Model of a Lifeboat

...; transferred from the Ministerie van Marine (Department of the Navy), The Hague, to the museum, 1883

ObjectNumber: NG-MC-1197-1

Rigged frame model of a 10-oared double-banked lifeboat, the gun is missing.

Carvel-built double-ended launch or whaleboat with bilge keels, a curved raked stem and a straight, slightly raked stern. The planking is painted white. It has a double hull, the inner planking containing buoyancy chambers in the sides. It has five thwarts, an open cockpit, and a small cuddy fore and aft. The broad rudder has a steering quadrant instead of a hand tiller, the tackle is missing. The model has ten oars, two boat hooks, two round buoys and a grapnel. The model is rigged with sails, the rig consisting of a mainmast with lugsail and foresail, the mizzen with a small triangular sail with a boom; it flies a Dutch tricolour.

In 1865, the Dutch Navy ordered two lifeboats from John White, which were tested in Flushing. They were accepted as the lifeboats C1 and C2 of the Dutch Navy thereafter. This model represents lifeboat C1, which was 9.22 metres long and had a 7-cm gun.

Scale 1:10.

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, 2e Afd., pl. 19, fig. 5; J.M. Obreen et al., handwritten inventory list for items 944 to 1431, 1884, manuscript in HNA 476 RMA, inv. no. 1089, no. 1197; W.E. May, The Boats of Men-of-War, London 1999 (1st ed. 1974), p. 73

J. van der Vliet, 2016, 'Adriaan Rosel, Model of a Lifeboat, Netherlands, 1865', in J. van der Vliet and A. Lemmers (eds.), Navy Models in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.245010