Continental Ship Enterprise

Enterprise - 1:300 scale paper model.

Over the last couple of days, I made an attempt at trying something different for me.  Generally, I'm not much of a naval modeler, and I don't think I've ever made a paper model before.  Now I can successfully say that I've completed a naval paper model.

Port side, with Quarter for scale.

In May of 1775, Colonel Benedict Arnold and his men, during the opening months of the American Revolution, captured the Canadian port of St. Johns, and with it, the Sloop-of-War George.   The George was renamed Enterprise, and used by the Continental army to secure Lake Champlain.


On the 11th of October, 1776, the Enterprise, along with Arnold's small fleet of recently built ships and gunboats, took part in the Battle of Valcour Island.  The battle ended as a defeat for the Americans, with several vessels sunk, scuttled, or captured.  Enterprise, however, escaped, and made her way back to Crown Point, and later Ticonderoga.

In July of the next summer, with the British seizing Fort Ticonderoga and moving against the Continental Army, Enterprise was used to help evacuate the residents of the fort south to Skenesborough (now Whitehall, NY), while the main body of the army retreated across the Lake into what is now Vermont.  The evacuation fleet, unfortunately for the Americans, was overtaken by the British, and Enterprise was run aground on the 7th of July, 1777, to prevent her capture.

Posing with a Vermont commemorative coin.

The model that I built comes as a free printable download from War Artisan's Workshop.  This ship is part of the site's Great Lakes 1:300 Scale collection.  Having never built something of this scale before, and not knowing much about naval building and ships in general, I actually found this to be a pretty enjoyable build.  There are certainly some fiddly bits (tweezers would have come in handy), but taking is slow and careful resulted in a very nice model that looks cool on my desk, and seemslike it is actually robust enough to be used for wargaming.

Now, do I purchase the other models and refight Valcour Island?