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HELLER : La Reine…an attempt The title says all…it’s only an attempt ! This idea came to my mind about two years ago when I had the chance to find à Soleil Royal for 50 euros on a second hand site. I built my first one in the late eighties, direct from the box ; and a second one a little later (unfortunately destroyed during a home-moving), and still another one is still lying around in the bottom of my garage. I thought, that I could, on this latest attempt, go a step further with details and correct the many faults that I was unaware of in my earlier attempts. I spent, thus, more than a year collecting sources about the first Soleil Royal and discovered also that the ship was, in fact, quite different from the one beautifully carved by Jean-Baptiste Tanneron in 1839 (model of the Musée de la Marine – Paris). In fine, I found the document above. After further researches, I discovered that this ship, the « Royal Duc » - who’s name was changed in 1671 to « La Reine » was nearly a sister-ship of Le Soleil Royal, with the immense advantage of being drawn by Willem Van de Velde the Elder in 1673. Keeping in mind that reliable sources of information an drawings of the first Soleil Royal virtually do not exist anymore, and using these known drawings as my basis, I changed my idea and decided to convert the Heller kit into La Reine. To give you an idea of the future build, I roughly drew on Autocad both profiles of the ships : Le Soleil Royal, Heller version : La Reine, redrawn from J.C. Lemineur’s book : Both superimposed for comparaison ; to the same lenght for the Heller kit. In fact, my model of La Reine will be slightly overscaled in comparaison of the announced 1/100 scale (more near the 1/90) : You’ll better see now the problems to solve : The stem must be changed, the forward bulkhead must be extended down to the first deck, on which the bowsprit mast was placed. It is a caracteristic of the french vessels built before 1690 to have the bowsprit mast anchored to the first deck. This is a feature that so many captains will criticize that, following the La Hogue disaster in 1692, new vessels will have their bowsprit placed on the second deck. A new figurehead and bow timbers must be made from scratch, only with the help of Van de Velde rough sketch… The distribution of the gunports is completely different. It is a specific caracteristic of La Reine, and of the first Soleil Royal, to have 16 gunports on the lower battery. They were the only French vessels with such an arrangement of gunports on the first battery at that time. The third battery was less armed in order to have place for the officers quarters, and the poopdeck of La Reine was left unarmed, a substantive difference to Le Soleil Royal. The position of the masts must be slightly modified, with the understanding that their dimensions and those of the yards were proportional to those of the hull. All the poop and side galeries must be fully scratch-build, but in this case, the drawings of Van de Velde and Desclouzeaux are truly of great help.
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