HMS Flirt - 1782

HMS Flirt kit 1:64
The 14-gun brig sloop, HMS Flirt - 1782

Scale model of one of the first of a new class of Royal Navy brig tugs.

The Flirt was commissioned in 1781 together with the Speedy and both were built by Thomas King, a private shipyard owner in Dover. The Flirt was launched on 4 March 1782, three months before the Speedy.

The brig-sloop class Flirt/Speedy was the second class to be built to the new flat-deck brig-sloop design. The first was the Childers class of 1779 (the Childers class was involved in the very first action that led to the long war with France from 1793-1815, after being fired on by a French battery stationed at Brest on 2 January 1793; a cannonball from the battery was taken to the Admiralty in London). The Childers and Flirt/Speedy class were almost identical, and it would be difficult to tell the differences. Both had roughly the same dimensions, mast plans, armament and crew strength. They also had the same very graceful lines, more reminiscent of a cutter than a brig. These early flat-decked brig-sloops had an elegant hull and a steeply sloping stern, in contrast to the later "mass-produced" cruiser and Cherokee classes.

The designation "brig-sloop" meant that it was a two-masted ship, and in the Navy List "sloop" was a designation for a ship commanded by an officer with the rank of captain and commander. The Flirt weighed 207 tonnes, the length of her upper deck was just over 78 feet and her beam was 25 feet and 8 inches. She had a crew of 84 men and 6 officers.

Her armament consisted of 14 4-pounder carriage guns and 12 half-pounder swivelling guns, but with posts for 20 guns, as the swivelling guns could be removed from their posts and moved to another post.

Flirt and Speedy were completed too late to see significant service in the American Revolutionary War. She then spent most of the peacetime years in British waters. In 1791 she sailed to Jamaica, but was decommissioned at Deptford in November 1792 and was not recommissioned until she was sold in 1795. Daniel Bennett bought the ship, had it almost completely rebuilt and then used it as a whaler in the southern whale fishery. A French privateer captured her in 1803 when the Flirt was returning to Britain from a whaling voyage.

The kit contains:

- Laser-cut parts from MDF, clear acetate and birch plywood. All visible parts are laser-cut from pear wood panels
- Laser-cut ladders and gratings made of pear wood included in the scope of delivery
- Laser-cut and etched limewood main deck with all nail details
- 3 etched brass plates
- Black resin moulded 4-pounder and half-pounder gun barrels with black acrylic cannonballs
- Double planking for the hull made of lime wood for the first planking and pear wood for the second planking
- Walnut roundels for mast and yards
- Several thicknesses of black and natural-coloured rigging twine as well as all the necessary blocks and maidens
- 60-page, colour illustrated building instructions in German and 10 building plans in original size

Technical specifications

Scale - 1:64
Overall length - 656mm
Overall height - 492mm
Overall width - 230 mm