Hi good idea to start again. You should find all you need on the Internet. One thing I have recently learned is that Google does not pick up everything. Try Bing or another of the search engines, it worked for me.

There is a lot on Wikipedia on Thames and river Medway Barges, Cambria is still in use.
The first sail to be hoisted on this barge is the topsail, connected by hoops it picks up the higher cleaner air to get going.

The Sprit sail is hauled up close to the mast, so when it is let go the sail opens straight away.

Note there is no sail boom, it is a loose footed sail and is just 'brailed' off onto the 'horse'. This means that when tacking it all operated automatically, the sheet to the foot of the sail at the clew just slides along the horse.

The rudder mechanism is complicated with left and right hand threaded screwed shafts which is an excellent compact system but does not lend itself to copy in a working model.

It is all looking good so keep us informed on progress.
regards
Roy

hi all i have decided to take the sails and rigging off and start from scratch the information that has been provided is fantastic although a bit over my head so i am going to have a steep learning curve i will try and get a sail and rigging plan for the Cambria if its available as this is the first time i have attemted this previosly the only sail boats that i have built was a Victoria but this is a whole new ball game so if any one can tell me a good book to get that will help me understand all the different sails on my model i would appreciate it and i will look up the Ambo face book group i think my estimate for finishing this boat in the spring is now defunct and now going to be next christmas

Hi Tom.

"Alessandro .. I still don't understand why you still don't want to recognize just the spritsail as the mainsail for Thames sailing barges...."

In reality I thought and wrote exactly this (according to the photos I saw in this forum): the Thames barges are characterized by a type of sail called "sprit sail" (in Italian it is called "tarchia").

Perhaps someone who read carefully from the beginning might have understood where the misunderstanding came from.

I have one last strenuous attempt left, after which I give up, if this fails I admit my inability to communicate in English and take all the blame.

I am not yet clear whether "mainsail" is a generic term or whether it refers to a specific sail unequivocally.
By now I think it is the first hypothesis and that is that it is not a specific (absolute) name but is relative to the position she has on the sail plan.
When I insert the word "randa" (which in Italian indicates a specific sail without the possibility of confusing it with others) both Google and my glossary translate it with the English word "mainsail".
From this I initially assumed that "mainsail" was a specific term and not a generic one.
But then this discussion made me doubt, so I performed another type of search.
I looked for a sail plan of a ship (three masted) in English where that type of sail is not the most important, therefore it is certainly not the main one, to see if the term remained "mainsail" or not.
All the pictures I have seen so far point to this glider as a "spanker" or "driver".
At this point I have come to the conclusion (but I leave it to your judgement) that the exact term to translate "randa" is not "mainsail" but "spanker".
So both Google translate and the glossary I used were wrong.
I have also come to the conclusion that the "randa" can be translated as "mainsail" only if it is actually the main sail on a certain vessel and therefore if it is attached to the main mast.
Therefore, if my conclusion is correct, the "randa" will be mainsail in the case of a schooner, a cutter and a sloop, for example, but not of a three-masted clipper (like the one in the attached image), for example, where it is inferred to the mizzen mast.
For us, that type of trapezoidal sail is always called "randa", whatever position it occupies and whatever mast it is attached to. Here's the difference.

I don't know if this conclusion is right, I'll leave the last word to you.

Now I wonder (indeed I always ask you) is the term "spanker" correct?
Can I call it a "spanker" or that type of sail even if we are looking at a schooner and not a three-masted clipper?

Hi,
as I can see .. much ado about nothing...

But now the main question - probably should have been asked at the beginning -
Alessandro .. I still don't understand why you still don't want to recognize just the spritsail as the mainsail for Thames sailing barges....
To your pictures..
The mainsail, as you describe it, is the mainsail of just and only a few types of single-masted ships(for example, the mainsail of cutters) and then of schooners, brigs and brigantines, which carry fore-aft sails on their mainmast. In other cases it is only and only a Gaff sail, as opposed to Yard sails, which are called square sails.

