Scratchbuilding the sloop Marianne and the Sultana Galley (Tutorial)

Folks seem interested in these cheap, easy, and fun cardboard ships I've been making. So for the next round I attempted to make a tutorial. Be forewarned, halfway through I got bored of taking photos and missed a few steps.

Here is the process I used to build a small sloop which I imagine as Sam Bellamy's Marianne. Below that, I'll add a short description of steps I took to build a slightly larger, 3-masted ship which I imagine as the Sultana, another of Bellamy's.

The tools I used:

Small awl

Scissors

Pliers (mine are part of my leatherman knife)

Utility or craft knife.

Supplies and material:

Oil paint (water-based paint will lead to the cardboard dissolving over time!)

Elmer's Glue-all.

I used wooden dowels of a few various sizes for the masts and, on larger ships than the Marianne, the cannons.

I used wooden bbq skewers, thinner than the dowels, for some of the yards.

I used two types of cardboard:

Typical, thick corrugated cardboard that you find in box boxes.

Thin, smooth cardboard that comes inside wine boxes, making the grid the bottles sit within. If you look closely, one side of this cardboard is rough, but the other runs in parallel lines, making it a great choice for the hull and deck planks. Don't drink wine? Do what I did. Go buy a couple bottles of rum from your local liquor store and ask for a wine box to cary them out in.

The Marianne

The Marianne was the first ship SamBellamy captained, the commission handed to him by Benjamin Hornigold. Bellamy had impressed Hornigold by outsmarting the latter's rival, Privateer Henry Jennings. In taking the promotion to captain, Bellamy passed over Edward Thatch, the future Blackbeard, and many other crewmen who had sailed much longer under Hornigold. Though Bellamy would soon take over command of Hornigold's fleet -- after a vote of the crew, who preferred Bellamy's war on all of the crowned heads of Europe over Hornigold's refusal to attack English ships -- Bellamy ultimately proved Hornigold's original opinion of him was correct by becoming the most successful pirate in history during his short career. At 27, Bellamy sailed off with 170 of Hornigold's men in the Marianna and the Postillon.

Originally a French ship, the Marianne was a small sloop painted lead white at the waterline. The stern was painted blue, with trim of yellow and blue on the quarterdeck. Under Bellamy, she was a well-armed sloop, with 8 to 10 guns and also well-used. Surviving reports describe the peeling paint and major battle damage. Unfortunately, that is all I've been able to learn about the sloop.

I began by drawing out the bottom of a water-lined hull, and then a second, slightly larger shape for the deck. Don't forget to put a hole in the center of your deck for the mast. If you attempt to do this later, after you've started putting the ship together, it may get damaged by your force.

I used a couple small pieces of cardboard as risers to hold the deck above the base, using the deck and base to measure the width of the risers. Then I added two more risers for the quarterdeck.

I glued two dowels together for the mast and boom. Note that the hole for the mast is slightly forward from center.

Next, I carefully, slowly, glued sheets of wine-box insert cardboard to the hull of the ship. If you can't hold these together with a vice or some improvised weights, use your hands. Glue-all dries pretty fast, but this is still one of the most difficult parts. I usually do this while listening to an audio book or, more realistically, watching TV.

Not shown here, but I glued the rest of the yards on to the mast while it was still detached from the hull. I also cut a window into the stern section of the riser before I glued it on.

Next, I wrapped the quarterdeck the same way that I had wrapped the hull.

I added a simple door to the quarterdeck.

Next, I cut planks out of the wine-box insert cardboard. I laid these down over the deck horizontally. After looking closer at other model ships, I probably was supposed to do this vertically instead.

I followed a similar process with the sides of the ship.

As well as the stern.

Next, I glued the mast in place. I used rectangles of foam board, with three holes punched through it with the awl, to hold the base of the rat lines. I made a simple figurehead out of a spare miniature horse and a little bit of Miliputty. This one is a unicorn, which were common figureheads. I placed a little 1/72 pirate on the deck for scale. Now the Marianne is ready to be primed and painted.

The Sultana

After completing these early steps on the Marianne, I began second, slightly-larger, three-masted ship, which I imagine to be the Sultana.

The Sultana was a three-masted galley described in some sources as a miniature version of the Whydah Galley. In the time between Christmas of 1716 and New Years Day of 1717, the crew careened The Sultana at La Blanquia Island off the coast of Venezuela, where they "made" the ship into "a man-of-war." I'm still not totally sure what that means in this case other than adding more cannon.

Now, I didn't photograph the early steps, but they were pretty similar to the steps I took to start out the hull of the Marianne, except this hull was slightly larger, there are extra decks, and there are 3 holes for the 3 masts instead of the 1 on the sloop.

As you can see in the photo below, I've also cut out doors and windows for the castles holding up the upper decks.

The quarter deck sits upon an extra base piece I cut, so that it may hang farther over the back of the stern.

When I cut my strips for the sides of the hull, I made 20 square holes for the cannon. Then I cut a dowels into 12 small sections for the cannons. I glued them into the holes I had made, very carefully and slowly. It was pretty annoying to balance them in place while they dried, and required a lot of patience. I kept losing them inside the ship. When they dried, I added extra glue, to help prevent the inevitable breaking. If you are less cheap than me, and your measurements are true, you could instead cut the dowels into sections slightly longer than the width of your hull, so that one dowel becomes 2 cannons (sticking out parallel holes on both sides of the hull). This would eliminate the balancing-while gluing issue.

I added railings to the deck at the bow.

I glued on a row of port hole covers just above the waterline for the massive oars they would have used in shallow waters, galley's being unique for their ability to be powered by oars, each requiring a team.