Martes

Additionally to what we discussed, there is a simple logic behind this.

1. From the beginning of the 18th century, the North American shipyards (before they went, uhm, rogue) were a source for British-flagged merchant vessels and privateers. That was their trade, literally, and that's what they knew how to build.

2. When attempting to buy ships or technologies on the Continent (France and Netherlands) they couldn't turn to official military shipyards, so they would interact with private shipyards and shipbuilders as well, and the closest those built to warships are, again, privateers.

18 minutes ago, Waldemar said:

Now, I would still like to say that people, while attempting similar analyses, usually focus on comparing dimensions, which is completely missing the point. After all, absolute dimensions, just like many of the proportions, are simply determined by a kind of circumstances which have little in common or being quite independent of design methods, as you pointed out above.

Yes, that's what I wanted to point out as explicitly as possible. After all, there are a lot of examples of ships that are almost indistinguishable in profile, but have completely different hull form.

The class of the frigate was mostly dictated by the number and the caliber of the guns - which implies more or less fixed spacing between the gunports for a given calibre,  and a fixed length of the deck for a given number of guns, and those parameters would be quite close everywhere at the time. 

Standard requirement for a fast, ocean going vessel would also suggest the range of depth of the ships, but there would be nothing hinting at the shape of the hull.

Certainly, the American shipbuilders aimed to keep in pace of the contemporary European frigates, and at times built ships suited for guns they didn't in fact have. But this more or less limits the extent of the influence on the designs.

It's the European, and in particular, French privateers you're looking for.

It is all very entangled, because an origin of a method does not generally mean the origin of it's practitioners. Designs, methods and shipwrights were known to move from one country to another.

Spanish professionals, accompanying or arriving in the wake of prince Philip could have included people from any region that were under the rule of the Spanish crown, or any foreigners in Spanish service. Virtually almost anybody.

Sometimes a king tried to force foreign methods on his own shipbuilders - Ian Friel mentions an (unsuccessful) attempt by Henry V to force the English shipwrights to repair captured Genoese carracks; they took the money, but refused. McEvolgue writes that Edward IV imported Portuguese shipwrights and encouraged them to teach their craft to local shipbuilders.

Henry VII as we see ordered to copy a single French carrack in various sizes, and Henry VIII continued the practice - because until introduction of heavy broadside artillery this was a very successful design - and all of them purchased much ships abroad.

If indeed the stability problem had been perceived after the sinking of the Mary Rose and if there was a targeted effort to find a design solution to it (as opposed to girdling/furring a ship after building), the information may have been obtained from many different sources simultaneously, including professional migration, espionage operations, etc.

7 hours ago, Waldemar said:

And this is why there was such widespread and rapid adoption of this Mediterranean specificity in Mathew Baker's time.

English kings, including Henry VII and Henry VIII traditionally relied, besides the local shipwrights, on Portuguese masters. IIRC, most Portuguese designs into the 18-th/19th centuries are closer to "northern" tradition, but during the reign of the Queen Mary London was full of Spanish retinue of Philip Habsburg, and I was extremely surprised to realize at some point that for long five years it was he and his administration who managed most of England's affairs. This - at least partly - could explain the technological pivot.

1 hour ago, Waldemar said:

for a faithful reproduction of the underwater part of the hull they would have needed the following set of data from this alleged agent

1 hour ago, Waldemar said:

cites an extant document of this nature and from this very period.

Many thanks for compiling this detailed list, especially in comparison with contemporary document.

It shows the relative ease with which a ship design could have been transferred - a scrap of paper with innocuous numbers would suffice, as opposed to large and cumbersome scale drawings - and, I suppose, it is possible to assume there would have been some code or indicator as to which design method was used by the builder of the original ship.

I see at least two English ships on the Cowdray engraving with apparent additional side timbering:

But the Great Harry is not one of them.

