Black Seas: Building HMS Anson

For me one of the iconic Age of Sail images is a scene from the first Hornblower movie, "The Even Chance," with the Actor Robert Lindsey as Sir Edward Pellew demonstrating command presence as HMS Indefatigable attacks a French Food convoy.

Indefatigable was a cut down 64 gun two decker, an Intrepid class, considered too small to stand in the line of battle, creating a 44 gun "heavy" frigate.  In 1794 three such ships were razeed, or cut down to reduce the number of decks. The word is derived from the French vaisseau rasé, meaning a razed (in the sense of shaved down) ship.

All three ships had been built in the previous decade, HMS Indefatigable, HMS Anson and HMS Magnanime.  The first of these three, Indefatigable was immortalised by C S Forrester in the Hornblower novels, but all three served successfully, although Anson was lost in 1807 in one of the Royal Navy's worst disasters of that century.  Whilst I am going to focus on the Anson... other razees are available.

Anson was chosen for razee in 1794 with and the original forecastle and quarterdeck were removed, and the former upper deck (now weather or spar-deck) was partially removed and restructured to provide a new forecastle and quarterdeck. The result was a frigate of 44 guns, with a primary gun deck armament of twenty-six 24-pounder cannon (most frigates of the time were too lightly built to handle such heavy guns, so were armed with 18-pounders). 

The new quarte deck and forecastle also allowed the armaments stationed there to be substantially strengthened from the original design, including adding carronades. Anson was thus heavily armed for a frigate, and retained the stronger construction (and ability to absorb damage) of a ship-of-the-line.

The Build

The three base sprues for Black Seas obviously have no a razeed frigate, but no problem, I used two frigate sprues to create two different models.

The frigate used as a basis for the Black Seas model is an Amazon class.  I deduced this by researching the model against illustration and ship plans.  Interesting since Amazon and Indefatigable were the two ships that caused a shock with the destruction of the French two decker Droits de l'Homme.

The basic Black Seas 32 gun frigate.

I practiced by cutting two Brig models and recombining the hulls to create a Sloop and a three mast Corvette.  The Corvette has a cut down Frigate stern piece added (there are two spares on the sprue.

The recombined frigate hulls against an original.  The smaller 28 gun will be a useful type. I raised the larger frigate underneath adding to the sheer, and have yet to add the covering quarterdeck and poop, originally the second deck of the 64.  Anson already looks so much more powerful than the smaller frigates.

A resin printed hull.  I can`t source one of these yet and I`m such a maniac that I rather enjoy making my own, but far easier like this.

So far so good.  Anson with the raised quarterdeck and poop.  She still needs highlighting, soft tone and varnish, rigging and brass sails.

Anson was embayed and wrecked in a storm off the Cornish coast in 1807.  The yards were still those of a two decker, larger than a frigate, and they unbalanced the ship in the extreme circumstances she found herself in.  I could use the sail set from a 74, but I`m taking the easy way out and using the smaller frigate yards onto which I`ll place larger cut sails.  

I cleared the struts across the main deck to give her the through deck appearance of these razees and I`m quite pleased with the result.  For Black Seas I`ll be using the "Indie's" stats.

Given the number of Privateers and French ships that struck to Anson I`m convinced that sharing Indefatigable's stats and status is fair. 
I should also point out that Warlord do make the ships figurehead and stern for Indefatigable, as part of their Royal navy Fleet, but I really really need no more Brigs and I wanted to build my own.  Works for me.

I`ve painted one of the standard Frigates as HMS Amazon, and am now waiting on a French 74 to play the part of Droit's de l'Homme.