Object data
wood, brass, rope and paint
height 55 cm × length 134 cm × width 34.5 cm
Laird Brothers
Model of an Ironclad Ram Ship
Birkenhead (Merseyside), 1868
Inscriptions
- inscription, on a square brass label: ARMOUR CLAD RAM / "STIER" / BUILT FOR THE / DUTCH ROYAL NAVY. / BY / LAIRD BROs. BIRKENHEAD. / 1868.
Provenance
...; Ministerie van Marine (Department of the Navy), The Hague, September 1868;1 transferred to the museum, 1883
Object number: NG-MC-1236
Copyright: Public domain
Entry
Polychromed and rigged block model of an ironclad ram ship, the original base is missing.
The model has a ram bow and a cruiser stern, with two twin-blade screws and a balance rudder. It features the coat of arms of the Kingdom of the Netherlands on the stern and carvings on the bow. On the quarterdeck a steering wheel is indicated at the after extremity, with two binnacles. On the main deck are two deckhouses with a triangular shape, one forward and the other aft, allowing a maximum field of fire for the two guns in the rotating turret. The railing can be lowered when the guns are fired. The funnel is placed on top of the after deckhouse immediately aft of the turret, and part of the railing at this point has hammock netting. The model has three boats on davits and one on the poop. The sheer is completely flat, and the hull is flat with rounded bilges, painted a metallic copper colour below the waterline. The rigging is reduced to two pole masts.
Two models, one of Stier and one of the identical monitors Heiligerlee and Krokodil, were built by the Laird Brothers at Birkenhead and delivered to the commander of Buffel in 1868.
The ram ship Stier, 59.43 metres long, was built for the Dutch Navy by Laird Brothers of Birkenhead from 1867 to 1868. Originally armed with two 23-cm guns, these were exchanged in 1882 for a single 28-cm gun, five 3.7-cm fixed guns and two 3.7-cm revolving guns. It had two twin-cylinder engines and four boilers. It was used for internal defence only and disarmed in 1908. In 1925, the ship was used as a bombing target.2
Literature
B.J. Tideman, Memoriaal van de Marine, bevattende opgaven betrekkelijk de afmetingen, constructie, ... van Nederlandsche oorlogsschepen en omtrent enige havens, dokken, sluizen, werven enz., Amsterdam 1876-80, livret F; J.M. Obreen et al., handwritten inventory list for items 944 to 1431, 1884, manuscript in HNA 476 RMA, inv. no. 1089, no. 1236; S. de H., ‘De eerste Nederlandsche pantserschepen’, Ons Zeewezen 30 (1931), pp. 306-17, 344-50, 382-87, 420-26 and Ons Zeewezen 31 (1932), pp. 4-9, 42-48, pp. 384-86; A.J. Vermeulen, De schepen van de Koninklijke Marine en die der gouvernementsmarine 1814-1962, The Hague 1962, p. 89; J.M. Dirkzwager, ‘De introductie van pantserschepen in Nederland’, Tijdschrift voor Zeegeschiedenis 4 (1985), no. 1, pp. 23-41, pp. 35-37
Citation
J. van der Vliet, 2016, 'Laird Brothers, Model of an Ironclad Ram Ship, Birkenhead (Merseyside), 1868', in J. van der Vliet and A. Lemmers (eds.), Navy Models in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.245048
(accessed 23 November 2024 00:59:35).