HM Gun Brig Adder, 1797 – Vanguard

The Kit

Scale – 1:64
Length Overall – 615mm
Height Overall – 493mm
Width Overall – 208mm

Kit includes:

• Laser cut and engraved parts in MDF and pear wood.
• Laser etched and cut lime wood deck with treenail detail
• 3 sheets of photo etched brass
• High resolution 3D-printed parts.
• Double planked hull in limewood for first planking and pear wood for second planking.
• Walnut dowel for masting.
• Multiple sizes of both black and natural rigging thread along with all necessary blocks and deadeyes
• Comprehensive, full colour instruction manual, along with TWELVE plan sheets which include all masting and rigging drawings.
• Features include laser-engraved treenails on both inner and outer bulwarks.

History of the HM Gun Brig Adder – 1797

The Acute Class was a group of 15 brig-rigged, 14-gun gunboats designed by Sir John Henslow, Co-Surveyor of the Navy, of which 11 were built in Kent shipyards. They were a slight enlargement of Henslow’s previous Gunboat design, the Conquest Class.

The Acute Class gunboats were vessels of 160 tons. They were 75ft 2in long on the main deck, 61ft 8in long at the keel and 22ft 2in wide across the beams. Their holds were 8ft deep, they drew 3ft 9in of water at the bow and 6ft at the rudder. This does not include the depth of the Schank Sliding Keels. They were manned by a crew of 50 men and boys. Not being ocean-going vessels, they were commanded by a Lieutenant-in-Command rather someone appointed to be their Master and Commander and he was the only commissioned officer aboard. The vessels were armed with 12 x 18pdr carronades on the broadside, with 2 x 24pdr long guns in the bow.

Adder was ordered on 7/02/1797, and keel laid that same month, and launched on 22/04/1797. In 1798, according to both Daivid Lyon’s Sailing Navy List and Rif Winfield’s similar work, British Warships in the Age of Sail, Adder was lengthened in 1798 to 97 feet along the deck, so Adder may not have been coppered when first commissioned. She was broken up in 1805.