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Subject: 
Delfín
Newsgroups: 
lugnet.pirates
Date: 
Sat, 24 Jul 2004 00:48:55 GMT
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My second ship is here - the Spanish xebec Delfín!

You can see her here: http://www.brickshelf.com/cgi-bin/gallery.cgi?f=91804

A xebec (or chebeck, if you prefer) was originally a ship built by the North African Barbary Coast pirates and operated from such cities as Tunis, Tripoli and Algiers. They were very fast, shallow draft craft, designed to emerge from a port at high speed to intercept merchant ships, and originally all lateen rigged (like mine is). Later versions had square sails on the main and mizzen masts. They could also be driven by oars during a calm, or to maneuver. The French, and especially the Spanish, copied the design and built their own to counter this threat, and to provide effective anti-pirate and escort craft all over their empire.

The Delfín (Dolphin) is one of these, constantly cruising to deter and capture pirates and help protect treasure fleets from attack.

I only had two large oars when I made these pictures (I have four now) so I couldn’t show the entire ship under oars. The sailcloth material is from Wal-Mart (believe it or not!) and the stripes are only slightly thinner than the official Armada sails. The sails were measured, marked in pen and glued along the edges and where the pegs would go with thinned white glue, allowed to dry, then cut out and hung. (My thanks to an old article by Steve Jackson for this - you can find it here: http://www.io.com/~sj/legosails.html). I didn’t have a leather punch so AI simply cut an “x” with my hobby knife and pushed the pegs through that. The jib was attached to the black embroidery floss rigging with black thread and needle.

The overhanging stern on the prototype was actually a grille-work, but I wasn’t able to replicate that and keep it strong at the same time. It’s attached with two hinges at the back in such a way that the front is at just the right angle to lock together with the studs below. There are two pins above the front for it to pivot on.

There isn’t enough room for the ship’s boat on deck, so it’s towed astern.

I’d like to thank Anthony Sava for his wonderful Photo-Shop minifig torsos that I used here for my sailor shirts. You can find the articles (and many other useful articles that can be used in .pirates) here: http://www.classic-castle.com/howto/creation.html

If anyone has any questions/comments, please let me know!

Aaron :)



Message has 1 Reply:
  Re: Delfín
 
(...) -snip- (...) Nice work on the sails. The X cut sounds like a good idea - I've used a paper hole punch, and have often found that the hole is slightly too big. And threading the jib seems like a good option to save them slowing travelling down (...) (20 years ago, 26-Jul-04, to lugnet.pirates, FTX)

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