Gaff is a spar which extends the head (or upper portion)of a (square) fore-and-aft sail.
The sail suspended by gaff is called a gaff sail !
The foot of the gaf sail can be extended by boom or can be free, like at barges .
Sail booms take their names from sails, they extended, as the main,mizzen, or spinnaker booms.
The Sprit, in modern sailing craft, is a pole set diagonally across fore-and-aft sail to extend that sail by the peak.
Sprit sail (it is in Holland > spreet< ,then this applied to small boats is used with conjunction with a foresail . This combination is called > sprit and foresail rig < which at big barges is pecuilliary adapted.
In the end - I helped myself here with a Dictionary Of Sea Terms from A.Ansted in my statement. Otherwise, I really ran out of all the arguments.

Tom

Yes I trust you Roy implicitly.

Oh! Ronald 'don't you trust me'?😊

I thought I explained a few posts ago.

Never mind no one listens to the oldies!

Roy

Hello to all naval modelers.

For Ronald, thanks to you too.
Certainly very useful.

The photo confirms to me what I had noticed on the boats shown for the first time by Wildhog31 and that is that the Thames barges use "a tarchia" sails which you call "spritsail" and have the characteristics we have already talked about in previous posts.



Mainly for Tomarack.

In the meantime, thanks for all this information. Many of them match what I knew too and I'm pleased.

I try to find the main threads of our dialogue because I think that communication is ruined by my bad translation.
Maybe we're saying the same thing, but I'm not sure.

My statement (among other things) to Wildhog31 was this: "Furthermore, the main sail is not a mainsail but a sail that in Italian we call a "tarchia" sail, (perhaps a "sprit sail")."

Now I think there is no longer any doubt about this.

That is, I want to definitively state (please correct me if I'm wrong) the Thames barge (like many other barges) uses the type of sail illustrated in the first attached image and not that of the second attached image.

I call the sail in the first image "a tarchia" and that in the second image "randa".

The English call the sail in the first image "sprit sail" and that in the second image "mainsail". (is this correct?)

Hi Alessandro, thanks for the interesting explanation, but I'm afraid there's a big misunderstanding here.
First of all..it's a shame you can't argue with Mr. Ivor Bittle, who was a great theoretician in all things sailing.I will try to find at least some of his texts.
So, the way I see it - I think you're confusing the sail's function with its design in this case....
I recommend that you familiarize yourself with the terminology used among bargemen. I myself discovered that it is quite different from everything I have known so far - and without his knowledge, we cannot come to an agreement..
What I mean by this is that the main sail of most Thames barges today has a spritsail design...you have to accept that the MAINSAIL HERE IS USUALLY THE MAINSAIL SPRITSAIL..

But now a little history..
* The spritsail and leeboard are both of Dutch origin. The rig was certainly employed in Holland as far back as 1416, and some of the early Thames barges had it by 1600
The rig developed slowly and by the end of 18 th century > the usual sail plan still consisted of foresail and mainsail ,the latter a spritsail. With increasing length of hull an extra sail was needed to assist in handling and about 1800 mizzens were added. The mast was stepped on the rudder post . These sails were small and little of driving power . Later the mizzens were stepped in-board and made larger to balance the increased head sail of later craft. (Handbook of sailing barges by Cooper and Chancellor).
* The sailing barges from the south-east could be broadly clasified into types by their cargo capacity,dimensions and rig , all reflecting the requirements of the trades for which were built.
The „stumpies“ were the smallest of these basic types and retained the original and simple rig of the Thames spritsail barge into the 1930s.
Average dimension 70ftx14ft x 5ft load draft. The „STUMPY“ rig was a foresail , a sprit mainsail fitted with brails , and a small mizzen sheetet to the top of the rudder.Some stumpies did not have a mizzen.
The next larger size of sailing barge worked generally between the Thames and Medway rivers
and to the many small ports on the adjacent coasts of the counties of Essex,Suffolk and north Kent..
Many were rigged -when less bowsprit - with foresail, sprit mainsail, topsail ,and staysail. Next were rigged with jib set on bowsprit which could be topped up and large mizzen, which was stepped well forward,reducing the mainsail and topsail to a size suitable for crew. The mizzen was often set from a standing gaff and was fitted with brails. This rig was known as „MULE“ (Mullies) (e.g.Cambria),the term the coasting sailors and fishermen applied to any hybrid rig or hull form.(Barges by John Leather).
Some similar size coasting ketch barges had a gaff and boom mainsail and mizzen, then they were „BOOMIES“.

