I've been into the Hornblower series of books since elementary school, but it was C.S.Forester's The Captain From Connecticut that lead me to Horry. The first story published has Hornblower in command of the 32 gun frigate Lydia. I've always wanted to build a model of Lydia, but, of course, there were no kits or plans to be had. My friend and I have a 16 foot Windsprite daysailer, hull #1 of 16 built, which we named Lydia. In the picture, the 20-something girl in the 40 year old boat is also named Lydia. After starting on Constellation, i was thinking of donating or selling that model, so I wanted to build and RC square-rigger I would keep. Lydia came to mind again, but I what plan to use for a fictional ship? I decided on a British frigate and since the lines for one were in Chapelle's History of the American Sailing Navy, and getting a copy would cost under $10 US, so that's the boat I went for; HMS Macedonian of 38 guns. At 1:36 scale (like my Constellation) she would measure... Beam: 13-1/2" (34.3cm) Length on spar deck: 55" (140cm) Length of the hull: 59" (150cm) Length over the rig: 85-3/4" (218cmcm) Draft: 6.7" (17cm) w/o ballast keel, 10.2" (26cm) w/ballast keel Making her a little smaller than "Stella." Later, after I'd already built the hull, I found out Lydia, of the novels, was based on the Perseverance class of frigates. One of the pics attached shows the profile of the Perseverance in front of that of the Lively class showing how small she would have been by comparison. Actually, if I had built Macedonian at 1:48 scale (which is what the plans were) she would have been very near this size. Anyway, what's done is done, and while I don't have the ship of my fictional hero, I have a ship that was one of 16 ships built to that class. Built at Woolwich Dockyards, England, in 1809, and launched on 2 June 1810. In October of 1812 she encountered, fought, and was captured by the American frigate United States. Captain Decatur of the United States was intent on preserving his battered prize, and after two weeks floating in the Atlantic, she was repaired enough to sail to the US. She was officially taken in to the American Navy in April 1813, though she spent the remainder of the War of 1812 blockaded in the Thames River in Connecticut with United States. She was decommissioned near the end of 1828, and broken up at Gosport (Norfolk Virginia) While not a glorious history, full of battles, the Lively Class did have great histories in battle; Lively, Resistance, Apollo, Hussar, Statira, Horatio, Spartan, Undaunted, Menelaus, Nisus, Crescent, Bacchante, Nymphe, Sirius, and Laurel. Ships that fough at Lissa, Naples, intercepting the Spanish Treasure ships, and more. My model is a representative of a great class of frigates of the Napoleonic Wars, even if it isn't HMS Lydia.

My first official job, when I was 16, was working on the construction of the Baltimore Clipper schooner Pride of Baltimore. On my 21st birthday I reported on board as a member of the crew. After that I acquired the plans from Thomas Gilmer who designed the vessel, with the intent to build an RC model. After a false start then, I changed the scale and started again in September of 2010. The model represents the boat as she was when I was crewing aboard her in September-October 1981. I had a certification from the National Park Service to handle black powder cannon, so I was put in charge of Pride's guns which was handy when we went to the bicentennial of the Siege of Yorktown, what it really meant is I slept with 25pds of black powder at the foot on my bunk. I cooked right along with construction while also working on Constellation and starting a third model, until July of 2012. She was basically a static display model since then, with an attempt to work out her controls that didn't work out in 2015. Trying to set up her steering uncovered a design flaw that I resolved by moving the rudder servo forward. Life has a habit of getting in the way of my hobbies, and several changes in jobs and homes put a damper on all three models. She's pretty much just sat till now, going on display a few times, getting floated in a pool in 2019 and capsizing, which was a bit eerie considering the fate of the original. The model is 1:20 scale making her Hull length: 54" (137.16cm) Length on deck: 48" (121.9cm) Length on waterline w/o rudder: 46.75" (118.75cm) Length over the rig: 81.5" (207cm) Beam: 13.625" (34.6cm) Draft without ballast keel: 5.875" (14.9cm) Total height (top of jack-yard to bottom of keel): 61.6" (156.5cm) Total Sail area: 2,049.13 square inches in 7 sails as shown above, 2,205.13 with the flying jib. Her keel is plywood and she was planked with white pine strips over plywood forms, which were removed. The hull has a layer of 4oz glass cloth and poly resin outside, and several coats of just resin inside. As mentions she capsized in the pool when a slight gust caught her, despite being weighted to the waterline. She's designed to have a removable fin with a lead bulb making up most of her ballast, but that hasn't been made yet, so it wasn't fitted in the pool that day. Her lower masts are white pin made with the "birds-mouth" method so they're hollow and weigh next to nothing, but are strong. Sails are made of a Dupont cloth called Supplex which is a polyester that makes excellent sails. All lines will be nylon or polyester Dacron walked up from thread acquired from a sail-maker's supplier. All the sails have bolt-ropes hand-sewn on. There's no stitching to represent seams because I think it looks like crap, and it's a lot of work to do to ruin your sails. The seam lines on Pride are drawn on on with an .005 permanent marker. Originally her controls were going to be a Mega-arm sail servo and a winch servo, with the winch driving a loop. That was changed to two arm servo controlling my Semaphore-Sheeting system used successfully in Constellation for the over-lapping heads'ls. That wasn't going to work on Pride mostly because space limitations (vertically inside the hull). A friend recently launched his four foot schooner in which he used two winch-driven loops to control the sails. It's success, especially with the over-lapping jib, got me re-thinking Pride controls and reverting to the loop-sail-control system, with changes. So I'm working on the model again, this time removing everything inside the hull. I removed the motor and my homemade 1 inch prop because there's no way that little prop can over-power all that sail in the lightest of wind. The rudder servo will be moved aft of where the motor was and be accessible through the cabin hatch. One winch will be mounted where the motor was, under the engine hatch, just aft of the mainmast, and another winch will be mounted just aft of the foremast and be accessible through the main hatch. This is where things stand at the moment (June 25 2022). The pic with the gun is a 3D printed test of a gun for my Macedonian model (1:36 scale) which seems to be just right for the 1:20 scale Pride, which will benefit from 3D printing with guns, gunport lids, a much crisper name board on her stern, along with the Baltimore emblem that was back there. The last pic is the actual boat in the Pacific in 1982. I edited in the main tops'l to show the rig I plan to set. She also had a ringtail, stuns'ls, and a main topmast stays'l, none of which I plan to use. Hopefully, this approach to her controls will work out and I can actually get her sailing at last.

Made the framed glass portion of the skylight. They're hinged so I can get a finger inside to flip the power switch on or off. They're made from clear plastic from some packaging, basswood, and brass wire.