1/700 American Privateer Prince de Neufchatel

 I hope everyone here on this side of the Pond enjoyed their Thanksgiving holidays. I know I did. First we had our dinner a week early with our two daughters who were able to get two days off at the same time. They had to work over Thanksgiving this year. Then my wife's nephew spent the week with us on break from Montana State. He is studying Computer Engineering but is an avid modeler and gamer so I had someone to play with. We also spent a lot of time in the Dungeon working on stuff. He built two pretty nice Warhammer type terrain pieces while I built another ship.

The ship is another of Henry Turner Miniatures 3D designs. An American 18-gun privateer, Prince de Neufchatel was built in New York some time during 1812. She sailed as a hermaphrodite schooner/brigantine and operated primarily in European waters efficiently damaging British shipping during the war. Noted for speed, at one time she outran thirteen British warships. In 1813, operating in the English channel, she took nine British prizes in quick succession. She also delivered a crushing defeat to the boats of a British frigate sent to capture her. On 11 October 1814, on the south side of Nantucket becalmed and vulnerable, the British frigate HMS Endymion sent 111 men in five boats to cut out the privateer defended by only 40 Americans. After 20-minutes of savage fighting, the British surrendered. British casualties were 28 killed, 37 wounded, and another 28 taken prisoner. The Americans had 7 killed and 24 wounded. Most of the wounded and all of the prisoners were put off at Nantucket and the Prince limped back to Boston. Eight days out of Boston on 28 December 1814, three British frigates, Acasta, Leander and Newcastle sighted her and gave chase. Under the strain of so much sail area her masts sprung. Unable now to outrun the frigates, Prince de Neufchatel surrendered. At the time of her capture she had 18 guns and a crew of 129 men.

• Tons Burthen 328
• Length Overall 110'8"
• Beam 25'8"
• Depth of Hold 11'6"
• Armament: Privateer 18 guns (possibly 16 x 12-pounder carronades plus 2 x 6 pounder long gun bow chasers)

This was a really fun and quick build. I love the look of this kind of vessel and have always enjoyed building them. Everything but the hull is scratch built. I decided on cloth sails for this model and I think they do it justice.

The next few photos of the Prince de Neufchatel were my inspiration guides for building this model.

Two 1/700 prints of the ship

As you can see here the bulwarks stop at the top of the hatches, which just didn't look right to me and didn't match my reference images.

This photo shows the additional bulwarks I added above the hatch covers.

First cloth sail tied on.

This model went a bit differently than my normal sequence. On this one I found I needed to add some running rigging early on with the sails, then some standing rigging. Then more sails and more running rigging, then more standing rigging, and so on.

 

I hope you like it as much as I liked building it. Comments and suggestions are welcome.

Happy Holidays! PS: It's legal now to listen to Christmas music!