johnsmachines

Battleships in the era of HMS Bellerophon were essentially floating gun batteries which moved by the power of the wind on the sails. Power for the ship’s machinery, lifting anchors, adjusting sail positions, pumping water etc was provided by MANPOWER. But I digress.

A 74 gun ship has, you guessed it.! 74 guns and 74 gun ports, spread over two full ship length gun decks, plus upper decks. Each gun port has a hole in the outer planking, a gap between frames, and a hole in the inner planking. And most of those holes were lined with heavy planks, and covered on the hull exterior with a gun port flap. The flap was also quite thick and heavy, to keep out heavy seas particularly on the lowermost gun deck, which was only 5′ above the waterline.

The flaps were recessed into the outer hull planking, so the lining stopped about 3″ short of the hull exterior. But the lining was flush with the internal surface of the internal hull planking because there was no flap there.

So, at my model scale of 1:72, the gunport linings have to stop 1mm inside the hull exterior, but be flush with the hull planking interiors. If that makes sense. It does complicate the modelling of the linings, given that the exterior of the Bellerephon hull, and the interior of the Bellerophon hull are complex curves, and not the same as each other. And some of the gunports on the upper gun deck did not have flaps so on those the gunport linings were not recessed at all.

On a 74, the lower gundeck guns were 32 pounders (the balls each weighed 32 pounds), the upper deck guns were 18 pounders, and the poop deck guns were 9 pounders. The bigger guns required bigger gunports. Each gun port for each size gun had the same dimensions. And the gunports were parallel with the gun decks, not with the wales or the planks, or the decorative paint job.

Bellerophon update. After finishing the second layer of hull planking and wales, the gun port linings were installed. Made a rectangular wooden tube over an accurately machined stick, about 200mm long. See pics. Then cut, filed, and sanded the gun ports to accept the square tube. Marked the internal protrusion, and cut and sanded it to shape, then reinserted the tube and marked the outside protrusion. Subtracted 1mm to allow for the gun port flap, then cut and sanded the outside. Test fitted and adjusted where necessary, then glue the piece into position. Simple process, but quite demanding to get it right. Photos follow.

The rectangular tube was glued up over the solid stick. I had sanded the stick corners to minimise the CA glue sticking to the tube. Runny CA in small dabs to minimise leakage to solid stick. Frequent moving the tube over the stick to avoid destroying the tube due to sticking to the stick.

After shaping the gunport to accept the square tube the internal protrusion was marked, cut and sanded to the marked line.

Then to exterior position was marked. I cut, and sanded an extra 1mm from the line to allow for the gun port flap thickness.

The final piece was permanently glued into position. The arrow was to remind me of the direction of insertion. Used the “stick” to assist with inserting the rather delicate gun port lining.

It took 3 solid days to install the lower and upper gundeck linings.