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Hello friends in the as unsolvable closed thread about TERRIBLE - here the link to all that are interested: we figured out very important content about the close relative of SOLEIL ROYAL 1668 - the ROYALBDUC later rebaptisted to REYNE/REINE. The renaming may also been gone aside withba more sorber decoration. This realtionship was announced by Marc with the followingbsimple few and important words: "As a side note: La Reyne is the closest known corollary to Soleil Royal. Same yard, same designer, built a year apart, and only slightly shorter in length and breadth. The sheer presence of SR would have been very similar to this vessel. Perhaps, she was a little bit taller at the stern in 1670, if she carried a poop royal deck." In stead of a repetition of the development of the knowledge let us jump into the important points we do have as evidence and knowledge: Sometimes you can trust in Wikipedia more https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_ship_Royal_Duc_(1668) than in a 26 year old book of Jean Boudriot who's discriptions show a 76 gun ship. On page 319 we do finde some information we do not got presented unter the First Sunking's Navy at the very beginning. So the key documents of ROYAL DUC are the following tetralogy: and as scaled(!!!) drawing of the transom. The pure amount of details in these 380 year old drawings is incredible : The galliin is very Dutch innstyle with its V-shaped structure and the figure head shows a horse riding man with a (kind of duke's crown or) contemporary stylish turban. There are a four circle round gunports for the VIII pounder guns of the backdeck. When we do walk along the hull aft we pass the cathead coming to the fenders and stairs This pictures of four tiers of gunnery's muzzels gives an impressive picture of the pure force brought to the battle line by ROYAL DUC in her two beattes she fought. She took part in the two beattes of Schoonveld on the 7. and 13. VI. 1671 (N.S.) and as LE REYNE thevship took part in the a beatte of Texel on 21. VIII. 1673. Under both names she acted as flagship of Vice-Admiral Jean d'Estrées. Turning to the quater gallery there arebstraight structured of an (fake?) window enclosed single tier with lozenge lead structure. The very first window is/can be used as a gunport. (In the middle of the Anglo-Dutch-War this may have been a secret information... were the vdVs spys in their second profession?) The deck above the nicely shaped and figured roof isn't integrated in a kind of bigger artwork and so the officer's accomodation only got a pair of luxuriously framed windows. The coat is usualy ermine (stoat/short tailed weasel) in heraldic symbolism looking like this: Allways black on a white background - not to be confused with a fleur-de-lis! When we look at this vdV ink paintung we do recognize easily that foreward looking gunport in front of every battery deck below&beside the gallion. The wide gap between the piercings through the hull is very interesting. These for now I do hope on a cooperation with Cederic due to support e ach other. ROYAL DUC had hat the following armament : LD 16 × XXXVI ryl. frc. pound 14 × XXVIII rfp MD 30 × XVIII rfp UD 26 × VIII rfp F'c'st'l&QD: 18×VI rfp ,Here both views added to each other. ROYAL DUC's scilpturing program was more elaborated than the one after her rebaptism. So I have to look for differences like a hawk to figure out what ship is infont of me on the paper.
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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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