To brig or not to brig?

Civil is proving.... educational.

And a pain in the ass.

Much more sanding, fine this time, and her lines still aren't great. Wood glue as patches here and there.

But all that to one side.

Originally once I was happy with it, Civil's measurements matched up with the French Dromadarie class of flutes, one of which the English captured and entered, two of which the French turned into frigates for round-the-world scientific expeditions. I thought, well hey, converted transport, that would make a great privateer or hired vessel, maybe for a Dutch captain?

Turns out most of the class were wrecked. 62.5%, in fact, including the science frigates.

The problem, as best as I can tell, is simply their size and weight. Despite being 4.70 times longer than they are wide (hah!) which English wisdom tells us they should be extremely fast, they just were not weatherly at all. Maybe they were too tall? Maybe too long?

I don;t know why so many wrecked, but the fact is that they were more like the dreaded sixth-rate than anything else, unable to fight or flee.

And besides, now Civil is shorter than them, anyway.

So then I got thinking, well, I'll sand away the "top deck" of Civil, and call it a fictional brig. But that's a lot of material to just turn into dust, so I'm not committed to that plan, yet. And if I DO cut Civil down to a brig, I'm not sure how to rig her. I suspect I'd go with a true brig, but I suppose she could be ship-rigged. I think, though, that ship-rigged brigs were not as fast. But I may be misinterpreting that data. Also if it's to be a privateer, brig-rig means less men.

I dunno. I hate to ruin the hull, but considering it was going to be scrap anyway, maybe it's worth experimenting.