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Constitution class US warship

Posted: Tue Feb 16, 2016 6:19 pm
by greengiant
Old Ironsides was one of six warships built identically to fight the British and is still a commissioned US Navy ship.
I built this model kit about 20 years ago as a mantle piece.

Re: Constitution class US warship

Posted: Tue Feb 16, 2016 6:29 pm
by Swamprat33
Nice. What scale is it?

There are only 4 Naploeonic era ships left in the world.
USS Constitution. Boston, MAS. USA.
HMS Victory. Portsmouth. UK
HMS Trincomalee. Hartlepool.UK.
HMS Unicorn. Dundee. UK

Ive been on all 4 over the years and they are all magical to visit.

Tim

Re: Constitution class US warship

Posted: Tue Feb 16, 2016 6:55 pm
by greengiant
Have no idea but the kit is still sold. Its less then half the scale that the large Cutty Sark model kit is.
Closest thing to a sailing vessel I've ever been on is a new built copy of a Great Lakes schooner that has a summer home port in Milwaukee Wisconsin :) .
I thought there were more large sailing vessels still around but I guess most of them were not built as warships.

Re: Constitution class US warship

Posted: Tue Mar 01, 2016 3:09 am
by atcttge
Beautiful.

I've always wanted to buy those super expensive already-built models of the USS Constitution or HMS Victory for display at home. I built the old Revell (or was it Airfix? cannot recall...) HMS Victory kit. Not as pretty as yours turned out. I do remember adding sand as ballast inside the hull so I could put it on the inflatable pool to play around hehehehe

Your pics makes the white look yellow on her hull. For a while I thought it was a Her Majesty's Ship....

Again, beautiful build. I wish I had the skill and patience to do such a thing.

Re: Constitution class US warship

Posted: Tue Mar 01, 2016 12:25 pm
by jackalope
We have the U.S.S. Constellation in the Baltimore harbor.

Also have Fort McHenry which held off a bunch of rowdy types a few hundred years ago.

Bunch of history around me! 2 hours in any direction and there's one battlefield or another be it Revolutionary war or Civil war.

Re: Constitution class US warship

Posted: Tue Mar 01, 2016 2:10 pm
by greengiant
The yellow is yellow and the way the instruction called for it to be painted. Not sure if that is historically accurate as the real one I think is painted with a white trim band.The paint on the hull insides and deck that looks yellowish used to be white but age has made it fade. The sails came white but I did weather them to make them look used.

Did some research on the hull stripe. Seems the captain of the ship at the time, early 1800's, had the normal white stripe painted yellow like the British warships of the time as camouflage to allow him get closer to the British warships before attacking. It Seems to have proved to have been successful by all historical accounts on at least one occasion when that captain was hunting down a particular warship which it destroyed. Could find no mention of when it was later repainted to white but I would imagine pretty quickly to avoid being mistaken for a British vessel by other American warships.

Getting all the rigging correct is a pain. I have a Cutty SARK that someone had jammed into the trash and that took some real patience to untangle all the rigging and get the masts back on. luckily it was built with furled sails or I may not have even tried to rebuilt it.

The USS Constellation had to go through quite a possess of authentication and lack of a proper name for quite a lot of its existence and very tough forensic examination before it was conclude that it was indeed the original ship not one of the sister ships and didn't permanently receive its name until a more modern metal aircraft carrier was decommissioned and the name was again available as far as I can tell. Parts of it that were rotting away were actually replaced with timbers from a sister ship that had run aground and was going to be broken up according to something I read.

Re: Constitution class US warship

Posted: Mon Apr 11, 2016 12:51 am
by atcttge
If you haven't, get a copy of Six Frigates book. It is a very excellent book on these frigates. They weren't really identical as some stuff were designed for each ship, IIRC some at the whim of the captain who was assigned to it, others at the whim of the lead shipbuilder. They weren't really a class, just six frigates that proponents of a navy that wanted these ships built to protect American trade. Gives insight on the design, build, and career of each frigate.

Re: Constitution class US warship

Posted: Tue Apr 12, 2016 5:17 pm
by greengiant
Wiki has a complete description of the class of war ships. There Is also a site that describes just what happened to them all (2 I think were capture be the British navy and used for a short time be them). They do have an interesting history of use over many many years.

Re: Constitution class US warship

Posted: Tue Apr 12, 2016 6:23 pm
by doc larsson
dont suppose you want to finish my hms victory do you ? great looking craft "!

Re: Constitution class US warship

Posted: Wed Apr 13, 2016 12:45 am
by greengiant
Wouldn't mind, but doubt it could survive being shipped anywhere once finished.
I actually built the model for my brothers fireplace mantle but with all the activity at his house he was afraid someone would touch it and break something so after a week he gave it back to me and now he no longer has a fireplace mantle to display it on.