As the inner keel for the 25-foot Launch lays clamped up on the molds, I find myself continually reading, researching and sketching new improvements. The original design was solid and its merits proven by our counterparts across the pond. However, from them we also learned a great deal about her drawbacks. Now, during construction of ours I have set out to improve on many of these. Issues such as hull shape, weight, reserve buoyancy, availability of materials and cost all play integral parts in how we proceed. And while I am now very sensitive to any delay in construction (we have material and money, and are short only on progress) I still find that we have plenty of time while we're waiting for one thing to dry to start others or yet further develop the remainder of her execution.
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One thing that keeps me highly interested are models. While I have literally dozens of sources talking about the qualities of boats, lists of boats carried by various ships, after-action reports of engagements involving boats and even a few primary source treatises on naval small craft construction, I find nothing so useful as studying extant contemporary models. A great source of these is the National Maritime Museum (UK), and this proves convenient for me as a good amount of their collection is available online. I've found that not many US maritime museums have the same level and scope of collections when it comes to small boats - and this is for two reasons. First, in the UK Royal Navy all bidding contracts went through centralized approval processes, many of which required models and/or extensive drawings, all of which were subsequently filed and indexed. Boats in the US Navy were often built on "local expertise" and didn't recieve the same level of higher-level attention that the Royal Navy counterparts did. As a result, few plans and almost no builders models survive.
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One model which very closely resembles the hull form and many of the features of our launch is actually a somewhat famous pair of models of the "Longboat belonging to HM Ship Medway" dated 1742. One model is shown unriged, with much of the planking removed to allow a view of the framing, while the other is shown rigged without sails. Though the provenance is a bit too antiquated for our direct interpretation as such, she clearly illustrates how windlasses were often fitted in boats, and how the sloop rig was carried in the mid-18th century. Later, the rig was heightened, the gaff lengthened and mast steps hinged to allow 'convenient' stepping underway. On a mast that size, it had better be a flat calm.
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Another great inspirational piece is one alternately labelled a 'cutter' and a 'launch'. Dated 1824, this piece is fascinating in that her lines represent a throw-back to the 1760s, when the raked transom and well-rounded stem were more common. She is, in fact, a launch - though her finer and somewhat antiquated lines led curators to assess her at first sight as a cutter. The model illustrates hawse trunks - a fairly common appliance to be fitted aboard boats at this time, yet rarely depicted in drawings. A work voucher returned at the dockyard at Plymouth dated 1784 indicates that several boats coming in for replacement had been "alter'd to ship a hawsr by trunk, beside the keelsen [sic]".
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And lastly - a model of the boat on which our original launch design could have been based. Dated 1824, the actual form is reflective of launches starting in the 1790s. Her lines are fuller, the transom is more of a barn door than a wine glass, and her center of flotation is slightly aft of midships. Most fascinating in this particular piece are the waterlines. Clearly someone was trying to sell the carrying capacity of the boat - one waterline reads "Water Line When Twenty Tons are Hove Up By the Windlass". Yeah - sold! Granted the boat depicted would have been 38 feet long, but launches of smaller size were still capable of hauling great loads (see the previous model for evidence).
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Happy browsing!
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