeat of the Spanish fleet in the English channel in 1588 and the most famous ones are from 1607, 1613 and 1618, with modifications made in 1666 and 1679. These regulations were very strict rules but as the need for larger vessels arouse, the modifications were made and the last galleon build based on these Ordenanzas was the Nuestra Señora de la Concepción y las Ánimas, a 90-gun, three-decker, supervised by Antonio de Gaztañeta in 1688. Based on his experience as ship-builder and many years of navigation he proposed a new design for ship building, which meant the end of the era of the armada galleons and the birth of the eighteen century navíos, published in 1712 and 1720.

I. Medidas arregladas a la construcción de un bajel de guerra de sesenta codos de quilla, in a memorial of Bernardo Tinajero (1713) to the King: De lo que se ha de observar, y regla con que se ha de hacer la fábrica de diez bajeles y dos pataches que S.M. ha resuelto se construyan en el puerto de La Habana.

II. Proporciones de las medidas más esenciales para la fábrica de navíos y fragatas de guerra, que puedan montar desde 80 cañones hasta 100, con la explicación de la construcción de la barenga maestra, plano y perfil particular de un navío de 70 cañones, con los largos, gruesos y anchos de los materiales, escrito de orden del Rey, Madrid, en el año de 1720.

The ships were often build slim, with a length/beam ratio of about 3, give or take. And before the Ordenanza 1608 even close to 4. In comparison the Neptune has a ratio of 2.6. I found a galleon build close to the dimensions of the Neptune, with a deck length of almost 42 meters, a clean keel length of 30 meters, but a width of only almost 13 meters compared to the 16 meters of the Neptune. This converts to about 1.5cm wider on each side of the model (Pic. 7).
The calculated tonneladas are also similar, with the original one at 1186 tonneladas compared to the 1312 of the Neptune. However, the Spanish were not exactly famous for their mathematical skills and some researchers point that out in their research when comparing the capacities of the ships in tonnes and tonneladas.
The form of the ships back then was thus also more straight compared to my model, which resembles more the form of a smaller vessel, such as the Portuguese-built pepper-wreck Nossa Senhora dos Mártires, which sunk 1606 near Lissabon (pic. 8).

Because the ships were so slim, they had the tendency to be unstable, with the best example recorded in history being the tragedy of the Vasa, sunk in 1627 just after few hundreds of meters of her maiden voyage. A way around it was to test the ships after it has been loaded with its heavy artillery and then bring them back to repair them by means of "furring and girdling". This meant to thickening the frames and re-planking them in case of furring or adding some additional wales and planks when girdling, which was much cheaper than the first solution. This widened the ship at its water level, thus giving it more stability for the huge weight above the water level (pic 9).

After that little excursion into the 17th century ship building I noticed that I forgot two holes for the chasers in the front (pic 10) and drilled them by hand with a 9mm drill for wood. A real electric drill would have probably just shredded the whole construct.

Right now the planking of the decks is complete (pics 11 and 12) and I will continue with constructing the sides of the hull.

Rgds,
RdK



...Febrero anno domini 1669...

“Antonio Iturribálzaga Gaztañeta !!”
...shouted the shipwright Radék de la Sól de la Santa Cruz de Brazíl. “Where have you been? You smell like a pig! And you look like you haven’t been changing your clothes since the conquest of the Aztec by Hernan Cortez! Did you cracked Jenny’s Tea Cup in the early morning hours? I have a responsibility for you towards your father! Do not make me regret that I agreed to teach you the art of ship building.”

“I…I wish I could recall, but by that time I was three sheets to the wind…” admitted the young adolescent.

“Did you at least made your homework regarding the Ordenanzas and the deck width to beam ratios?”

“Yes, sir” said the slowly sobering Antonio, “ and the Ordenanza of 1607 recommends a bredth of 22 to the deck length of 75 and keel length of 32 royal cubits. (pics 13 and 14) But…the Neptune here seems to have a beam of 27-28 cubits.. Should we not follow…”

“Aaah, you have still a lot to learn, my young shipwright. The shipyards do not like to make it public, but many of their ships are too skinny and with all that heavy artillery that is required, they tend to be very unstable and have to go back for expensive repairs. Do you remember what happened to the Swedish Vasa? Hah ha har har!!! Such horrible ship designs by the Swedes and Dutch! We will do much better! We will not tinker and girdle or furr like the sneaky English or the abhorrent French scurvy dogs!
We will build the Neptune wide enough so she can carry all the heaviest cannons of the entire armada and be still able to sail fast and in shallow waters! To the dogs with the Ordenanzas!” Radék de la Sól took a last look at the Ordenanza with its modifications from 1666 (pic. 15 ) and tossed it in a wide throw down the cliff into the warm ocean towards the morning sunrise.
He did not know that the view of the flying old regulations towards the new rising sun would have a strong effect on the young boys mind, who, imagining a new dawn of Spanish supremacy, years later will propose an entirely new era of ship building designs, ending the era of the armada galleons, which he will publish with great success in 1712 and 1720.
...

[Michael Mash]

Hello Radek:
Later when the ship has its lights working, it should be very impressive.

And, your story writing is excellent.
I look forward to the next chapter.

Happy New Year,
Mike

[Doug J]

You are sure off to a great start! I will be following with great interest!

[abhovi]

You did it again Radek: nice hull form without filler. I envy you.
Ab