I heard from the Administrator of the AMBO group on Facebook regarding this discussion and he said, “the pole is the sprit, pronounced spreet on barges” and included this photo.

Hope this helps.

Hello Roy.

Of course you were helpful, thank you.

Indeed, sails can be differentiated by their geometric shape, the way they are luffed (head-rope) and the poles that support them. I used the generic term "pole" on purpose.

In the "a tarchia" sail (spritsail) the pole that supports it starts from the lower part of the mast and ends in the "drizza" corner (halyard corner).
This sail has an irregular quadrangular shape, sometimes trapezoidal, inferred on one side only.
It was also seen in Italy used for small coastal boats, usually with shallow draft.

In the mainsail the pole is called "picco" in Italian (perhaps "spanker" in English), it is fixed in the upper part of the first spindle of the mast.
The mainsail is drawn on two sides and is always trapezoidal in shape (ancient mainsail).
Often on the side of the base there is a pole called a "boom" that controls it (the boom is always present in modern mainsails).

Hello Alessandro, You mention the spritsail.

A 'sprit' is a pole or spar. We have a bow- sprit which is at the bow of the boat.

In this case the sprit from 'spritsail' is the long pole that holds the far corner of the sail up. Easy to do and there is no extra rigging needed.
So the spritsail is also the mainsail in this case.

Hope this helps.
Roy

Hi Tomarack,
The Thames Barge hull that was the base of my larger build was started and given to me by Richard Chesney.
Richard has been extremely helpful with the two Thames Barges I have built and renovated.

Hello Tomarack and greetings to all modelers.

First of all, I'm happy to read you again on this forum.
Your posts are always very instructive and interesting for me because they are full of useful information and because they stimulate further thinking.

I hope I haven't lost some information in your messages with a bad or incomplete translation.

What I write is not to contradict what you say but to have a chat and to clear up some doubts. Maybe I didn't understand all the steps:

I start from one point: the terms and words are different but the rules in the navy are mostly the same, then there are the peculiarities (differences from area to area and country to country).

THE SAILS.

Tom if by: "spritsail on barges is always mainsail" you mean that the spritsail is always the most important sail then that's fine.
If you mean that "spritsail" and "mainsail" are the same thing, no. We don't understand each other.

Perhaps the misunderstanding arises from the translation of the various types of sail.
So I'll take a step back to explain what I wanted to say in my previous post.

The sail that in Italian we call "randa" (the one you see in the first attached image) I have translated (using an Italian-English glossary of maritime terms) with the word: "main sail".

The sail that in Italian they call "a tarchia" (the one you see in the second attached image) I have translated (using an Italian-English glossary of maritime terms) with the word: "spritsail".

As you can see they are different sails.
Schooners, for example, do not use "spritsail" sails but rather "main sail".

STABILITY OF VESSELS (INCLUDING BARGES)

As I said in another post a few weeks ago, the same physical principles that apply to real ships also apply to models but we must never forget the scale factor that changes all the cards in play.

For this reason, if you reproduce to scale a vessel (to give a striking example) such as Nelson's Victory, it will be very difficult if not impossible to give it stability without the false keel protruding under the hull.
This is due to an elementary but often ignored fact: If, for example, the scale of the model is 1:100, it means that the length of the model and all linear measurements (height, width, etc. etc.) are reduced by 100 but the surfaces (think of the sails for example) are reduced by 10,000 (i.e. 100 x100). The volumes (for example the immersed volume) will instead be reduced to the cube i.e. 1,000,000.
Having said this, it is now easy to imagine why all the balances of a real ship are different from those of a scale model.

