A BUILDER'S HALF-BLOCK MODEL FOR THE H.M. DISPATCH VESSELS/G...

Hammer

£1,800

A BUILDER'S HALF-BLOCK MODEL FOR THE H.M. DISPATCH VESSELS/GUNBOATS FLY AND FLAMER, BUILT BY FLETCHER FEARNALL, LIMEHOUSE, 1856

with 45in. hull carved from the solid, with ebonised top sides, with pierced gun ports and chain plates, mounted on display board with launching cradle and nameplate, overall measurements -- 10½ x 60in. (27 x 152.5cm.)

During the Crimean War (1854-56), the Royal Navy’s capital ships were faced with the Russian fleet’s repeated refusal to emerge from their safe harbours and give battle in both the Baltic and the Black Seas. Accordingly, the Admiralty embarked upon a massive programme – known as the ‘Great Armament’ – to build a large flotilla of small wooden craft designed to operate in very shallow waters and comprising 156 screw gunboats, 56 sail-powered mortar vessels and 50 non-self-propelled mortar floats, i.e. floating batteries. The Admiralty also required this huge project to be complete by 1^st March 1856, with the result that the orders were spread between practically every shipyard on the Thames, including some which had never before built ships for the fleet. However, the various contractors were only required to build the bare hulls by the deadline; the machinery was then installed by the engine-builders, and the boats were finally taken to a new specialist Gunboat Yard which had been constructed at Haslar Creek, Gosport, where they were coppered, armed and stored ready for use.

Flamer and Fly were built by Fletcher & Fearnall at Limehouse and engined by John Penn & Sons. Constructed to the standard specification of W.H. Walker, they were 106 feet long with a 22 foot beam and an 8 foot draught. Measured at 284 tons displacement, they were armed with a single 68pdr. on a pivot aft and one 32pdr. forward. Each was screw powered by a single expansion engine and could make 7.5 knots. Flamer’s keel was laid in November 1855 and Fly’s the next month, with both launched in April 1856. Fly was completed first, in July 1856, but seems to have seen very little service and was broken up in 1862. Flamer however, was left unfinished until 1859, but thereafter employed in coastal defence (1868) and as a hospital ship in 1871. Blown ashore in a typhoon at Hong Kong in September 1871, she was wrecked beyond repair and sold for breaking.

Old wear and losses. Forward chain plate missing. Ebonised topsides retouched. lacking propellor and cradle. Backboard split forward of bow. Cradle possibly repaired.