Some club member musings on individual projects here regarding models of Jeffersonian gunboats. One subject is an Amati kit that’s been around for a while called the Arrow Gunboat. While the name is most certainly fictional, and it was a proposed design, but that’s all that’s really known about it. Was there an actual gunboat based on the drawings? Possibly, given that there were some 170 gunboats in service at the start of the War of 1812.
Looks like we’ll see the Amati gunboat model again soon, and maybe some kind of scratch-built gunboat model as well.
So, this past week, I’ve been having a few conversations with Mr. Paul Reck, who’s an accomplished ship modeler that runs the Hyde Street Pier Model Shipwrights club in San Francisco. I’ve been a member of that group for at least 10 or 11 years. Paul has been talking for some time about gunboats of the Jeffersonian navy. So, 1801 through the War of 1812. And, yes, that’s technically into the Madison presidency, but we’re talking about the gunboat navy that took shape under Jefferson.
Paul has built a model of the War of Independence gunboat Philadelphia and small galley cutter Lee. Lately, his attention turned to these Jeffersonian gunboats. This is something I’ve always had an interest in, though my knowledge doesn’t really go past a couple historical books on the War of 1812 and the Barbary Wars, and Howard Chapelle’s book History of the American Sailing Navy.
A…
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Hyde Street Pier Model Shipwrights 