Model of a Windsail

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

ObjectNumber: NG-MC-570

Model of a windsail with a vane.

The top section consists of three rotating hoops covered with cloth with an entrance for fresh air, on which a vane is fitted to direct the aperture towards the wind. A piece of lead serves as a counterweight to the vane and to enhance the rotation. The axle of the hoops is mounted on a fixed section with two hoops, which continues in a cloth ventilation shaft with a round wooden plate at the bottom with three apertures.

I.P. Gandil’s design was inspired by a ventilator for mineshafts described by Agricola.¹¹G. Agricola (trans. H.C. Hoover and L.H. Hoover), De re metallica, s.l. 1556, New York 1950. In the Netherlands Gandil’s windsails were considered too cumbersome,²²J.M. Obreen, Catalogus der verzameling modellen van het Departement van Marine, The Hague 1858, no. 570. costly and heavy for ordinary ships and were used only for guard ships, storehouses and the like.

Scale unknown.

Tijdschrift toegewijd aan het zeewezen, 1835, vol. 2, pp. 59-61, no. 39, pl. II, figs. 5-7; J.M. Obreen, Catalogus der verzameling modellen van het Departement van Marine, The Hague 1858, no. 570; G. Agricola (trans. H.C. Hoover and L.H. Hoover), De re metallica, s.l. 1556, New York 1950; E. Pade, Kulsejlet og andre æeldre ventilations-systemer. En kulturhistorisk skitse, Copenhagen 1972, p. 39, fig. p. 41

J. van der Vliet, 2016, 'anonymous, Model of a Windsail, Netherlands, 1831', in J. van der Vliet and A. Lemmers (eds.), Navy Models in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.244385