Free Ship Plan: 77-foot North River Schooner

Another interesting free ship plan from Wooden Ship Building by Charles Desmond is the North River Schooner.  The plans are a little rough, as the pages are yellowed and the ink faded, but the missing bulwark lines can be recreated using a coffee stir as a batten. Hold it on edge and bend it to match the existing lines on either side of the missing portion. The wood will give you an accurate curve to trace with a pencil to fill in where the lines are too faint to see.

Sail Plan for a 77 foot North River Schooner

Section, Sheer, and Waterline Plans of North River Schooner

This 77-footer is typical of the shoal draft centerboard sailboats used on the Hudson River to haul bulk cargo in the  19th Century. When it was extended, the centerboard acted as a keel, giving the boat stability when tacking to windward, keeping it from "crabbing" - moving sideways rather than forward. When retracted, it allowed the boat to get into shallow waters common along the river, or even be beached for unloading where a harbor wharf wasn't available.

From The Sloops of the Hudson, by By William E. Verplanck and Moses W. Collyer (The Knickerbocker Press 1908):

 The North River schooner was built on somewhat the same plan as the sloop, having a center board, and her bowsprit carried out almost horizontal, and one head-sail, the single jib, attached to a jib-boom, as with the sloop.* (A few of the later schooners carried a flying-jib.---W.E.V.)  She carried not foretopmast. The skippers contented themselves with a maintopsail only and set it like the sloop’s. The foresail was of good size compared with the mainsail and not a mere “ribbon” such as the racing schooner yacht now carries.  The quarter-deck was replaced in the later schooners by a trunk cabin, lighted from the side and end, affording smaller and less pleasant accommodations than those below the quarter-decks of the old packet sloops with their large windows for light and air at the stern.

The schooners were not as good in windward work as the sloop, but with a fair or beam wind they were faster.  The rig, however, soon commended itself for the sloop with her long boom, tall mast, and heavy mainsail was difficult to handle at all times and especially in a blow and required a crew of six men to the schooner’s four. The first of the schooners were converted sloops. From which many of the larger ones were changes to save expense of operation. Late, about 1865 there was built  a new type of schooner for the Hudson which though rigged the same was a wider and shallower boat thus giving her greater carrying capacity and permitting all the cargo to be placed on deck for expedition in loading and unloading. She was quite sharp forward, which—with other good points in her model—made her good sailer.

Free Ship Plan 19th Century Steam Fishing Trawler

Steam-powered 19th Century fishing trawler designed by W.E. Redway

These plans, from the University of Washington Freshwater and Marine Image Bank, are of a late 19th Century steam-powered auxiliary fishing trawler of about 80 feet in length, designed by W.E. Redway.

Deck and inboard profile view of 19th Century Great Lakes
steam-powered fishing trawler designed by W.E. Redway

W. E. Redway was a Great Lakes shipbuilder in the late 1800s. 

Born in England, his father was also a shipbuilder. Redway served an apprenticeship in the Chatam dock yard in England, followed by positions in various shipyards "on the northeast coast of England and on the (River) Clyde," according to an 1897 profile in The Globe newspaper in Toronto. The River Clyde, flowing through Scotland's industrial city of Glasgow, was a major shipbuilding center during the Industrial Revolution.

Redway moved to Toronto, Canada in 1886.

Body, Sheer, and waterline plans of 19th Century Great Lakes
steam-powered fishing trawler designed by W.E. Redway

According to The Globe newspaper profile, Redway "up to June 1897, planned and constructed eleven steam vessels. These were the Imperial, the Mayflower, the Primrose, the Garden City, the Mascotte, the Mistassini, the Medora and others. He also framed the Gooderham yachts Cleopatra and Oriole. Hearing of some of his good work, the managers of the Union shipyards at Buffalo sent for Mr. Redway, and he was there second in charge of the building of the steamer Ramapo, being occupied for six months of the year of 1895 at that work."

Our Favorite Model Shipbuilding Book

One of the best all-around ship model building books for those contemplating building from scratch, Charles G. Davis' The Shipmodel Builder's Assistant also has tons of useful info ship model kit builders can use to improve their result.

New Illustrations in Shipbuilding Terms pages

We've been adding illustrations from vintage shipbuilding books to our Glossary of Shipbuilding Terms pages. Check them out:

Types of Rabbets, illustration fromThe Elements of Wood Ship Construction by William H. Curtis

Ship Plan of an Early British Steamship

Browsing through an old out-of-copyright book The Theory and Design of British Shipbuilding, I found this ship plan for an early British "Screw Steamer," a propeller-driven steamship (as opposed to paddle wheel).

While there is no superstructure detail, this would make a good freelance cargo ship project with deck details pulled from google image searches of early 20th Century British steamships.  This vessel is 320 feet long with a beam of 45 feet and a molded depth of 23 feet.

Clicking on the reduced size image here will bring up the original size document. Just right click and choose "save image as" to download this free ship plan.

320-foot early 20th Century British steamship hull

New Page: "The Hull: Heart of a Wooden Ship"

Once you've read our page "How to Read a Ship Plan,"  move on to our new page "The Hull: Heart of a Wooden Ship."

Fishing schooner Lettie G. Howard lines plan, courtesy Library of Congress

In it we describe all the major components that make up a prototype ship's hull, from keel to deck beams, and explain their function. 

We also provide a bunch of free ship plans for New England fishing schooners Ernestina and Lettie G. Howard pulled from the collection of the Library of Congress.

An Unexpected Trip Back to Childhood Model Ship Building

It's time for a trip back to childhood.

Back in the early 1960s, my grade school library in Flint, Michigan wasn't the most up-to-date. It had one book on model boats. It was Boys' Book of Model Boats by Raymond Francis Yates, published in 1920 by The Century Co.

Boys' Book of Model Boats by Raymond Francis Yates

I checked that book out week after week, and read it front-to-back, back-to-front, middle-to-ends and any other way possible. My favorite part was (being a child in a state surrounded by the Great Lakes) the chapter on building an electric lake freighter.

I didn't have access to a saw, but I found some 2x4s in the garage that had been cut with stake-like pointed ends. I stacked them, nailed them together, and found other bits of wood from which to make the freighter superstructure and funnel. I even found some small nails and string to model the stanchions and railings surrounding the bow and stern on real freighters I'd seen.

Excited to launch my new "scale" model of an actual lake freighter, I insisted we take the two-foot long chunk of lumber with nails sticking out of it with us on our trip to our summer cottage. My mother, however, drew the line at letting me carry a potentially dangerous weapon on my lap during the two-hour car ride. She made me put it behind the seats in the cargo compartment of our Buick station wagon.

When we arrived, I immediately changed into my swimming trunks, and insisted we go swimming. I carried my model carefully down the trail through the woods that led to the lake. Casting aside towel and sandals, I dashed into the cold water almost to my waist, and carefully set my lake freighter model in the water.

Imagining a band playing a John Philip Sousa march appropriate for the launching of such an impressive vessel, I carefully let go of the model.

And it promptly capsized.

I never did get that darn thing to float right, but I kept it on a shelf in my room for years.

I had not thought of that first attempt at ship modeling for years. Then, while scouring the internet for ship modeling info, I found a digitized copy of none other than Boys' Book of Model Boats!

Reading through it brought all those memories back, so I'm posting a PDF copy of the now out-of-copyright and I'm sure out-of-print book here. I hope it brings back as many of your memories of first attempts at building a ship model as it did mine.

Click on the book title link at the top of the post and enjoy!