1 hour ago, Waldemar said:

I will also take this opportunity to attach the paper by R. C. Anderson dated 1960

👀

The Woolwich ship, the Sovereign of 1487, demonstrates a similar sharp turn of the hull near the gripe forward as evident from this photograph of the wreck:

The photo is taken from Sovereign of the seas : the seventeenth-century warship, 2011 by James Sephton.

Together with the comparison of the midship section of Sovereign with the Mary Rose, this reinforces the similarity of the design of both ships.

For the tragic history of the wreck see here:

https://thewreckoftheweek.com/tag/sovereign-1487/

Can you describe a format that could have been used to transfer the design from one place to another, if it was not done graphically? 

What would have to be written on that piece of paper that an English agent brought from France describing the Colombe, so that English shipbuilders could unpack into a hull shape and be confident that the result matches the original?

5 hours ago, Martes said:

Alexander McKee - King Henry VIII’s Mary Rose (1973)

Those quotes also underline the careful attention given to the forms of the ship hulls already at this time, with navies watching each other's designs and wide exploitation of proven and successful variants.

On 5/22/2025 at 10:39 PM, Waldemar said:

there is an interesting juxtaposition of cross-sections of two important wrecks dating from the “pre-Mediterranean” period in England on an equal scale — the Mary Rose 1511 and the so-called Woolwich ship (possibly Sovereign 1487).

It should be noted that the design of the Mary Rose was not borne in vacuum.

Apart from an inventory which gives the numbers of her masts and yards, there are only two clues to the Regent’s design, a building warrant which states that she is to be made “like unto a ship called the Columbe of France” (of which nothing is known either) and a note that she was made by a “novel construction … with ordnance and fittings”. For the Sovereign we know even less. Apart from an inventory which lists the number of masts and yards,[2] there is only a mention in 1525 that she is in bad condition but worth repair because “the form of which ship is so marvellously goodly that great pity it were that she should die”.

The “novel construction” of the Regent could refer to a change from clinker building to carvel or to the introduction of the square stern which occurred generally about this time. Perhaps it was the answer to the mounting of high-velocity, long-range guns in the bows of galleys, which in a calm could manoeuvre to fire into the weak and unprotected sterns of the great sailing ships. The obvious defensive answer was to mount heavy guns in the sterns of the carracks, and more of them; and the only way to provide space for a rearward-firing battery was to make the stern square.

...

The best, he thought, was his own command, the Mary Rose. “Sir, she is the noblest shipp of sayle and grett shipp at this hour that I trow be in Christendom. A shipp of 100 tone wyl not be soner at her … abowt then she.”

With these qualities, plus proven success in battle, it is not surprising that the design was continued. As replacement for the burnt Regent, a scaled-up version of the Mary Rose was ordered to be built. Called at first the “Gret carrik” Imperyall, she was later named the Henry Grace de Dieu, but nowadays is more commonly referred to as the Henry Grace à Dieu or Great Harry.

Alexander McKee - King Henry VIII’s Mary Rose (1973)

There is a clear succession of design evaluation here, from the French original (the carrack Columbe) through the Regent and larger Sovereign (the parts of which are known as the Woolwich ship), the Mary Rose and ultimately the Great Harry.

McKee - who is responsible for the finding of the ship and raising her - made an unparalleled search in contemporary documents in order to locate and identify the wreck.

Concerning weight, I suppose heavy artillery + high castles + a lot of heavy infantry combined with insufficient ballast and stores in the hold (because there was no intention for a long voyage and they probably had to reduce the weight of the stores not to raise the waterline even more) brought about the result.

There is a question of how the larger Great Harry (that is assumed to have been built to the same, only enlarged design) had survived.

I am inclined to attribute it to either a miracle or much better seamanship, because she was as overloaded and carried her gunports probably as close to the waterline as the Mary Rose. But she was larger.

Note that the Great Harry is the only ship on the Cowdray engraving of the battle of the Solent that has the guns so low to the water.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/cjb22222222/16179732864

The French fleet

the rest of the English fleet

So I assume the overloaded Harry is a faithful depiction.

