Launch
Posted By Russ Emerson on March 4, 2010 at 6:23 pm
I mentioned I’d be working next on the HMS* Bounty’s Launch.
It looks like this project won’t take anywhere near as long as I took building the Black Prince; the skills I develop during this build are going to be different, but useful.
A bit of background, from the kit manufacturer’s website:
As captain** of the HMS Bounty, William Bligh demonstrated an obsession with paltry matters. Too hastily provoked, he antagonized officers and crew with frequent and uncontrolled outbursts. With tempers already flaring and resentment simmering, a trivial matter of coconuts stolen from the ship’s store provoked a true mutiny. On April 28, 1789, Fletcher Christian and his sympathizers took over the ship, casting Bligh and 18 of his loyal supporters adrift in the Bounty’s 23′ launch.
In a remarkable feat of seamanship, Bligh navigated the dangerously overcrowded boat on a 47-day voyage to the Dutch colony of Timor, equipped only with a sextant and a pocket watch. He recorded the distance as 3,618 nautical miles. While struggling to survive, he kept a log and produced highly accurate charts and surveys of the seas and the terrain, such as the Fijian Islands and the northeast coast of Australia.
The Bounty‘s launch was typical of boats issued to Royal Navy ships of the period. Historically accurate and highly detailed, Model Shipways’ HMS Bounty’s Launch kit is based on original plans from the Nautical Maritime Museum in Greenwich, England. . . .
Bligh, by the way, had an eventful and perhaps even moderately illustrious career after the famous mutiny; he commanded ships-of-the-line at Camperdown and Copenhagen, was governor of New South Wales, and reached the rank of Vice Admiral before his death in 1817, aged 63.
Next up: construction begins.
* More properly, it should be HMAV (His Majesty’s Armed Vessel) but since the kit uses HMS (His Majesty’s Ship) that’s probably how I’ll refer to it.
** He was only a Lieutenant, but as commander of the vessel, he was entitled to be called Captain.
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