Preamble
This paper has a chequered history. I started by thinking that modellers would welcome any text that would help them build and sail a barge more successfully. It is not the case. Most want to be left alone to make their own decisions based on the most unlikely concepts of physics. However there may be just a few who can make use of the following text
I am aware that many and perhaps most people are wary of what they perceive to be “theory” and that it is fashionable to decry anything that is “theoretical”. I am an academic who makes things to check the theory. Mostly I succeed in applying theory correctly. I used that theory to design and build my boom-sail barge Pearl. When I looked at models of sprit-sailed barges I realised that some of the things from Pearl and from my racing yachts were relevant to sprit-sail barges. I thought that I might try to explain without building a model how the sprit-sail barge actually works so that modellers might have some reference text to help them. In the end it proved to be necessary to build a model of a sprit-sail barge to get everything into perspective.
(1) The idea of scale model
There is a deeply rooted idea that if one makes a scale model of a real vessel and converts it into a working model it will behave like the full-size. The idea has no foundation in science. One tends to think of scaling as reducing in size it could as easily be increasing in size. It is hard to imagine a barge built 24 times larger than the full size not requiring some very serious adaptations to make it practical. Indeed science tells us that we must expect to make adaptations to a scale model of any sailing vessel if it is to sail at all with its full rig. In order to design these adaptations either we need some theory or to live a long time in order to experiment blindly. No one should be surprised that some of the bits that must be added to a miniature barge are just the same bits as are used on model racing yachts. Neither are models, they are miniature sailing vessels.
(2) Horses for courses
I used to race model yachts at Swanley Park. The lake there is not totally surrounded by trees but there were more than enough to produce big wind “shadows” of confused swirling wind. When a shadow covered a mark we used to stick to the rules of full-sized yacht racing and not paddle the boats round the mark using the rudder. When we hit a wind shadow between marks we simply waited until the boat got through it.
This coloured my view when I considered making a model barge. I made my first boom sail barge as I would have built a yacht and it sails beautifully in a steady wind. Then I discovered that model barges are required to race at venues where the water is surrounded by mature trees. At these venues the wind is hopelessly confused. (Go and look at the water just downstream of the piers of a bridge over a small river to see the wake. The wind can be like that.) My model barge proved to be useless at such venues. It was purgatory to sail it and now I only sail on the only open pond available to me at Maldon. It is sheer joy to sail it when the wind is right.
So how do people sail model barges in what they cheerfully call a “fluky” wind? The most important thing to accept is that the wind comes randomly from all directions. The model makes progress in short bursts and there is no hope of continually adjusting the sails by radio in response to the wind changes. Keeping in mind that sailing boats go fastest when reaching it makes sense to set the rig for reaching and leave it alone. If the barge is as light as it can be for the strength of the swirling wind it will go as far as it can in the short intervals when the rig is driving in the required direction. Unhappily it is nearly impossible to sail round the marks because a burst of speed is too short and the wind direction too uncertain to get round. To overcome this the most important adaptation is to fit a large unbalanced rudder with as much as 70° of movement to right or left. Then, even if a barge model is stationary in a very light wind, it can be made to change its heading with no forward movement by swishing the rudder repeatedly to one side and back to the centre. (This is paddling.)
So progress is made by pointing the model barge towards a mark, waiting whilst the barge gets there, turning the mark by paddling to change heading for the next mark and so on. It is not pretty but it is very widely practiced by all sorts of model sailing boats on sheltered waters. A model with only control of the rudder is extremely practical for this mode of sailing. Indeed I would go so far as to suggest that the rudder-only option is best. The rig can be set up to give the best result and not altered whist sailing. Unfortunately half the pleasure of the remote control of a sailing boat is lost if the sails are fixed and this pleasure is denied to the modeller whose boats are confined to sheltered waters. Rudder-only models will lack performance when beating and running.
If you are lucky enough to have a lake with a steady wind from at least one direction more sophisticated control is justified. Then, in my view, the rig must be refined so that the barge can beat close to the wind, can reach and can run and the very large throw must be reduced to give the facility for fine control during all these points of sailing.
So it follows that one set up will not be suitable for steady-wind sailing and for sailing in confused winds.
