CSS Manassas -aka- Steam Atragon

[Steampunk]

Last three pics, for now. It will take me some time to get more pics "developed" and ready for posting ... but that will give folks some time to be looking over the work, so far; and to be wondering why no one has taken the time and effort to dig up the real thing; to study it in detail!?! Until that day, who's to say the actual historical "pygmy monster" wasn't quite a bit more strange than any amount of "truth" a person like me is able to squeeze out of old drawings?!

[Steampunk]

Here's a shot of the turret on my model, taken when the model was fairly far along, in terms of having the whole thing completed.





The idea behind having taken an almost-directly-overhead camera angle on that area of the vessel was partly for the purposes of that article I'd written; but it was also sort of a "Wow!" moment for me, in that I had been trying all along to interpret whatever in the heck this mystery was all about:




The photo above being a partial view or close-up on J.A. Chalaron's drawing (seen in a modified view, with various mysterious features sort of circled and enlarged), as seen here:



A quick aside: please notice the partial, slanting line, above, that I circled. The one that is located just in front of the very visible smokestack. Was that an indication of a second smokestack, being added (or removed?) in front of the one shown? Notice that the line's angle is virtually identical to the smokestack's angle. It seems like too big of a coincidence that such a line should be located in front of those other lines; and spaced at just about the right spacing to be an indication of two like-thickness stacks, mounted on in front of the other.

Could their have been two smokestacks, at some point in this craft's life, located one in front of another? Thereby cutting down the apparent obviousness of such a feature, for stealth purposes? (Reducing "frontal area".) If so, then such a feature could appear to viewers (as seen from directly ahead or behind) as a single smokestack; while also being seen (by viewers from either side), as if they were two smokestacks ... but, when viewed at an angle to the craft, appearing like one really fat smokestack?

This is one of the reasons that research into this craft is so enticing, on some levels ... while also being potentially frustrating, in matching accounts up.

Something I've begun to notice, more and more, in various other historical drawings, is that sometimes when two smokestacks are shown, they're not shown as being directly side-by-side. Some drawings give that impression -- at least at a glance, to the casual viewer -- but when studied more literally, with the assumption that the artist wasn't intentionally fudging their "perspective" in the drawings, and that the artist knew just what they were doing ... there are a lot of hints in the extant records, hinting at smokestacks mounted along the craft's upper lines ... but which weren't mounted directly side-by-side. Some of the drawings, when you study how masterfully the artists handled their visual perspective in other areas within their lines of sight (such as when seeing other vessels on the water, things on shore banks, etc.) seem to indicate that some sort of anomaly is possibly going on, from a strict interpretation of the two smokestacks being side-by-side. I've obviously taken things farther, with my model: and have mounted my smokestacks considerably lower: and not sticking up super-blatantly, along the upper edges of the turtle's shell. My excuse for having done so being those mysterious slanting things, located just a bit above the apparent waterline; as seen in Chalaron's 1861 dry dock sketch. My interpretation, as I had mentioned things before, being an elimination of the obvious smokestacks, mounted alongside the turtle's back -- and then having those older items replaced via the experimental addition of "low visibility" stacks, which wouldn't disrupt the organic-looking "whale's back" and give away the position of the craft. Or immediately stick out, visually, as something man-made, etc.

I'll show what I mean, later on ... but for now, I'll get more firmly back on the topic of the possibility of Chalaron's drawing showing a turret, mounted aft.

As a reminder, here (below) is the unaltered original image of Chalaron's drawing: just as anyone can download it from history dot navy dot mil.




Whatever's going on, back in that area, Chalaron has always struck me as too good of a trained artist to have "accidentally" made all that.

My thoughts have always been that all those "extra" lines were indicative of something ... and I was curious to test the turret possibility.

For further comparison purposes, below is the relevant page I had initially drawn up, as part of my self-made blueprints for creating that model. (That is, these drawings date back to before the time the model itself was fully complete. So, some things had yet to be worked out in 3D.)

While the image below does not show the very "curvy" looking lines around the turret's sides, that are present on the actual model, you can see that I was initially trying to explore two different ways of representing that area of the model. On the one hand, I had a continuous line shown: sort of as a sensible "backup" to the possibly unworkable idea that Chalaron's drawings may have indicated a turret was in progress, at the time that artist had seen the reconstruction work going on. On the other hand, even early on, I had begun to mentally explore the idea that, maybe, just maybe, the non-visual reports sometimes seen in things like newspaper accounts, might have been hinting at a gun, located aft. Which some folks saw, in person. But some didn't notice. Had the craft had a single possible freeboard height, some people noticing it and others not, would have seemed odd. But if you factor in that idea, above, of a variable freeboard -- (ranging from approximately six foot of craft visible; to only three foot or less visible) -- well, at least I was exploring some ideas on why there is so much disagreement in the verbal and visual accounts of the period. Doesn't mean my guesses are correct: just that, visually speaking, what I have included on my model isn't immediately impossible, as one way to interpret the available data.





And lastly, here's a photo of the finished model: as seen from an almost-orthographic sort of camera angle. (I say "almost" because the shot was taken, for purposes of visual drama, with the camera below the craft's vertical mid-point. So, the upper edge of the turret's shape looks like a much larger interruption to the "flow" of the aft end of the vessel, than would have been the case had the camera angle been closer to the visual, vertical mid-point of the model. Further exaggerating things: I have the little carronade poking outside of the turret, itself. Making the image below sort of a "worst case scenario" as far as the turret and weapon "blending in" ... but even so, it's not wildly impossible.)




And last but not least, here's a quoted section from an 1903 article in the New Orleans Picayune newspaper: as found on the navy's historical web site.

