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

Object number: NG-MC-322

Polychromed fully planked wooden half bracket model of the starboard side of a three-masted ship, mounted on a rectangular wooden backboard painted white.

The side of the ship is fully planked and painted black, with a small white band running along the full length of the main gun deck. Twenty-one recessed, black gun ports are indicated in two tiers. The sheer is almost flat. One wale and a sheer rail are indicated. The model has three channels with deadeyes. The bow features a fully detailed beakhead with a floral scroll for a billethead and a cathead decorated with a lion’s head, both painted gold. The elliptic stern has a decorated single-storey quarter gallery and an open deck above. The lower finishing of the quarter gallery is a floral scroll, the raised woodwork consists mainly of pilasters and scrolls and is painted white. Below the stern a round-headed rudder with a rounded blade is indicated. The hull is S-bottomed and painted a metallic red copper colour below the waterline. The upper deck is closed but does not have any details. The position of three masts and the bowsprit is shown in a truncated form.

This model was transferred to the Navy Model Room in 1851.¹¹HNA 2.12.01 Min. Marine, Exh. 21/2/1851 N26. It represents the 38-gun frigate Prins Hendrik der Nederlanden, 48 metres long, built by J. Vos in Amsterdam in 1844-47.²²J.M. Obreen, Catalogus der verzameling modellen van het Departement van Marine, The Hague 1858, no. 322. The frigate was a Dutch prototype based on a British design by Commander William Symonds (1782-1856) and Surveyor of the Navy from 1832 onwards, but which proved to be a disappointment. In the end only a few Dutch ships were built after Symonds’s design principles in the Netherlands, among them the sister ship Prinses Sophia. In 1859 the Prins Hendrik der Nederlanden was converted to a floating battery and renamed Pollux, but was never used as such and decommissioned in 1860.³³A.J. Vermeulen, De schepen van de Koninklijke Marine en die der gouvernementsmarine 1814-1962, The Hague 1962, p. 11. The inscription on the left refers to a letter in the archive of the Department of the Navy.⁴⁴HNA 2.12.01 Min. Marine, Exh. 3/3/1846 N103.

Scale (on model) 1:50.

J.M. Obreen, Catalogus der verzameling modellen van het Departement van Marine, The Hague 1858, no. 322; A.J. Vermeulen, De schepen van de Koninklijke Marine en die der gouvernementsmarine 1814-1962, The Hague 1962, p. 11; A. van Dijk, Voor Pampus. De ontwikkeling van de scheepsbouw bij de Koninklijke Marine omstreeks 1860, Amsterdam/The Hague 1987 (Bijdragen tot de Nederlandse Marinegeschiedenis, vol. 4)

J. van der Vliet, 2016, 'anonymous, Half Model of a 38-Gun Frigate, Netherlands, c. 1828', in J. van der Vliet and A. Lemmers (eds.), Navy Models in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: https://data.rijksmuseum.nl/200315765