I built a lot of plastic kits when I was young. The Constitution, Victory, Cutty Sark, and a few others were available, but I always wanted the redoubtable British frigate, and no one made that kit.

Always a fan of the Hornblower series, the temptation to make the frigate Lydia was strong; my 16 foot daysailer is named Lydia, but a friend gave me a copy of Chronicles of the Frigate Macedonian 1809-1922 by James T DeKay and that pretty much settled it.

Macedonian was a fairly typicle 38 gun British frigate and an interesting subject as she was captured and served in the US Navy until she was broken up in 1828.

This model will be a working-sailing model 1/35th the size of the original.

Length: 61" (155 cm) taffrail to Alexander's nose
Beam molded: 13" (33 cm)
Draught: 6.875" -ballast keel (17.5 cm)

Macedonian profile by Chapelle

The model will be built plank-on-bulhead - that is, selected stations will be cut from plywood as forms. The hull will be planked in soft pine and faired. Most of the forms will be removed, a few will be left to support internal decks for the mechanics to operate the model under sail.

The plans for the model are those drawn by Howard Chapelle as plan 14 in The History of the American Sailing Navy and ordered from the Smithsonian Institution in 1:48 scale.

There's a lot of reasearch yet to do. What the ships transom and galleries looked like, for instance. Chapelle's given spar dimentions are from 1818 and are probably represent her Americanized rig. Finding the spar dimentions for the Lively class is one of my chores, or failing that, determining her rig from British practice at the time, and comparing them to the 1818 rig.