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

Object number: NG-MC-1277

Polychromed wooden half block model of the starboard side of a gunboat of the ‘Staunch’-type, mounted on a framed rectangular wooden backboard, painted blue.

The side of the ship is painted black above the waterline with two gold-painted lines running fore to aft. The bow features a vertical stem and a small platform ahead of the raised main deck. The stern is elliptical and fitted with a rudder with a rounded blade and a three-blade screw propeller. The main deck is flush with the sides and fitted with the base of a pole mast, a skylight, a black funnel (one of a pair), a large companionway and a covered Moncrieff-type gun position at the bow. The hull has a flat bottom and is painted red below the waterline.

Hydra, 25.88 metres long, was built by W.G. Armstrong & Co of Newcastle in 1873. It was a gunboat of their own design called ‘Staunch’, to be used for inland defence. It was equipped with a prototype gun position: an adaptation of the Moncrieff gun cradle,¹¹For more details on the Moncrieff gun cradle, see model NG-MC-1265. originally designed for use on land. In reclined position the gun was supposed to have a less negative effect on the stability of the gunboat but in practice this proved untrue. The hydraulic and pneumatic operating system was considered too dangerous and was soon removed from the boat altogether. Hydra became a guard ship in 1877 before being decommissioned and sold for breaking up in 1907.²²A.J. Vermeulen, De schepen van de Koninklijke Marine en die der gouvernementsmarine 1814-1962, The Hague 1962, p. 118.

Scale unknown.

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 I; J.M. Obreen et al., handwritten inventory list for items 944 to 1431, 1884, manuscript in HNA 476 RMA, inv. no. 1089, no. 1277; A.J. Vermeulen, De schepen van de Koninklijke Marine en die der gouvernementsmarine 1814-1962, The Hague 1962, p. 118; I. McNeil, Hydraulic Power, London 1972; J.M. Dirkzwager, ‘Stoomkanonneerboot type “Staunch”’, Spiegel Historiael 27 (1992), no. 2, pp. 85-86; A. Preston and J. Major, Send a Gunboat: The Victorian Navy and Supremacy at Sea 1854–1904, London 2007 (rev. ed.)

J. van der Vliet, 2016, 'W.G. Armstrong & Co, Half Model of a Gunboat, Newcastle upon Tyne, c. 1870 - c. 1871', in J. van der Vliet and A. Lemmers (eds.), Navy Models in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: https://data.rijksmuseum.nl/20054210