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[raflaunches]

Next batch...


the bow chaser 3pdr gun enclosure has been marked out with Tamiya tape and chain drilled.








The sternwalk support brass rods tacked in to place with super glue.





The sternwalk floor glued together, using Victorian's method- two thinner floors sandwiching the brass rods to create a strong, resilient section.  The eagle eyed members may notice that the ship has been named using plastic letters- Prince George lives again!!!








I've started to add the supporting brackets from 0.8mm plastic card, drilled in the centre to create the lightening hole.





I have also built the battery trays and decided to have three 12v 7amp/hr SLA batteries so I don't need to use an inverter to power the 24v foggy unit. I am building the ballast trays into the hull so using maths I have worked out that with the batteries, motors, foggy unit and hull weighs approx 15-18lbs which means that I only need to add 12-14lbs of lead ballast which makes life a bit easier.

[derekwarner]

Hi Mick B....when you use term the "sternwalk" ...I assume it has nothing to do with walking........but just to provide a support profile that in plan view would protect the extremities of both props & rudder....is this the case?..................Derek
 

[tghsmith]

everything to do with walking, if you were the captain or high level officer, basically a private deck.. mainly used in port, at anchor or fair weather....

[derekwarner]

From the WIKI people.....
"A sternwalk is a balcony on the outside of the hull on the stern of a ship, usually reserved for the highest-ranking officer on board. They became less common on warships in the twentieth century".
 
I find this amazingly  dangerous & questionable  .....Derek

[warspite]

All the Queen Elizebeth class had them. in todays culture, it's where the smokers would have to go 

[derekwarner]

  Absolute rubbish warsipte    in the Majestic Class vessels..... smoking was permitted
On the bridge & in the following ...War Opps Rooms, MCC, FCC, Turrets, BCM, boiler rooms, turbine rooms, auxiliary rooms & steering compartment's  etc
Together with Officers & crews mess & quarters
Some exceptions were powder & shell handling rooms.......... ..............
Todays vessels .....do not have or require a stern walk..........but do have as necessary angular tubular buffers over the extremities of the propellers.........Derek
 

[raflaunches]

The stern walk also indicated that the vessel (usually a battleship) was a flagship and was used by the Admiral and his staff since his night quarters were located in the stern (least amount of vibrations and not subject to waves smashing into it like the bows!).
Also regarding the sternwalk HMS Prince George was rammed (accidentally) by her sister HMS Hannibal when they were in the Channel Fleet, off the coast of Spain, Prince George was holed badly below the waterline and was in serious danger of sinking, when she reached Gibraltar the stern walk was awash! She was patched up and returned to Portsmouth to be repaired properly. Prince George did have a reputation of being an unlucky ship she was involved in no less than three collisions involving a battleship (HMS Hannibal), a German Armoured Cruiser (SMS Friedrich Carl), and another British ship- an armoured cruiser (HMS Shannon). One of the only bits of luck she had were during the Dardanelles campaign when she was torpedoed but it failed to explode!

When I was on HMS Edinburgh the deck area beneath the flight deck was used for the smoking area, but not whilst the helo was in use above for obvious reasons. Sternwalks are not needed now because the pomp and ceremony of visiting VIPs do not require cabins anymore with private walkways and the lack of space on modern vessels do not allow for such frivolous decorative features. They are, after all, warships not luxury cruisers or liners but back in the late 1890s it was all part of the prestige of the fleet.

[warspite]

Statement was in jest,    though unsure now if they ALL had sternwalks, I remember them on the anatomy books plans.

[victorian]

Ships with photos showing sternwalks:
 
Majestic
Caesar
Prince George
Hannibal
Mars
Jupiter
Magnificent
Victorious
Illustrious
Hannibal
 
Errr .. that's it.

[derekwarner]

  .....are they also not vessels that show a.... "support profile that in plan view would protect the extremities of both props & rudder"......... ...time to get seriously serious  ....Derek

[warspite]

seems I mistook a stern gallery for a stern walk  , need to get the Ross book out.

[Colin Bishop]

Surely the stern walks were simply a vestige of the old stern galleries provided for captains/admirals on the old wooden walls. Traditionally the men berthed forward and the officers aft with the Royal Marines between them as a sort of buffer.
 
In the days of the sailing navy this also made sense because the ships were conned and steered from aft on the quarterdeck which was quickly accessible from the officer's quarters. When steam came in designs slowly changed so that ships were conned and steered from the bridge up forward. However the officer's accommodation remained aft by tradition. This was inconvenient as it could be a long walk forward and possibly dangerous in heavy seas and there were experiments whereby the officer accommodation was moved to the bridge area but this proved to be unpopular with both officers and men.
 
As for comfort, the stern was actually one of the most uncomfortable locations while at sea due to the vibration of the screws directly below but tradition is tradition!
 
Colin

[Jerry C]

Stern walk, HMS Exmouth, sub depot ship(and my school) Scapa Flow during WW2.
Jerry.

[victorian]

Wavy Navy! Wow, what an amazing picture Jerry. Thanks for posting that!
 
Presumably the door to the admirals' quarters would have been something like that, but protected by a heavy outer door when at sea.
 
I had not heard of that Exmouth before. A steel ship, built in the form of an East Indiaman in 1905! Here's the view from outside, found on a site called Worcester III.
 

[warspite]

brings a new meaning to name iron side

[Jerry C]

This is how I knew her as HMS Worcester. 1964-66
Jerry.

[raflaunches]

Wow, that's some fantastic pictures, it would make a brilliant model especially with the submarine. 


Thanks for correcting me Colin, I'll have words with my navy chum for giving me duff info! Never mind I suppose he was pulling my RAF crab leg! 


Back to the model...


