PS Comet 1812 | Early Steamboat

(Historical recreation, 1:1ish)
Widely credited as being the first successful European steamboat, the Comet was built by Henry Bell in 1812 to operate a passenger service
on the River Clyde, between Helensburgh, Greenock and Glasgow. She was a small craft of 28 tons and was originally built with four 4-float paddle wheels (floats being an alternate term for paddles), driven by a set of gears by a single steam engine, but this was quickly found to be unsatisfactory and she was refitted with 2 paddle wheels. Her funnel also doubled as a mast, supporting a yard to rig a sail, giving her a very unique appearance.
She was initially a great success, but that exact success led to her quickly being superseded by larger and faster steamers run by competing companies on the same rout. She was used on a few different routs and underwent jumboisation and was re-engined in 1819, but in 1820 Comet was wrecked in a storm with no loss of life. She was then salvaged, converted to a schooner and renamed "Ann". The former Comet collided with a steamer in 1875 and was lost.
A fully functional replica of Comet was built in 1962 for the 150th anniversary of the building of the original, and sailed the same rout as part of the anniversary. She was subsequently taken out of the water and placed on permanent display in Port Glasgow, being restored in 2011.
In 2019 a survey found that the boat rotted away so much that she was beyond economic repair, and was then broken up in April of 2023. No known trace of her remains.
Remarkably, Comet’s original engine that was taken out in 1819 still exists. It can be found in The Science Museum of London.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PS_Comet

Top speed: 5 knots
Length on Deck: 13.5 Meters, Length Overall,17.125 Meters
Width: 3.75 Hull, 4.75 Paddle boxes
Height From Waterline: 6.5 Meters
Draft: 1.5 Meters
Engine Type: Similar to a Grasshopper Steam Engine
Fuel Capacity: 189 Including firebox

-1 Simulated steam engine, 4 working paddle wheels
-1 Boiler
-2 Cabins (1 actually furnished)
-1 Bell (can be rung, switch hidden in the funnel)
-1 Anchor (not functional)
-6 Seats in the aft cabin

Simply press the Light Boiler key and wait for steam pressure.
Don’t forget to keep the firebox filled with coal
The boat is too small to fit an actual steam system in, so a basic simulated version is used instead. You don’t need infinite electric on, I fitted an infinite generator.

-While the boat is almost at a 1:1 scale, it’s not perfect. It’s slightly larger (roughly half a meter) than what Wikipedia states, and different sources reported different dimensions.

-It is reported by more than one source that Comet was "brightly painted, having for her figurehead a lady garbed in all the colours of the rainbow", however all depictions I’ve seen that include color have it as completely gold. I decided to go with the gold version, simply because it’s much easier to do at that scale.

-Sources say that the aft cabin had "concealed beds" behind the wooden seats. I’m not entirely sure how that was implemented, so I just followed the only plans for the aft cabin I found as well as interior photos of the 1962 replica as best as I could, with seats on either side, and 3 cabinet doors leading so some sort of compartment, the label of which was too compressed to read.

-I also have no idea what’s going on with the forward cabin. The only plan that showed the cabins have the forward one as being completely empty, so that’s how I left it.

-At least one source indicates that Comet had a very tall funnel like what’s seen on the 1962 replica, however every depiction of the original show the funnel to be much shorter, ending only slightly above the yard. My only guess as to why is that it was perhaps heightened when she was modified to have 2 paddles, as the some of the few depictions of her post-modification have that larger funnel.

-There’s also some oddities with the boiler. I couldn’t really find much on the face of it so it’s fairly simple (and because the way it’s designed), and the way the funnel is mounted seems to be a mystery as well, with some showing a sort of bent funnel base snaking its way to the front, and others, including the 1962 replica, has a sort of trunking running up the side of the boiler that the funnel is mounted on. I went with the latter, for similar reasons to the figurehead.

-She may want to randomly have the physics glitch out a bit and make it harder to steer (or just flip the boat). I already fixed it once but it happened again once afterwards, so I’m not entirely sure what to do about it. It hasn’t happened much for me, so hopefully you shouldn’t have too many problems with it.

-No, she does not have a sink switch.

-Can be run on low physics setting.

Discord server for checking out how the latest builds are coming along, chatting, memes, the occasional build competition and other nonsense: https://discord.gg/7Z2VWqvDwq