The Model Of A Ship

Who would ever have imagined tliat a great sliip - a modern wonder of the sea like the Paris or the Oainperdowi - is built as a woman makes a dress or a tailor cnts out a suit of clothesV That is the fact. Ships nowadays are buil from pattern8, and thosepatterns do no greatly difïer in appearance or in fact from those which enable American woxaen to copy the fashion in dress. To be snre, a tailor'sand dressmaker's patterns are made of paper and are ïaic upon cloth or dress goods, while a ship builder's patterns are of wood, and stee and iron are made tofollowthem. Tha ia perhaps the greatest dirïerenee between the methods of high grade tailoring and high grade shipbuilding, so far as tbeir first steps go. The English have only lately begun to valne the model as the basis of shipbuilding. A famous American shipbuilder says that the model of the yaclit America was the first model he ever saw in England. That accounts for the absence of beauty in English ships, which even to this day possess varying degreesof ugliness, but no beauty. For, though they make models today, the mere making of them does not suffice. The art and appreciation of model making must be instinctive. The French and Spanish from the earliest times made beautiful ships and models, and when one of these ships feil into the hands of the English they adopted and used her if possible, or ir sho was too miich damaged they took her apart, piece by piece, and built a new ship like her by copying the exact shape of each part of her in new material. Curiously enough, we Americans have always made beautiful ships - wel] proportioned, artistic in every line, while satisfactory in an equal degree for all practical purposes. A model is made in a way that seems queer to the average layman, who doubtless suspected that it was whittled into shape out of a block of wood, as we boys used to wlnttle our blocks at the age when all of us were shipbuilders. It is not done so. After an order has been received for :i oertain kind of ship the plans of it . drawn upon paper. Mr. Lewis Nixuu, the famous constructor for the Oramps, tells me that very early in the process he ma; s a picture of the snip as he wants it to look, but though he does so others inay not consider it essential. At all events, apart from any drawïng, the needed dimensions and lines are developed upon paper, and then the model is made, and the presideDt of the company beging to take very active interest in the work. The model is made in the shape of a block, for raed of a nnmber of pieces of wood glued together. These pieces represent the different curves of one side of the ship, from the keel to the gunwale - the different water lines is how the builders expresa it. To understand this the reader must -imagine a ship made of solid wood. Imagine that cut in half lengthwise, and then imagine one half laid on its side and cut into slices. The pen and ink calculations and plans produce the shape of the ship, and from these it is possible to obtain the outline and dimeusionsof every slice or plane between the bottom and the top. JBaoh plane is measured and drawn in ontline on a board, and the outline is dented or cut in the board with a sharp tooi. All the boards or pieces of wood are then glued together, and a simple Jooking block is made - a block that shows uothing of its fcrue nature except that the top of it bears the graven outline of the top deck or gnnwale line of a ship. Out of that simple square block will come the egg vvhich is to hatcb the splendid ship tbat is to be. That block, made up of slices, each with its dentad outline of a different place of the ship, is now cut away, mach as we boys used to cut our block, bat witb this difference: Each board is ent exactly to the dented or graven line upon its surface. The shape the block will have when all the superflnons wood is ent away will be the model of the ship that was designed by the engineer on paper to fill the requirements of the enstomer's order, but will that model stand? Will the master builder be satisfied with its lines? Will it do to be enlarged in steel and sent around the world as an example of what the Cramps consider the most beautiful and wristic and nseful shape such a ship should have? No. Such a first model nest to never suits the modeier, -who in this case is Mr. Charles H. C'ramp. He hacks into it with fervor. He tapers the b-iw. He digs away the stern. He shaves the whole model with the nice and dainty touches of a sculptor at w.ork upon a statue on which is to rest his boast that he is a true artist. The fate of the wooden block alters the figures of the engineer's plans. Perhaps the alteralion is such that new drawings and a new model follow. Thus, by borrowing and lending, the two soon agree, and upon the two - the model and the plans - the ship will be built. Sometí mes a model ís on the cale of a quarter of an inch to each foot of the ship, but the scale differs