I was reading and studying the pictures in Brian King's Modelling Late Victorian Battleships hoping to find some reference to torpedo net shelves and was quite surprised to see some pictures of his HMS Magnificent hull side. The torpedo net shelf was not a solid plate as I imagined but was a very intricate and almost decoritve lattice work.  I presume that it was for drainage and possibly weight saving it certainly is more challenging to build or replicate without using etch brass. Brian King's model did not have the torpedo nets fitted so it was a lot clearer to see.

[derekwarner]

Clearly the "Stern Walk" has been explained by Jerry C...& Colin & is indisputable....having said this, the angular plate on the Majestic Class vessel & mounted over the rudder & propellers has I suggest nothing to do with walking, but is simply a protection device for warships when reversing    ......
Colin is also correct when referencing the constant vibrations & drone noise in the aft hull structure created by the propellers.........Derek

[victorian]

I'm not sure about the 'angular plate' in these ships. Nothing visible in these two pics, unless I'm missing something ...
 
 

[derekwarner]

  ...checkmate to you 'victorian' ..... ........these images clearly show a 'walk' area by the stern & access from the quarters of the [assumed] residing senior Officer .......
Again....having said all of this........   the angular stern plate depicted by Mick B on his build has little to do with this............ Derek

[victorian]

Regarding torpedo net shelves, this photo of Vengeance makes it clear that they were indeed gratings. I regret not realising that before, because an etched grating would be simple to produce and less potentially damaging to the hull in handling.
 
 
 
All a bit academic if you are going to cover it up with netting of course. The shelves were probably narrower than in some models as well, witness this picture of Triumph, found on this site: http://www.cityofart.net/bship/albion.htm
 
Edited to say there's some problem with resolving the city of art website here. Google for 'Anti torpedo nets' and you'll see the pic about half way down the article.

[Geoff]

The stern walks on ships were for purely decorative purposes and to provide a space where the Captain and senior offices could meed undisturbed and out of sight of the crew. Their structure was lightweight and indeed some of them were latice like structures on the floor to reduce impact damage from a following upsurging wave. Think of the forces on the sternwalk if a wave hits it? It was not uncommon for them to be damaged during a storm or in some cases ripped off.
 
In no way were they intended to provide any "bump" protection to the propellers or rudder. A little though will show there is no really effective way to stop an 18,000 ton ship when it hits anything as the kinetic energy will simply crush any structure, or be crushed by any structure it comes into contact with.
 
All battleships were a mixture or ordinary plating and armour of various thicknesses. The ordinary plating being no tougher than a merchant ship.
 
As an aside, the problem was if you use thin armour 2"/3" say then it protects the hull from splinter damage but 2"/3" is just the right thickness to detonate an armour piercing shell which would otherwise have passed right through without exploding. Victorian battleships tended to have thin armour at their ends partly to protect against splinters and small arms fire and secondly to act as a support to the ram. Also battleships evolved and originally big guns were very slow at firing so their 6" secondary battery was an integral part of their main armamant  and not as we now class it as their secondary armamant. Thin side armour would protect against a 6" shell so was valuable but as time went by and the stamndard 12" guns rate of fire increased it became irrelevant.
 
In terms of the torpedo shelf I have seen various pictures some appear to be solid with small holes drilled into them and others are indeed a lattice type structure but unfortunatley detailed pictures are quite rare.
 
On my model of Canopus I have used very thin plywood as the net shelf and this works well because it is always the net shelf that takes the impact! It should probably have been a series of very closley spaced bars as again they would not want the impact of a solid wall of water hitting it and causing damage.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

[raflaunches]

Well it's been a long week already working 13 hour shifts but at least I'm half way through this week.
Thanks to Victorian and Geoff for answering my question about the the torpedo net shelf, tonight and last night I glued the 1/8" plywood deck to the deck beams using superglue, I realised that some of my filing of the GRP hull was a bit excessive so I've spent tonight adding some plastic and filler to the low points and filed the rest to a nice regular flat level ready for the final deck to be fitted. Looking forward to this weekend to meet everyone at Ron's Open Day on Saturday.


Derek- I'm still not sure to what you are referring to as the angular stern plate, the item I have fitted and made from plastic card and brass which fits on the stern is most definitely the floor of the stern walk or gallery. There are some small brackets that are being glued beneath this to act as the support brackets for the floor of the stern walk. As Geoff has pointed out that the need for protection for the rudder and propellers is rather pointless because of the tonnage and size of the vessel- no piece of metal other armour or hull plating is going to stop a 160000 ton battleship from hitting anything especially reversing into the rudder or propellers.

[derekwarner]

OK....granted that a 16,000 ton ship going astern.....etc, but consider a tug boat out of control approaching from the stern  ....the tug would conveniently hit the stern BOOMERANG or kidney shaped plate before contacting the propellers or rudder 
However if a tugboat is out of contention, how about steel cable or ropes.........why do most warship type vessels with propellers that protrude outboard of the plan footprint of the vessel have a curved tubular lattice work over the foot print of each propeller? 
The location & shape of the plate & it's physical sizing is more than a co-coincidence ........ Derek
 
 

[raflaunches]

Hi Derek


I think it's just co coincidence, we are thinking from a modern 21st Century point of view instead of a Victorian one. The actual structure is quite flimsy in comparison to the hull or even the props or rudder.
The actual floor print of the stern walk doesn't cover the props and only just covers the rudder, I think they were more for show than any practible purpose. Even on later vessels like the dread noughts they were nothing more than decoration and a tradition dating back from the sailing warships of the 17 and 18 centuries. Judging by the amount of collisions the Prince George was involved with including a ramming from the stern didn't damage the props or rudder, I think the stern walk wouldn't stop much not even a tug!