This simple position of using different designs to suit lakes is upset by the fact that some venues are open to the wind in one direction, eg Orpington and Herne Bay and some are lined with trees on just one side eg Maldon. So one becomes tempted to use one set up for all lakes. Then another requirement becomes important. All model barges need an under-slung weight to give adequate stability. Normally it is suspended on a streamlined keel but some modellers favour suspending it on two wires. They can sail on lakes surrounded by trees but would fail to make progress upwind in a steady wind. Some fit a keel of small area to support the weight and they too would not be able to make headway against a steady wind. Mostly they do not know this. But, if the model is always to be used in swirling winds, it also must be as light as possible to let it make as much distance as it can whenever the wind is right. All this is not at all what is required for open water sailing. There the weight must be heavy enough to permit the barge to carry its rig in all usable winds. It must also have a keel of adequate area and of aerofoil shape.
There is food for thought here for anyone considering building a scale model of a sailing barge. I think that you must decide whether you are building a scale model that will be sailed like a full-sized barge or a model for racing. They are becoming increasingly different and it is not clear where the process will end because the deck detail is just a nuisance on racing barges. Sheets and vangs get caught round figures, the steering wheel, and even the mizzen mast on a scale barge and whilst this can be avoided by sailing carefully in a steady wind it is not possible on a fluky lake. So racing barges tend towards a stripped down appearance with little deck detail and with no batten hooks etc.
Skippers of racing barges tend towards the lightest keel for the prevailing conditions and accent excessive heeling. The object is to win races.
(3) Reasons for building a model barge
In my view one should know how the model of the barge is to be used. By that I mean that one should know whether it will simply be the sight of the barge making progress in a wind that is sufficient return for the effort or whether it will be necessary for the barge to sail like the full-size producing a similar wake, heeling to the right angle and with the rig looking like the full-size if it is to give satisfaction. It may be that the barge is to be raced. Again you may find pleasure in exhibiting the barge at the various model exhibitions or simply having it on the sideboard. Whatever it is, building a barge to scale complete with detail is a very long job and it is desirable to make the right initial decisions. A static model converted for sailing will never be as good as a barge built for sailing from the outset.
My comments in paragraph 2 are relevant here.
There is one other reason that may attract the retiree. Building a model of a barge can fill a lot of time pleasurably. I find great pleasure in building and the fun is partly in the building and partly in the finding out what to build. When I was building my two barges the search for information took us all over south-east England and caused us to meet many interesting people. I am still meeting interesting people long after Pearl has been completed. It is very rewarding.
(4) Choice of subject
Full sized barges were not built from drawings, they were built from half models of the hull and sail plans. The barge builder knew how to build a barge and as barges were workhorses they were made down to a price. Only a few carried any non-essential items and these tended to be the ketch-rigged barges. Winches, windlasses, anchors, hatch covers, pulpits etc. were standardised. The consequence for us is that drawings have been made of only a few barges and those done by interested third parties.
Barges had a working life of upwards of 50 years and any given barge would undergo changes as equipment wore out or became damaged. It is hard to know now exactly how a barge was fitted out in say 1910. It follows that we cannot make a scale model of a sailing barge in the same way as we can a warplane, a locomotive, or a battleship. The best we can do is to use the hull lines that have survived to build a hull, use the sail plan if it is available and make scale models of typical details to set up the rig to make it work. Then everything is to scale on a hull that might give the barge its name fitted out with a rig and details that have appeared on most barges but not necessarily all on the same barge.
Some people have already done this and gone on to make drawings of their model so that others may make a similar model. It is a popular way of getting a model barge. In some cases mouldings of the hull are available because this is perceived as the most difficult part of the modelling work and this facilitates the use of the drawings. Would-be modellers expect a model made from these drawings to have been tested before sale. What happens if the testing was done on a sheltered lake and the new model has to sail on open water? We have seen beautifully built models of barges in smartly turned out travel boxes arrive at Maldon to be sailed for the first time and fail miserably. Ask around before you buy.
Better still start from some working drawings of a barge like those for sb Will Everard or for Pearl and build everything.
The commonly used scale is 1/24 that is 1/2² to the foot. Scale details for this size are fiddly but they can all be made. At the smaller scale of 1/36 the details are too small to make and some have to be omitted and things simplified. In some ways this makes a more suitable model both in size and complexity. They are becoming popular.
This preamble leaves me with the problem of the content of this paper. I have made the unequivocal decision to build scale models and not to race them. As I have no experience with models built to race I will describe my model of the sb James Piper and if that has any value to my readers so much the better.