1/700 SS Sagamore 1893 (Scratchbuilt)
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by Jim Baumann |
1/700 SS Sagamore 1893 (Scratchbuilt)
Background to the ' Whaleback Design 'The ' Whaleback ' design ship originated on the Great Lakes of the USA as a means of getting more cargo tonnage through the restrictive narrow locks of the time.
Designed by Captain Alexander McDougall , the vessels design has been likened to a cigar with bent up ends. A whaleback hull has a continuous athwartships curve-( as opposed to a conventional; ships 'flat 'deck) above the load waterline The bow and stern were nearly identical in shape with 'flat ends)
The 'decks' were fitted with ' turrets ' , so named because they looked like the gun-turrets of warships. When fully loaded, only the curved portion of the hull remained above the water, giving the vessel its "whaleback" appearance. Unlike with the usual design of ships, heavy seas instead of crashing into the sides of the hull and over the decks on a whaleback would meet minimal resistance from the rounded turrets and would simply wash over the deck .
Accommodation, masts and cargo handling gear and winches were placed atop the circular or oval turrets to keep them clear of deck-sweeping waves
The whaleback ships were seaworthy vessels and fast for cargo ships their time, able to maintain 15 knots in continuous operation.
Although the whalebackships are now extinct , there fortunately is one left ; SS Meteor built in 1896 and sailed until 1969; a remarkable career of 72 years active use is a testament to the design and she is now a museum at Superior Wisconsin.
SS Sagamore, the English whaleback.
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The Charles W Wetmore was the first whaleback to operate outside the Great Lakes. In June 1891, as a way to promote the whaleback design, she was sent to London and Liverpool, England, carrying a paying cargo of 95,000 bushels of grain.
This required traversing the rapids( downstream ) of the Saint Lawrence River as she was too big to fit through the locks of the time, and was thereby essentially a one-way journey.
The unusual design was received with mixed feelings by the rather conservative English ship owners, of that time .
It was William Johnston & Co of Liverpool, that ordered the build of the only non-USA whaleback, the Sagamore from Doxford's in Sunderland.and she and was launched on 15 June 1893.
Her unusual design prevented her from being given registration in the United Kingdom. To circumvent this issue Johnston's and the builders, Doxford's , created a new company to own her, Belgian American Maritime Company SA,registered her in Antwerp, Belgium
Like all whalebacks, SS Sagamore had hatches that were smaller than those conventional cargo ships. This impeded the handling of many types of cargo. Johnston's therefore used her as a Bulk carrier, mainly taking grain from various ports in the Black Sea .In addition shecarried sugar from Cuba , Manganese ore from Poti in Georgia , Copper concentrates and Iron ore from Spain, and Phosphates from Sfax in Tunisia as well as Braelsa in Romania—some way up the Danube.
In 1897 Johnston's transferred /Sagamore/ to the Belgian Marine Trading Company. She remained registered in Antwerp.
After 18 tears of operation ,1911 Johnston's sold Sagamore to Italian buyers who renamed her 'Solideo'. In 1916 she changed hands again and was renamed ' Ilva. '
While en route from Genoa to Barry Roads, Wales, Ilva was intercepted and the scuttled with no loss of life by German submarine U 69, 5 miles from 'Isla Colleira', Spain, (Atlantic coast) on May 4, 1917.
An ignominious end to a fine ship
The model of SS Sagamore 1893
I was inspired by the fine model of Sagamore scratch built built by Gordon Brookes in 1/96 scale, set in a drydock of his own construcion and exhibited at the 2010 Telford Scaleworld show.
Generously Gordon supplied a number of photos as well as a self-drawn plan based on the half-builders model in Liverpool maritime museum.
I have since been collecting further images of the ship.
Based on all the information I had... a short 13 years after first setting eyes on the ' English whaleback '' , I started work on my 1/700 model .
I carved the hull out of a block of Jarrah wood, aided by some automotive filler pastes using negative hull offsets in card to control the shape.
The Hull had the plating strakes added with tape. The rather fiddly superstructure was made of styrene sheet and brass tubes and all the other details, hatches , mast and booms made or adapted suing materials to hand or photo-etched spares re-purposed. The full step-by-step description of problems found and the solutions used to overcome can be read here:
I am pleased with the model of Sagamore, especially as I learnt that the model by Gordon Brokes had suffered irreparable water damage and as such is no longer in existence.
I feel honoured to have been able to pay homage to a little-known brave English experiment in non-orthodox ship construction .
