MODELMAKER'S CORNER
Space Age Technology Takes Us Below Decks Aboard ''Navy Board" Ship Models by Major Grant Walker, US Army (Ret) he United States Naval Academy Museum is engaged in a longterm project to explore the interior spaces of the Museum' s pristine 17th-, 18th-, and 19th-century British "Navy Board" or "dockyard" ship models with the aid of laser light and fiber optics surgical instruments. The USNA Museum ' s curator of models , Robert Sumrall, and I were captivated when introduced to the world of fiber optics several years ago by Simon Stephens of Britain 's National Maritime Museum in Greenwich, London. Simon, John Franklin, Alan MacGowan and others in England had pioneered the successful use of small industrial borescopes, which use laser light to peer into pipes where neither the naked eye nor a standard 35mm camera could ever hope to see, to explore the interiors of a number of models in Greenwich and elsewhere. Upon our return from England in March 1992, Bob and I eagerly set about
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Fiber optics technology now makes it possible for the first time in centuries to view the below-decks portion of mankind's first attempt to steer a great ship of war by means of a wheel.
This photograph of part of the starboard side and upper works of Model Number 7 shows the fully-rigged ship's wheel situated just abaft (here , to the left of) the hole for the mizzen mast. Thanks to the model's open-deck construc tion , the lines wrapped around the wheel's axle can clearly be seen dropping through slots in the quarterdeck and continuing downward to and through the upper deck. There, however, they disappear completely from sight. By gently lifting the lower deck gunport lids and inserting a fiber optics probe into an open gunport, the rest of the rigg ing assembly can at last be observed in stunning detail. Other avenues into the model's interior include the mast holes and the spaces between the deck or hull frames, but in most cases the best views are obtained via the gunports.
This is one of the most important finds we have enjoyed thus far. What you see here is the rigged tiller located in the gunroom of the Academy's Model Number 7, an authentic dockyard model of an English 70-gun two-decker ji-om about the year 1705. Two decks above, the tiller ropes wind around the axle of the ship's wheel, located on the quarterdeck. Presumably , if the wheel were turned the rudder would respond, though no one is about to risk damaging the 300-yearold original line to test the theory! The wheel replaced the whipstaff in the early years of the J8th century. Evidence of its introduction in the Royal Navy is provided primarily by a handful of models such as this one in Annapolis. Fiber optics technology now makes it possible for the first time in centuries to view the below-decks portion of mankind' s first attempt to steer a great ship of war by means of a wheel.
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SEA HISTORY 77, SPRING 1996