(quotes on)

“The boat turned into the ram was reconstructed by putting on an extra bow, made solid and extending out a few feet, with an iron prow for ramming purposes. A shield, or roof, was put over the deck in the shape of a whale back. The frames were eight inches thick, moulding way -- that is, solid against each other crossways from forward to aft, and the planking on top of this was four inches thick. Outside of this she was covered with a single layer of flat street car iron, such as was used at that time to run the street cars on -- not rails such as are used now. On the water line all around she had a solid sponson four feet thick to protect her from being rammed. She carried two sixty-eight pounders, one over the stem and the other over the sternpost."

(quotes off)

Mystery solved, or mystery deepened? Historical, or hysterical? Each viewer must decide for themselves!

[greenman407]

A lot of Tedious work with the thin wood striping material. And it turned out so well too. You must have a great deal of patience.

[Steampunk]

You must have a great deal of patience.

Thanks for the compliments!

In thinking about your comment regarding patience: while I understand what you mean -- (and mostly agree) -- I think it could be argued the other way, too.

Yes, it was tedious work, and took (relatively speaking) a long time. Thing is, I had REALLY wanted to "see" this thing, armored in that totally unexpected way ... and no one else was doing it, back then, that I knew of ... soooo, at some point my patience (in waiting, and hoping to see someone else's model "textured" in that way) ran out, and I ended up doing it myself. So, yeah, I can see how some folks would describe what I did with that "flat street car iron" as requiring a lot of patience ... but, compared to waiting years and years in the hopes that someone else would do it: by that way of thinking, what I did was arguably an act of extreme impatience.

(That is: arguably, anyone "sane" would have weighed the workload, up front; and would have waited for someone else to do it.)

I wanted to see that shape, "textured" in that way, pretty badly. That was an itch I wasn't willing to wait, any longer, to scratch. After waiting for a few years (and working on other projects), I figured no one else was likely to do it "for me" any time soon ... so I spent a week making my fingers all super-glooey.

Also, I wanted some solid, workable idea of how the real builders might have gotten around the various practical problems inherent with doing things, by adding one hard-to-bend, "iron plank" at a time. A big part of the pay-off, for me, was figuring out how the "real people" might have worked around the lack of ideal materials, etc., that they had faced, back then.

Being able to physically place (without glue) several "iron planks" side-by-side, in various ways and positions, and then try some other way of positioning the unglued iron planks, until it seemed like I'd found the "easiest" direction for each plank to have been positioned and attached ... well, maybe I'm a hopeless nerd or something for thinking that was exciting stuff to have been able to have "reverse-engineered" ... but, I'm just mentally wired that way ... and as it turns out, that was enough to keep me motivated. Seeing it all "come to life," a little at a time, in one area and then another, motivated me to keep going.

At the end, I was glad that it was over! But I was even more glad that I had done it. Because if I hadn't have worked out the practical problems, as I went, (by what amounts to determination and brute force, in a sense) I would have never figured out how the real thing might have actually been armored. Having done the work, I could "understand" the real thing quite a bit better ... and to me, that knowledge was motivating enough to have made it all satisfying.

If the purpose of a model is to put a person's mind closer to the point where they can imagine the nuts and bolts that make it all work: mission accomplished!

[Steampunk]

I haven't been doing any updates, of late, over here ... but for a good reason.

There's a boatload of stuff going on, over on the discussion thread called "Civil War Talk". Several people over there did some fan-frakkin'-tastic research work, and came up with all sort of cool historical tidbits that many of us had never seen before ... including the "lines" drawing of the tug or tow boat slash icebreaker which had been the "donor" vehicle, when private Southern citizens had made the Manassas.

Up until now, figuring out what the real boat(s) looked like, was full of conjecture. Now, our "guesswork" can become WAY more educated!!

One of the latest things which happened, over there, was that I managed to figure out what I feel is a really good guess at the true "scale" of that drawing by J.A. Chalaron, from 1861. (Having figured out, thanks in part to all the great new research findings that are turning up, that the stated measurements, on that drawing, are way off. Turns out you'd have to enlarge those drawings to the scale it claims / implies it is ... and then, do an enlargement of 133 percent on those first blown-up drawings ... and then, or so it appears right now, you'd have a much more accurate scale drawing. Ones which, once properly re-sized, match up REALLY well with the "lines" drawing of the Enoch Train tug / icebreaker.

http://www.civilwartalk.com/threads/aye-candy-c-s-s-manassas.81908/page-15

If you go over there, via that link, and then go backwards a few message thread pages, you'll find all kinds of things that make the history of the boat "come alive". There were a bunch of newspaper clippings that I hadn't seen before (many of which look to me to invalidate much of the prior research work done by official historians -- who apparently felt the info wasn't available; and then just filled in the blanks in their own stories with their personal best guesses; which is fine, if that's actually the case, but it wasn't as hard to obtain "real" info as some thought.)

Also ... there's news over there about several private letters I was kindly given copies of, from a private university in New Orleans (Tulane University) and was also given permission to type in, and share the contents (but not scans of the actual letters) with other Manassas fans ... and of course, those "lines" drawings of the Enoch Train ... and on top of that, a full color oil painting of the Enoch Train was also located.

So, suddenly, we know what the real tug boat's proportions / outlines / contours were like, in real life (which was a big mystery, before) ... and we also have that one-of-a-kind full color oil painting (or more correctly, some "up for sale, by an action house" photos of that painting) ... and we're finally able to start debunking some of the invalid guesswork that has been done about the Manassas, over the years.

Exciting times, for those of us who are big fans of this historical period's greatest technological achievements!

Sooooo ... just know that it hasn't been laziness on my part, which caused the lack of message thread updates, over here!

-- Ward Shrake --