2 hours ago, Waldemar said:

However, this does not mean increasing the breadth of the hull per se or by any means, but ideally this had to be done in such a way as to “maximise” the breadth above the draught line (typically 2–3 feet) while keeping it as intact as possible at the water level itself.

But you have increased the width on the max breadth level, i.e. the exact same place where the waterline was located at her latest configuration. And even Gresham ship shows that the furring specifically raises the max breadth of the hull above the original level.

4 hours ago, Waldemar said:

while for the forward half of the hull these radii are variable, equal to the corresponding lower breadth sweeps.

In practice this gives a single arc for both sweeps forward?

7 hours ago, kruginmi said:

this is a conundrum of the original kit and not realizing how off the kit was.

Yes, I thought it's the kit problem.

FWIW, the easiest solution would be to shut the incorrect ports and holes off, and just paint them in the more correct places afterwards. That won't fix the shape of the forecastle, but still give better appearance in the end.

It's probably a bit late comment, but I think something is off with the position of hawseholes and chase ports. They both appear to be more forward and closer to centerline on most of the plans and on the original ship as well. And the size of the chase port is identical to the regular gunport + angular cut.

Some assorted screenshots. Note the cleaner anti-aliasing enabled by DGVoodoo.

The design convergence and copying allows to easily substitute ships for various navies - some local quirks aside, those models can easily fly British, French, Russian, Spanish, Neapolitan and even Turkish ensigns.

Two frigates, light and heavy

A typical French frigate in British service with bomb-converted corvettes

a post-war razee with raked elliptical stern

On 2/24/2025 at 9:04 PM, CCClarke said:

Fully immersive, excellent graphics, with customizable, real-world scenarios and weapons.

Thanks, I am obviously aware of this game, and of probably all others in this genre up to Harpoon and North Atlantic 86.

But you would note that CMO is concentrated around different features, with the 3d graphics being very secondary to tactical simulation. Also, creating customized units and weapons is an immense headache there.

It seems I had a kind of a stylistic breakthrough - I found a way to combine the Soviet aesthetics of the 1134B (Kara) cruiser and the British Type 82 Bristol -

into one:

And practically all it took was a single stroke of a pen. I simply enclosed the lower part of Kara's superstructure with the outer hull, leaving the original sheer line as a knuckle:

Escort cruiser and helicopter ops:

And I even went as far as placing landing lights that weren't present on the original model:

The more or less final design for "as completed" Escort Cruiser, with rounded edge of the foredeck and other small corrections:

3 hours ago, sketty said:

Great work and beautiful models, it's amazing how such an old game engine can still run them.

Thanks

It was a great surprise for me at some point - not all old engines are that forgiving. There are some local quirks, of course, but still, it handles dozens of hulls in a scenario like a charm.

3 hours ago, sketty said:

Just a question, though; do you plan on ever releasing this? At least partially? The game is great fun but the current models are an eyesore.

 

(Sorry if this has been asked before, I probably missed some messages here)

*sigh* since I started the project around 2018 you are (checks notes) the second person to ask this. But frankly, I don't know. I constantly edit the models and there are several I'd really have to finish before considering a real release (Sane-designed 74 and 80-gun ships for example). Also I think from time to time to port the models over to Unity and run them on Ceto ocean, but that would mean rewriting the whole game logic. Considering the amount of public interest that's a bit bleak prospect. Or I simply have no idea where to get this interest.

https://www.rmg.co.uk/collections/objects/search/fubbs

https://www.rmg.co.uk/collections/objects/rmgc-object-66391

https://www.rmg.co.uk/collections/objects/rmgc-object-459439

Note that the plan has a second sheet with some internal arrangements.

And inevitable corrections after extensive testing.

Moved the anchors a bit higher, corrected the curve of the stem, widened the black waterline stripe a little.

Because it's all about how you read the silhouette at various lighting, camera angles and distances.

The Command Cruiser at sea: