Introduction

Welcome to my log for HM Post Ship Perseus. I began research on the project in late 2023 and started construction in January 2025. Below you can find links to log entries as well as the latest version of my monograph on Perseus and other primary sources I have transcribed.

National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London. AAA44.

Links

Transcription of the Contract for Perseus & Unicorn

Perseus Monograph

Table of Contents

Log #1 - Construction of the Bulkheads

Log #2 - Framing & Faring

Log #3 - The Stern Framing

Log #4 - The Bollard Timbers

Log #5 - The Lower Counter

Log #6 - The Wales Part I

Log #7: The Wales Part II

Log #8: The Wales Part III

Log #9: Redoing the Wales Part I

Log #10: More Structural Problems

Log #1 - Construction of the Bulkheads

My build log was lost in the 2026 MSW crash and rather than try to reconstruct it, I have attempted to summarize the work up until the time of the crash in a few posts. I will be focusing on the actual construction of the model in these summary posts as the research is available in my monograph. Once I have brought the log up to date I will continue from that point in more detail.

HM Post Ship Perseus was a 20 gun 6th rate that was launched in 1776 and so service during both the American and French revolutionary wars. She was converted to a bomb ship in 1798 and then broken up in 1805. I will be attempting to depict her as she looked around 1780-1781 when she was under the command of Captain Richard Dacres.

The plans for the model were developed based on a combination of the contract for Perseus, Sphinx (the lead ship of the class) plans I purchased from Alex M, as well as plans for Perseus available online at the National Maritime Museum.

The construction method for the model is broadly based on the Winchelsea instructions published by the Syren Ship Model Company. A build board was constructed and the bulkheads cut out of plywood. Hex nuts were glued in the centre bulkhead to allow the ship to be secured to a base.

The Stem, knee of the head and keel were cut from pear wood and attached to the centre bulkhead.

One thing to note about the knee of the head is the use of scarphs in its construction. This is not a practice I have seen widely in the ship modelling community, but my research suggests that it was widespread in historical practice. I have a detailed discussion on how I came up with the design for the knee of the head in my monograph.

The bulkheads were glued in place.

Edited June 28Jun 28 by Thukydides

Log #2 - Framing & Faring

Continuing my brief summary of the work predating the MSW crash…

With the bulkheads secured in place it was time to add some additional structural support on the outside along the the line of the upper deck. I also added filer pieces to the bow and the stern. The model was then given a preliminary faring. I continued to fare the model as I went after this point but will likely not comment on it as it reflects small adjustments I was making all the time.

Then it was time to frame the gunports. The run of the ports was measured and checked with a batten and a spacer was used to frame the upper sill. Then another space was held against the upper sill with elastic bands and the lower sill was glued in place. Finally the sides of the ports were added. I had designed the bulkheads so that one side of each port was always agains a bulkhead so I only need to add the side once for each port.

The forward ports could not however be done in this manner and so I needed to cut one of the bulkheads to allow space for them. These ports are on the cant frames and so need to be at an angle. Note: This is also technically true of the sternmost pots, but the angle is not very large so that it will not really be noticeable and so in the interest of simplicity I cheated a little.

Log #3 - The Stern Framing

In order to compress these summary log entries down to a manageable size, I am grouping things together by theme and so not all of this is in chronological order. I am also skipping over much of the mistakes, false starts and corrections that I had to make along the way.

So in this log entry I am going to talk about the stern framing. This began with adding the stern frames which were made of pear to give them strength and also to give me the option of not painting the frames around the lights if I chose.

Space pieces were added between them to mark the location of the upper transom. These will ultimately be completely covered and so were made out of basswood.

The outer frames have a curve at the lower counter. To since none of this will be seen, I simulated this in a similar manner to the Winchelsea practicum by adding a filler piece on the outside which I then sanded down to size.

There was little to know primary records I could find on the size of the stern ports, so I just estimated their size based on models and the marshall painting. You can see them in the below picture before being sanded back to the line of the lower counter.

The quarter gallery doors gave me a bit of trouble as the various plans were not in agreement as to their size. I had to go with a reasonable compromise in the end which I think will best reconcile the differences. The spacing was accomplished using a spacer block much as I did for the gun ports.

The sills for the lights gave me a bit of trouble as getting a good bond with end grain and positioning them in the exact right place and angle was tricky. In the end I settled for getting the piece glued in place and then adding small reinforcing support pieces below them. Again since this area will be fully covered by the planking, the key is to make it structurally sound, not to look pretty.

The upper sills were put in place using spacers I cut. Note that from this angle it appears that they are not lined up correctly. The reason for this is that the problem is actually with the original transom spacers. To make the upper sills more secure I filled in the space between them and the upper transom spacers and the uneven nature of the upper spacers means that some of the upper sills are thicker than others.

And here you can see the stern with the framing complete.

It will probably take two more posts to bring us up to the present date. Once we get caught up, I am planning on doing a post on a survey gun port and gun port lid related mentions in primary sources I have been conducting over the past few weeks along with the modelling implications.

Log #4 - The Bollard Timbers

Continuing my recap of work done prior to the MSW crash…

The bollard timbers caused me quite a lot of headaches and I had several false starts before the final version which I am going to document in this log entry. There was also a significant amount of difficulty in even determining what they should look like as with many things I have discovered over the course of this build, the historical evidence is sparse and sometimes hard to reconcile.

If you are interested in the contemporary evidence driving the decisions I ultimately made, there is a section in chapter 3 of my monograph which discusses the bollard timbers.

I designed the template in CAD and cut out the pieces on my scroll saw.

Then using chisels and files I carefully cut the shapes. For the top of the knighthead I copied @Chuck's trick from his winchelsea practicum of glueing a thin pice on top instead of trying to carve it.

Then the whole assembly was glued together with a 50-50 mix of white glue and paint. The reason for this will become more apparent when I get to painting, but the short answer is this will allow me to highlight the joints on areas I plan to paint black.

The assembly was positioned on the bow and a thin strip glued below it to represent the inner side of the apron.

And here is the view from the bow.

I also added some thing pieces of pear to fill the gap where the stem meets the bollard timbers (you can see a very thin gap in the above picture). And with that I believe we are essentially caught up to where things were prior to the MSW crash.

Edited July 2Jul 2 by Thukydides

I am very impressed by your approach to everything; so much time and research goes into it. Admirable!

Log #5 - The Lower Counter

We are finally caught up to where things were prior to the MSW crash and so today we get the first bit of “new” content in a long time. I actually completed this work almost two months ago, but have not gotten around to documenting it yet.

Before planking the lower counter, I need to paint the stern scuttles / ports. I did document this painting on the pre-crash log, but I am going to save the details till a future log when I discuss the ports more. The short version is that I painted the inside of the hole black and then carefully painted and edge highlighted the outer parts prior to planking.

The size of these stern ports was not listed in the contract so I estimated the size of the port lid from the Marshall painting and then allowed for a one inch stop at the two sides and bottom of the port. This reduced size was what determined the size of the holes.

The contract called for 3in thick planking for the lower counter so I used 3/64 x 5/32 in planks. No width was specified anywhere that I could find so I went with the same width I was using for most of the outer hull planking. The strips were bent using @Chuck’s iron edge bending method which I found worked well when I made alert.

After the first plank, the edges of each plank were painted with titanium white heavy body acrylic paint. This works in a very similar way to the practice of running pencil along the edges to simulate calking. In this case I will be painting this area black and so want the joints to be somewhat visible. I will discuss this in more detail when we get to the painting stage.

The most complicated section was the area around the ports. I got lucky in that the planking worked out just right to exactly run along the top of the ports, so I only had to deal with one strake of planking that needed to have cutouts in them. I used a 1/64in spacer I made to make sure the stop was left around the port. The planks themselves were carefully measured and then cut with mini chisels.

And here is the final result. I decided to leave the rudder hold to be cut out later in the process.

And this picture is what things looked like after sanding back the sides and surface of the counter. I have not yet decided what I am going to do with regard to the stern ports. I am thinking about having them open, hence why I went through all this trouble. I figure If I decide to make them closed it is easy enough to just place a port lid in the holes.

There are a few topics that were mentioned in the pre-crash log that long time followers may notice I missed (such as the ports, waterline, run / research into the wales etc…). I plan to cover some of these missed topics as research / construction reaches points where they become relevant to the ongoing work.

Thanks again to everyone who has contributed over the past year and a half with suggestions, encouragement and constructive criticism. I really do appreciate all of your comments and the model will be much better for all of your feedback.

Lovely, and so nice nice to be caught up!!!

Looks good! Nice to see some up to date- update 😁👍

Shaping up very nicely, an interesting project.

Log #6 - The Wales Part I

The wales of a vessel are probably one of the more consequential visual elements on a model. They determine the run of the planking and also stand out due to their thickness and visual prominence as they were often painted black.

Determining the run of the wales (like many of the tasks in building a model) turned out to be a much more complicated process than I anticipated.

Step one was to mark the waterline. This was also necessary for other reasons, but in the case of our discussion here today, the lower edge of the wales touches the waterline around midships. The Sphinx class vessels had a slight keel drag, so to mark the wales I made a jig using lego and then tilted the model such that the pencil in the jig was at the correct height both at the bow and at the stern.

The next step was to use the plans to make light marks on each of the bulkheads for the theoretical position of the wales from the plans. These marks were then used to set the initial position of the lower edge of the wales using a strip of wood. However, it quickly became apparent that this resulted in an uneven curve depending on the direction it was viewed from so I needed to make a number of small adjustments to get the run of the wales looking right.

This took a lot of adjustments to get to where I was happy with it. I came back multiple times over the course of three or four days to make small adjustments and tweaks. In addition to the problems with the run of the wales, I was also forced to make a number of adjustments to my faring during this process. In particular there was one bulkhead which was clearly not correct and I had to add a small amount of material (around 1/64 in) to bring it out and in line with the rest of the hull. This may seem like a very small amount of to be worried about, but when you looked at the run of the baton it was very visible. This is one of those cases where very small issues can actually be noticeable because of their relative measurements compared to things around them.

Once I was satisfied, I ran a pencil along the top of the baton to mark the position of the wales.

Lovely! Are you doing a single planking layer approach here? I am getting that feeling from this start with the wales 😁

5 minutes ago, TJM said:

Lovely! Are you doing a single planking layer approach here? I am getting that feeling from this start with the wales 😁

Thanks TJM,

Yes this is going to be a single plank approach. From a broad structural approach I am following quite closely to the Winchelsea practicum with some differences. For example I am planking the wales as a single layer instead of the two used by Winchelsea. This does make for some challenges as 3/64 in planks are fine to work with, but the 5/64 in ones I am using for the wales are tough to bend. Even with lots of heat, I need a fair bit of clamping pressure (at least at the bow).

To plank the wales with two layers makes the planking much easier. An old model builder gaves me the tip to use for the first layer of the wales a thinner planking than for the rest of the hullplanking. This makes it easy to grind the hull without demaging the wales. After the hull shape is fine you can plank the wales.

Log #7 - The Wales Part II

Thanks to everyone who gave me feedback. In particular @druxey @Waldemar and @AnobiumPunctatum for your helpful suggestions. I have already started the wales (and long since got the wood) so the number of layers can't be changed, but based on feedback I am going to be tweaking the run of the wales near the first gunport slightly. I think I can get away with some light filing to soften the downward bend so I don't need to replace the already complete planks.

In this log post I am going to look at some of the research that I am using to decide what the wales of Perseus should look like. This is largely lifted from my Monograph but I thought it would be helpful to highlight a few point for those who have not read it.

According to the contract, Perseus’ main wales were composed of three strakes. However, the contract does not specify the method by which the planks were to be laid apart from overall width and specifying the shift of the butts.

The main wales to be in breadth from the upper edge to the lower edge 2 ft 10 in & in thickness 5 in to be worked in 3 strakes of such lengths & the butts properly disposed so as to give the strongest shifts to the ports & to each other.

The below table summarizes planking expansion plans held by the National Maritime Museum for single deck ships launched from 1770 to 1805. Of these plans, six depict a top and butt arrangement for the wales and one anchor stock.

Planking Expansions For Ship Rigged Vessels 1770-1805

Name (Guns)	Launch Date	Plan Date	Wales Planking Style	Number of Strakes
Sphinx (20)	1775	1808	Top & Butt	3
Hornet (14)	1776	1776	Top & Butt	3
Thisbe (28)	1783	1807	Anchor Stock	4
Squirrel (24)	1785	1808	Top & Butt	4
Hawk (16)	1793	1803	Top & Butt	3
Cormorant (16)	1794	1793	Top & Butt	4
Diana (38)	1794	1808	Top & Butt	4

Source: NMM ZAZ3918; ZAZ5119; ZAZ3442; ZAZ3704; ZAZ4731; ZAZ4347; ZAZ2343.

The most obviously applicable of these plans is the planking expansion for Sphinx, the lead ship of the class Perseus belonged to. The wales on this plan show three strakes, consistent with the contract for Perseus,  in a top and butt arrangement. The dating of the plan is after Perseus was broken up, but surveys were often done of ships prior to being broken up and this plan is likely from such a survey. Winfield indicates that she was likely paid off in 1799 and did no other service before being broken up in 1811. Consequently though the plan dates to 1808, this likely represents her appearance in 1799 and potentially earlier.

https://www.rmg.co.uk/collections/objects/rmgc-object-83709

However, perhaps the most interesting plan is of Hornet, a 14 gun sloop launched around the same time as Perseus. The plan is of particular interest as the lines were taken on 3 February 1776 while the vessel was under construction. Perseus was launched in March meaning that the lines were taken while Perseus was being constructed just down the river. It depicts the wales in three strakes with the upper strake planked in a butt pattern and the lower two using top and butt. Though the ship is a fair bit smaller than Perseus, the number of strakes used in the wales are the same as specified in the Perseus contract.

https://www.rmg.co.uk/collections/objects/rmgc-object-84910

There are a number of other examples that could be cited, but I will only cover them briefly to explain why I discounted them:

• The only contemporary models I could find clearly depicting the wales were both larger 3rd rate vessels. One used hook and butt and the other top and butt and given the question of their applicability to Perseus, I didn't really consider them.

• McKay's book on the HMS Pandora (a slightly larger 6th rate than Perseus) depicts 4 strakes in a hook and butt arrangement. The source for this assertion is the contract for Squirrel 1785 which says the strakes should be locked into each other, but doesn't actually specify the method. A later planking expansion for Squirrel dating to 1808 shows the wales arranged in top and butt fashion. Because of these inconstancies and the fact that Perseus had only three strakes for the wales not four (as Squirrel had), I don't consider the Pandora book depiction of the wales to be appropriate for Perseus.

So in conclusion, the plan is to largely follow the planking expansion for Sphinx with regard to the wales as I feel that is the most likely example of how Perseus would have been planked. Using the plans I estimated that the two top and butt strakes will be 8 in wide at the narrowest points and 14 in at the widest point. That leaves 12 in for the single strake of butt planks.

Thank you again for all your feedback.

Log #8 - The Wales Part III

This entry has been a long time coming due to the number of times I had to make and then redo the first strake of the wales. I had thought I had been careful and had measured and planned well, but as I have discovered with the wales, I really should have prepared better. Getting a smooth curve that looks correct is very hard and I think it is safe to say that I am sick of trying to get the sheer correct.

What I am going to talk about here is an idealized version of what I have been through without the many times I glued and then had to break out the isopropyl to remove a plank. So know that in reality it was much more difficult that shown.

Since the lower two strakes of the wales needed to be planked in top and butt, I decided on a simple process to make my life easier with this. Step one was to take my stock planks (5/64 x 7/32) and edge bend them to the match the correct curve for the lower edge of the wales. Then I measured 1/8 in at each end to represent the thin part of the top and butt and marked the location for the thickest portion. A straight line was drawn from this point to the two ends. This essentially means that the plank is only curved on one side and the other side is flat edges allowing for hopefully an easier time when it come to the second strake.

I then used my mini plane to shave the plank down to size.

The finished plank was then bent to conform to the curve of the hull and the end was painted white. In later iterations I found that it was better to actually use my white paint and wood glue mix and apply it right before applying the plank. That way any small gaps get filled by the paint-wood glue mixture.

Early on I used a bunch of clamps, but as time went on I got better at pre forming the plank and so used less of them.

In spots where the joint between two planks fell in-between bulkheads I added a small filler piece. For subsequent strakes I can just use a small piece of scrap wood, but where this strake is setting the sheer of the planking, I need to make sure I was able to correctly locate the planks.

As I went along I was also using the planking expansion to help inform the shapes I had to make. One interesting thing that appears on it is a fairly sharp upward curve at the stern end of the wales. I ended up making a small adjustment to the run of the wales to match this curve as it looked better. Note the plank below does not end in a point, I just allowed the excess to stick off past the counter so I can sand it back later.

And with that the first strake of the wales is finally done. I am hoping the next strake goes more smoothly now I have the sheer established.

Very nice work, it looks great!

Good work, this looks incredibly difficult to make.

This run of the wale is critical to the whole planking job. Please check that the bow end is not higher at the stem than measured from the draught. It appears to rise too much rather than flatten out slightly over the hawse timbers.

1 hour ago, druxey said:

This run of the wale is critical to the whole planking job. Please check that the bow end is not higher at the stem than measured from the draught. It appears to rise too much rather than flatten out slightly over the hawse timbers.

Thanks David for your feedback. I really do appreciate that you take the time to give me advice on this. Is your concern primarily that the point it meets the stem is not correct or that the curve is too strong?

If the concern is the point at which the wales meet the stem then I can say definitively that it is correct (or at least that it matches the draught). If you look at the below cad screenshot with the draught superimposed in the background you can see that the point at which the bottom of the wale meets the stem is slightly higher than half way up the light grey (in the cad drawing) piece of the knee of the head. That point is where the wales currently meet the stem on the model.

The wales and thickstuff on top of the wales together are 44 in wide which if I measure on the model brings us right up to the bottom of the upper standard (I think that is what they are called) which I believe is where things should be.

If the concern is the curve, it does to my eye seem to largely match the run for the winchelsea 1772 (see below for a picture from the RMG). The wales in the winchelsea example go somewhat straight (from the perspective of the picture) around the first port before rising more sharply as they approach the stem. The plank itself (if laid out flat) is essentially straight till the first gun port before bending down. It then straightens before curving slowly upward along the rest of the model.

https://www.rmg.co.uk/collections/objects/rmgc-object-66277

I could try to remake the two bow planks starting the downward bend of the blank earlier. Though this is a pretty big pain (as the bow is a pain to do after other planks are in place). So really it comes down to if you think the curve at the bow is going to create problems for me in the future.