Object data
wood and paint
height 25.5 cm × width 113 cm × depth 14 cm
Rijkswerf Vlissingen
Half Model of a Floating Battery
Flushing, 1867
Inscriptions
- inscription, top centre, on an oval brown label: DRAAK / Gepantserde drijvende / BATTERY / 13 St:
- label, top right: 1200 former inventory label
Conservation
- Ab Hoving, September 2008: minor repairs
Provenance
...; transferred from the Ministerie van Marine (Department of the Navy), The Hague, to the museum, 1883
Object number: NG-MC-1200
Copyright: Public domain
Entry
Polychromed wooden ‘bread-and-butter’ style half block model of the starboard side of a floating battery, mounted on a rectangular wooden backboard, painted yellow.
The side of the ship is sloped vertically above the waterline and painted black. A superstructure with two inclined bulkheads and inward sloping roofs fore and aft is positioned on the flush upper deck. Two gun ports are recessed in the side, and two rows of two gun ports facing forward and aft are indicated in the bulkheads. There are three loopholes facing one another in the inner bulkheads of the upper sections. The stern features a small rudder. The hull has a flat bottom and is painted grey below the waterline.
The model represents the (second) conversion of a 44-gun frigate into a floating battery. Above the waterline most of the original sides and rigging were cut away to make way for an armoured superstructure – with sloping sides housing the main battery of 13 guns (three on the port side, two on the starboard side and a total of eight guns pointing forward and aft). The loopholes were to be used by marksmen firing their rifles.
Draak, a 13-gun floating battery measuring 46.21 metres in length, was rebuilt for a second time from 1863 to 1870, now to this design. The original vessel, the 44-gun frigate Ceres built by Pieter Glavimans Jansz (1768-1850) in Rotterdam from 1824 to 1830, had already been converted to a floating battery from 1859 to 1860. It was decommissioned in 1873.1
Scale (according to Obreen)2 1:50.
Literature
J.M. Obreen et al., handwritten inventory list for items 944 to 1431, 1884, manuscript in HNA 476 RMA, inv. no. 1089, no. 1200; A.J. Vermeulen, De schepen van de Koninklijke Marine en die der gouvernementsmarine 1814-1962, The Hague 1962, pp. 8, 38; A. van Dijk, Voor Pampus. De ontwikkeling van de scheepsbouw bij de Koninklijke Marine omstreeks 1860, Amsterdam/The Hague 1987 (Bijdragen tot de Nederlandse Marinegeschiedenis, vol. 4), pp. 68-71, 93-97
Citation
J. van der Vliet, 2016, 'Rijkswerf Vlissingen, Half Model of a Floating Battery, Flushing, 1867', in J. van der Vliet and A. Lemmers (eds.), Navy Models in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.245014
(accessed 27 December 2024 14:04:17).