I absolutely do not blame those who use the false keel protruding only the hull but I personally prefer never to use it. I prefer never to use it not only for aesthetic reasons (in fact many make it removable and remove it when the model is on static display) but for a personal challenge.

Did you see how I tried to solve this problem with my gunboat steamship model? What do you think about it?

P.S.
Technically, going from a barge without an added protruding keel (therefore original) to a barge with the aforementioned keel we go from a "form stability" vessel to a "weight stability" vessel.

Attention, I forgot an important clarification (before some expert sailor rightly pulls my ears, ahahahahah):
When I talk about mainsail I'm referring to the old ones. The modern mainsail (called Bermuda or Marconi) has a triangular shape and reflects the evolved shape of the (ancient) mainsail and topsail gaff in a much more efficient way.

I would like to say that if anyone has specific questions, if I can, I will be happy to answer them.
In any case, I would advise the builders of Thames barge models to familiarize themselves with the corresponding literature, which is mainly available in England, before construction. Then they will at least have a basic overview and avoid trivial mistakes. I didn't have that option right from the start, so my models have a lot to perfect... I just happened to come across the AMBO website, and thanks to my friends, the result wasn't a complete fiasco...

Thanks luckyduck, a friend said that one becomes an expert with age. I really don't know.
But I must emphasize that without good friends I would not have become a small expert. I was really helped by the Thames barge model builders - Kim Holland from the Isle of Man, Peter Simmonds from the Isle of Wight, Richard Chesney and (the late) Ivor Bittle. Thanks, friends.
Tom

For those of you not aware - Tom is a gold mine of experience and knowledge about model barge sailing - he has been a huge help to me in working out how to make my plans for a model barge realistic, but at the same time sailable. Thanks Tom

Mainly for Alessandro - spritsail on barges is always mainsail ..
Next for others.. you are well aware that in creating a model we have lost the real-life ratio of the volume to the surface area of the hull, and the relationship between the sail area, hull volume, and wet hull area.
Large barges usually have a box-shaped hull, which itself is quite heavy with great initial stability. This allows them to sail under full sail even when empty, without cargo.
Still, without resort to complicated calculations, etc. most model bargees decide to add a keel. Visual examination of the barge profile (all scales) shows that this is also the position that the leeboards occupy when lowered, so if it was a good position for the full size barge builders, then it’s probably good for us modellers too.
The use of movable leeboards is nice to watch for onlookers, but it has practically no effect on the navigation of the model (I tried that too)- and besides, you can't see it on the water anyway (without binoculars)..
of course.. it's up to the model builder what features they come up with on the model.
I, for example, had trouble even teaching my model to sail the way it should, and to imagine that I should still check what and how it works on board during the voyage -I really can't do it.
And then there are those that believe that model barges should not use keels, leads or extensions. If only we would be satisfied with true scale wind and speed, then we’d probably get away with that. The last newsletter reported a barge racer not using a keel or lead, he finished, in third place. Maybe he was a poor sailor, who knows, but he didn’t win, a barge with a keel did. Maybe we should have a new class, keelless and leadless and see what happens.
My model Capricorn (bowsprit class) is built on the basis of plans for Champion class (similar to sb Giralda) M 1:24 - the second model Gusty Cat (staysail class) according to plans for sb Lady Daphne 1:28, the smallest, Minikitty according to simple plans for sb Kitty (Model Boats April 1999) reduced for Footy class.
​

I see no reason why the leeboards could not be aligned with the vangs, when the lee vang is released, so is the lee leeboard which drops, assuming it has sufficient weight not to need winding down.

