Friday, 13th May 2022

The barque drawing is progressing well, with all the shrouds and backstays drawn in. The mizzen mast is almost completed, and the ten yards and square sails still need to be drawn in on the fore and main masts. The jibs and staysails forward of the fore and mainmasts are only pencilled in at the moment, as they will lie partially behind some of the square sails. A separate plan of the fore-and-aft sails has already been drawn.. All totally obsolete knowledge, of course, but that is more than half the pleasure, doing something simply because you like doing it!

Thanks,

I do a lot of writing on both model shipbuilding and life in the merchant navy etc. As far as drawing plans are concerned, it was always a problem getting illustrations for my articles and books because museums and various archives usually wanted fistfulls of £s for them, and even more if I wanted to publish them, so I took to drawing my own, and found it surprisingly easy to produce a decent plan. These are normally drawn using very ancient and faded plan copies that in many cases were barely readable, I have been collecting ship plans for over 50 years, so have a great store of them. The present ship was completed in 1895 and scrapped in 1925!