Whydah Gally - Pre-Bellamy

          Before becoming the flagship of Sam Bellamy's pirate fleet and ultimately wrecking off the coast of Cape Cod, the Whydah Gally was an English slave ship. I'm working on a second version of the Whydah, for Bellamy and his crew to hunt down.  The first model can be found here, for reference and comparison.

           

Commissioned in 1715 by MP/Sir Humphrey Morice, the Whydah was a fully-rigged-ship of 110 feet length, 300 tons, and capable of 13 knots. Whydah launched in 1716, bringing manufactured goods from the empire to West Africa, to purchase slaves.  Captain Lawrence Prince was in command.

In West Africa, the crew onboard 500 captive Africans which they transported to the West Indies to sell for raw materials like metals, sugar, and ginger.

The ship had a "slave barricade" across the top deck, which was used to separate the male and female captives when they were brought outside for fresh air. It would also have been used as a defensive structure for the slavers to put down slave revolts. 

Before the pirates captured and altered the ship, the Whyday had a few extra decks and a pilot's cabin, making it a taller and more top-heavy vessel.

After a year at sea, in February 1717 the Whydah became the target of Sam Bellamy's small but effective pirate fleet. After a 3-day chase, Prince gave up the ship without a fight.

When it fell victim to the pirates, the Whydah was carrying 18 cannon, though it had room for more. Theypirates ended up emplacing 10 more cannons, and storing many more in the lower decks.

The photos above are from my second layer of paint. I began with my usual brown spray-primer, and then made a lighter brown layer in oil paint.

Once fully painted, I used black thread and a needle to rig the ship.

For the rat lines, I find putting some gluey water on the thread lengths first and letting them dry hard makes them easier to work with.

Finally, I added the sails, cut from pillow cases, with thread tied off to the bottom corners.

Then I dipped the sails in gluey water, and held them in place on the arms to dry with clips.

As they dried, I tied off the threads to the arms below, and continued on with the next sails.

Here's some shots of the finished model:

Whydah Gally Tutorial Pt 2

 Picking up where I left off with the Whydah Gally tutorial part 1, I began by preparing cannons to add to the ship. Now, I'm not a skilled enough sculptor to model accurate enough cannons for above deck, where they can be closely viewed. My tooth-pick cannons were fine for below-decks where they would just poke out of the port holes, but I purchased some brass cannon from a model ship company. I also had a couple cheap plastic cannons from sets of pirate miniatures.

The cannon carriages were sold separately, and I cannot spend too much money on these projects, so I built my own out of cardboard and bbq skewers for wheels. Not the best pieces, but with paint and ropes they'll do fine on the crowded deck.

Glueing the cannon onto their carriages so that they would fit well through the port holes took a few tries. I needed to make sure they would all sit nicely before I could paint and finish off the cannon.

Looks pretty good.

I spray-primed the cannons and carriages, then painted the cannons in gun-metal enamel, and the carriages a similar brown to the hull.

I added the ropes around the cannons, and set them aside to dry.

While they dried, I began rigging the ship.

By this point, I only had a few days before my art gallery opened, so I really got down to it.

Before I got too far with the rigging, I glued the cannons into place, adding rolls of rope to hang next to each cannon.

Here they are, completed:

Next, I began stringing up the rat lines. I used a needle to thread the vertical ropes up the masts. Then I cut small pieces of string, wiped with a small amount of Glue-All to stiffen them up. Then I glued them in place horizontally, as the rungs of the rat lines. Other, better models than I would have tied each of these into place, but I had neither time nor patience for that. 

Once I had completed the rat lines and most of the inner rigging, I got started on sails. My kind wife brewed me some black tea, which I mixed with a little gluey water. I used some old pillow cases and cut them to size. I threaded a line through the bottom corners of each sail, to tie them off later. I dipped each sail briefly in the gluey tea, squeezed them out, then dripped the tea bag onto them before giving them a second squeeze.

I ran a bead of glue on the yard and clamped the sails into place until they dried. 

Slowly, over the coarse of the last few days available to me, I added the sails. and made sure they dried correctly, adding more glue where they hadn't.

Once satisfied, I went back through with my scissors and cleaned up the frayed edges and excess sail material.

Almost done, I went back through and tied off the bottoms of the sails, leaving the excess thread for the next step.

I rolled up the excess thread, or added more when there wasn't enough, to leave hanging off the rails.

I had previously made some anchors out of clay and paint, and I glued them into place as well, adding a roll of thread behind each.

I had one last lamppost leftover from my Telefonica diorama. I converted it with some rolled wire into a lamp, and carefully glued it onto the hull.

Finally, I added the flags.

For more photos of the finished piece, check out this post.

A final photo of the model in the art gallery, below a painting I made of the Wreck of the Whydah.