Hubac's Historian

I think that Dassie’s comments are wide-open to interpretation. My take is that he was referring to the scale of the fully rendered sculptural work: the Four Seasons and Continental figures. I think that by the time Puget is conceptualizing the ornament for SR (I read that she wasn’t fully decorated until 1675, or something like that), he had been chastened enough to reduce the scale of his sculpture work. My operating assumption, here, is that Guy is correct in his research, which asserts that Colbert contracted Puget to complete the finished drawings for SR’s ornamental program. By this time, Puget had soured on his experience with the State’s shipyards, but agreed to do the SR design work in exchange for a prime slab of marble and a commission at Versailles for what would become one of his most famous sculpture works - Milo of Croton: https://en.chateauversailles.fr/discover/history/great-characters/pierre-puget#:~:text=For a long time%2C Puget,Andromeda (1675-1684). Now, apart from the “vault,” aka the lower transom, which was remarked to be fairly plain in comparison to the RL’s winged-horse brackets and swaged garlands, I think SR was probably pretty well covered with ornament.

Good morning, Eric! Your bowsprit mast looks very good - a definite improvement over the kit. Assuming you will eventually paint it, you may find that “parchment paper” cut into appropriate width strips, makes excellent stock for the woolding moulds that bracket each woolding. I put parchment in air quotes because what I am referring to is actually a fairly heavily weighted paper that you can find in STAPLES. I used this paper to cut the letters for my Nec Pluribus Impar banner on my lower transom. Great stuff! It is great that you have ordered the book. You will not be disappointed. Mr. Pieper provides so much insight into the development of sailing ships, architecturally, what the actual process of construction was that is illustrated in the Album de Colbert, and of course, the specific ornamental programs - their composition and allegorical significance. Consider Le Argonaute of 1711, rendered toward the end of Jean Berain’s career and life: Apart from my reflected overhead light, the clarity of the rendering is absolutely crystal clear. All of the conventions of Berain’s ornamental style, with his paneling and compartmentalization of the classic symbols of the crown are in their best and most fully developed style. Even in 1711, there remain some elements of the early style with symbols of heraldry and the implements of war bracketing the quarter pieces and taffrail. Contrast Berain’s relative restraint with Puget’s exuberance in the mid-to-late 1670’s: A sculptor in marble, first and foremost, the application of Puget’s talents to ship sterns was largely influenced by the architectural style of the land buildings he witnessed while carving many of his most famous marble sculptures, in Genoa. Upon his arrival in Toulon, he must have been overjoyed to be tasked with filling the monumental stern facades of the largest ships, like the Monarque, with relatively huge statuary: As has often been discussed, these large sculptures were a hindrance to the ship’s navigation. After several years of continual castigation, on the part of Colbert and the intendants at Toulon, Puget was persuaded to reign it in, a bit. The Royal Louis is probably the best example of what the ornamental style for these two great capital ships looked like. A rough drawing of the scheme for the RL, probably by LeBrun: And the finished drawing, likely by Girardon: In contrast with the more compartmentalized and architectural style of Berain, there is a stronger reliance on foliate forms to organize the allegory and give it shape: You see this very prominently in Le Souverain of 1678: All of these elements coalesce, by degree, into Berain’s re-working of Puget’s initial design for Soleil Royal. Structurally, the stern and quarters would have been somewhat taller and more narrow, perhaps, but the allegory would have been largely the same. John Ott’s glorious infographic: So, obviously, that’s quite a lot to wrap your head around! The book will be a great help, though, as you familiarize yourself with the particularities of French style.

Hello Evan! Ironically, yesterday I found an entire Pinterest page dedicated to your Connie build, by another fan of your work. Great stuff! I really love all of the scratch modification work you are doing here. It is the aspect of plastic modeling that I love the most. Your work is do crisp! Best, Marc

Maybe, given it’s length, it could be lashed alongside the main hatch, and stored with spare topmasts and spars?

Foliage is always a safe bet, when in doubt.

If you are searching for some form of ornament to place over your door headers, a la La Reyne: You could extract the monogram cartouche from LeBrun’s frieze sketches: These would tie-in nicely with the central arms of France that you made a resin casting of, earlier. I would likely carve this in styrene, but it could also be fashioned from modeling clay. I think one approach, there, could be to do a scale drawing to the exact size and outline that you want. Paste that drawing to anything (scrap wood, even a ceramic plate). Cover the drawing with a piece of packing tape that the clay won’t stick too aggressively to. And then, work a daub of clay until it confirms to the underlying outline. Model details from there.

It’s coming together nicely, Eric! One observation: at the beakhead deck level, your door framing is barely proud of the base planking. This means that the clinker planking would protrude from the door framing. It may be beneficial to pad the leading edges of those door frames with 1/32” styrene strip.

There isn’t much to gain in messing with it, but there’s a lit to lose if you start manipulating your surface finish because the underlying wood has already begun to oxidize. You don’t want to jump down the rabbit hole of trying to color-match.