Hi Majorray, I do not know if it might work but subs and helicopters use a levelling electronics device.
regards
Roy

hi roycv that sounds a distinct possibillity i will look into it im not sure where you would get mercury switches i will have a look at rs comonents also my freind who had a look at the sail setup did a diagram of the sail setup witch i will put below it looks complicated but with some study i think i will work it out

Hi Alessandro
In real life these barges had flat bottoms so they could sail up some of the UK river estuaries.
The ballast keel in the model replaces the cargo weight carried.
Sometimes these models are not always accurate, and have been told that the sails should be closer to the deck.
Will be making another set of sails this winter for sailing in April.

Hi Wildhog31

Beautiful boat and beautiful sailing. Very interesting.

It seems to me that she is armed with a Yawl (I always have to make a bit of an effort to concentrate to remember the difference between Ketch and Yawl).
Furthermore, the main sail is not a mainsail but a sail that in Italian we call a "tarchia" sail, (perhaps a "sprit sail").

I wanted to ask you: the original boat doesn't have the bulbous fin under the keel and such a large rudder, right? Are they systems designed only to be able to navigate scale models, not make them capsize and make them turn easily?

However seeing them in the water is always a pleasure.

With a Barge that size it is advisable to have some main sail control in case of wind gusts so you can haul in the sail.
The arm winches and sheeting lines are easy to install.
I have two Thames Barges, one 48" with a bowsprit, and the other is 64" with only fore sails.

The Association of Model Barge Owners website is no longer maintained but there is an AMBO Facebook group which is well worth checking out. Nyers was a member and others from this MB website are too, like me.👍

Before RC was common I remember seeing a Thames Barge over at the Hampstead yachting pond. The leeboards were operating and the owner told me he had mercury filled tilt switches, one for each leeboard.
They were wired up to electric motors that hauled them in or let them drop, there was lead weight at the bottom.

It was done by the wind, if the boat leaned over the switch would tilt and the motor would drop the 'lee' board down but also hauling the windward board up.

So fully automatic, but no control as to where it went!

Roy

hi thanks for the advice i had planned to attach some strong fishing line to the boat if anything happens at least i wont leave it on the lake bed also i have decided to make the leeboards operable i havent worked all out yet but either two separate servos or connect through sail lines i have seen one this morning that uses the sail control the chap who showed me is going to do a diagram for me to follow this is going to be a challenge but i will try my best the reason is i want the lee boards operating is i look at some thing like that and think why are they for show there must be a way to do it not to make it sail better but it will look good

I built a similar Barge last year 63" long and it sailed really well.
I add two lever arm winches to control the main sail and Vangs.

Hi, a barge is never going to sail close to the wind so you could just fit a rudder servo and do manual adjustments to the sails.

She looks really nice, I had a smaller 48 inch barge for a time, but she was too heavy for me to manage and I think she is currently in a small museum.

I have to say I did not builld her but did a bit of restoration.
Roy

Before taking it to the pond, I would strongly suggest you stuff some foam in the
underdeck cavities.
Good luck!
Barry

hiAlessandro i will take it down to the lake in the next couple of days weather permiting and see what its like if possible iwill video it to

Hi Alessandro i did not build the boat i bought it at carboot 2 years before i sold it at the time i was building narrow boats thats why i sold it to my friend i had to much on he was going to getit fixed up but life gets in the way and he put it his garage forgot about until last week when i bought it bac as to balance it has a dropdown keel and as far as i can remember it is very well balanced i tried it in my sons small pool but didnt do much else

Hi Majorray.

If I understand correctly, you bought back a ship that you built yourself? Strong! I like this story.
Double congratulations, for the construction and for the recovery of the ship.

I would like to ask you a question before talking about sails and rigging.
Have you already put the model in the water for a static test?
I advise you to do it.
This test will be useful for: verifying the watertightness of the hull; check the setup; check lateral stability. For this last check, try to unbalance the ship to one side with your hand (as if it were the crosswind doing it) and see if it returns to balance.

What system did you use for the stability of your ship?