Object data
wood, brass, rope and paint
model: height 9.7 cm × width 13.1 cm × depth 11.2 cm
packaging capsule: height 33.5 cm × width 97 cm × depth 48.5 cm
anonymous
Model of Part of a Composite Ship Camel
? Italy, Italy, c. 1697 - c. 1718
Provenance
...; 's Lands Werf (Navy dockyard) Amsterdam, 18 April 1798;1 Ministerie van Marine (Department of the Navy), The Hague, 1837;2 transferred to the museum, 1883
Object number: NG-MC-22
Copyright: Public domain
Entry
Polychromed wooden construction model of a part of a composite ship camel, painted black, white and red.
The model is a section of a ship’s camel that includes a longitudinal bulkhead, two pumps, two windlasses, two hatches and two cocks for flooding. The back can be opened in order to reveal the pump and the cock and the wooden casings through which the tackles of the windlasses run to the bottom of the camel.
It is probably this model that Dockyard Superintendent Jochem Pietersz Asmus (1755-1837) mentions in a list of objects that had been transferred to him by his predecessor Jan Binkes in 1798.3 This is an independent section of a composite camel, which consisted of several such sections linked together. The Italian engineer Vincenzo Coronelli (1650-1718) invented this improvement of the ship’s camel after his visit to Amsterdam in 1697.4 The advantage of Coronelli's camels was that one could construct them in any size by linking separate sections.
Literature
J.M. Obreen, Catalogus der verzameling modellen van het Departement van Marine, The Hague 1858, no. 22; J.C.d.B., ‘Scheepskamelen’, Opbouw. Maandblad van en voor het personeel der Nederlandsche Vereenigde Scheepsbouw Bureaux 9 (1963), pp. 1-2 1963; M. Marzari, Progetti per l’imperatore. Andrea Salvini ingegnere a l’arsenal 1802-1817, Trieste 1990, p. 97; G. Boven and A. Hoving, Scheepskamelen & waterschepen. ‘Eene ellendige talmerij, doch lofflijk middel’, Zutphen 2009, p. 69
Citation
J. van der Vliet, 2016, 'anonymous, Model of Part of a Composite Ship Camel, Italy, c. 1697 - c. 1718', in J. van der Vliet and A. Lemmers (eds.), Navy Models in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.242747
(accessed 4 January 2025 04:46:31).