Honestly, Bill, that is such a minuscule detail that it does not draw the eye, in the big picture of the model. I don’t see, really, how you could have avoided the issue, as the holes had to be filled. Just remember that the actual ships were always a patch-work of revision and repair 😉

La Licorne in 1:36 Apart from the wale sheer being far too flat, I don’t see much to disagree with, here.

Agreed that that’s a much better shape to the lower half of the bulkhead.

So, on Beckmann’s Tre Kronor log, I encountered the following title: I decided to make an INVESTMENT in the hope that a clearer image of my “Gilded Ghost” portrait might show up in these pages. I was not so naive to think this was likely, though, and bought the book primarily on Beckmann’s recommendation of it. Unlike most books that focus on the 17th Century French navy - it’s organization, material resources and administration - this book focuses on the ships, themselves. More specifically, it focuses on the ornamental programs of specific ships and draws parallels between the architecture of the ships and their land-based counterparts. This is really an in-depth continuation of Pieper’s Floating Baroque. So, despite my mild disappointment at not finding my elusive ship portraits, the book has proved to be well-worth the price of admission! There are so many stern/quarter/bow portraits, all reproduced in crystal-clarity. Pieper’s insights into the allegorical composition of each vessel’s ornamental program are invaluable - particularly for someone like me who has designs on reconstructing a monumental allegory for Soleil Royal 1670. The whole thing has to hang together in a coherent fashion. The real gem of the book is a plan-set created by Pieper, himself. He grew up a huge fan of the TinTin series, and he has drafted a coherent and highly detailed plan of the fictional La Licorne - a French 3rd rate from the time of Colbert’s first building program - that more rigorously adheres to what is known and understood about vessels from this time period. It is all beautifully drawn, and from these plans, one could produce a highly plausible model of this time period. I may have purchased the last available copy, for the moment, but it is well-worth looking for, if these things interest you. The title only comes in German, however, I had such great success reading Versailles de Mer through Google Translate, that I decided to take the plunge. I was rewarded for my bet, as the book translates with nuance and perfect clarity, using GT’s photo capture function on my phone. Anyway, I thought this would be of general interest to all.

Dan, you have so perfectly captured the utilitarian ambivalence of this time in the ship’s history. One can still see the bones of the beast, but man did they let the old girl go!

I really like what you’ve laid out here, Eric.

Gorgeous work, Siggi!

Another good rope-handling tip Wefalck, thank you! And, indeed Bill, those are sage words from my MSW friends. Progress, here, has been slow, and continually disrupted by coaching basketball, the holidays, and being sick all the time. This truly has been the worst cold and flu season I can ever remember. I’m currently getting over my fifth cold, since September, and I am not an “unhealthy” person. Sometime in the not too distant future, I’ll have an update on my main deck guns. I’m presently experimenting with rope coils.

The Vespucci is a fascinating vessel, with lots of interesting deck houses and details.

I am pretty certain Ian is correct on all counts.

Yup, perfect! I was re-reading through your log yesterday, just marveling at the three re-starts of this project. I was thinking about how relatively easily you managed to disassemble your teenage efforts, without much damage. That may be, in part, because you didn’t flatten the mating surfaces of the keel and stem. Lucky for your re-build, but less good for your current project. I always sand these surfaces flat so that I get a good mating, welded bond. The coarsened surface from the paper grit melts readily. If you double-stick some 150 grit to a hard, flat block (I use my steel ruler), with a few glancing swipes you might be surprised at how un-flat these joints really are.

All of those tools and items in the foreground of your bow shot, make plainly evident the small scale you are dealing with. Amazed, I remain.

Not to toot my own horn, Eric, but I could not have done it better myself. I see your problem with the beakhead deck, which is two-fold: the cheeks terminate below the deck, and with a shortened stem - the sprit-mast entry into this deck is now a little awkward. Since you are going to construct a new beakhead bulkhead, anyway, my personal approach would be the following: I would cut a rebate for the forward edge of the beakhead deck (between the port and starboard terminations of the cheeks) into the black plastic of the kit pressing. It looks to me as though you can do this without also cutting into the white styrene of your replacement wales, so that this “cheat” will effectively remain hidden. You’ll have to create new glue ledges for the after-portion of the beakhead deck, but that is an easy enough matter with some styrene strip.

Nicely done!

For fairing, in this instance, sandpaper around a dowel is your best friend, IMO.

It has been a while since I checked-in, but WOW - Mark, you never disappoint with the fairness of your lines, nor the cleanliness of your craft! It is so gratifying to see her take shape, and I agree that those ship-lapped transom planks are a visual delight. All I can say is BRAVO, and keep on keeping-on!

Here is another bow perspective from one of the better and more proportionally drawn plates of Le Album de Colbert: As this drawing dates to the early 1670’s, it is interesting to me that the transverse headrail supporting timbers are drawn as concave. This is in direct opposition to all of the 1672 VdV drawings that show them in the more Dutchy convex form. I’m not really sure what to make of that, but I, personally, would side with the VdV’s, whose drawings were as close to a photographic record as possible for the times.