Martes

Thanks, I am really glad you like them. Hopefully I will convert the flush-decked version today or tomorrow and show her sailing as well. The Royal Navy had quite a lot of ships based on the Courageux, so making the Colossus as a base was a little bit of a cunning plan on my part (although I was completely unaware of the scale of the copying work that was going on in the Admiralty when I chose which 74-gun ship to make), I just have to maintain a list of precise transformations in case I have to correct something and reimport the change on all the derivative models.

A preliminary test of the Blake under sail:

As I already said, the completed hull of the Colossus presents a lot of interesting possibilities. Among other things, the hull can be stretched by inserting a parallel section in the middle, and the Colossus turns into the Blake class: Despite being almost 8 feet longer (180' instead of 172' 3"), it may be a little tricky to spot the difference - note the Blake has more space before and after the battery and an additional upper deck port. This model can represent practically any "long" 74, still smaller than 80-gunners and slimmer than the Temeraire-class ships. Another option, very slightly less historical, is to stretch the hull without the roundhouse, since I have it anyway, but this time the resulting ship would not be considered a frigate, but a full-fledged two-decker with armed spar deck, less only the upper tier of the cabins. The Royal Navy, if I recall correctly, had only one major ship of the line in this configuration, the Plantagenet, which was of a different design but very close in size (plus the St. Lawrence on the Great Lakes, but that's completely different story), so the model will have to do at least for now. The paint scheme is relatively unusual for Royal Navy and is closer to Danish or Russian ships, but it's not to say it was not used at all (at least it appears on a number of engravings) and it suits the design perfectly well.

Interesting, that on two versions of the image, the sail is of different size. On the graphical, first image, it's bottom is near where the lower, main staysail should end on the foremast, and it's upper end is closer to the main topmast, and on the painting from artuk it is more or less identical to the maintopmast staysail from the plans. Interesting, how effective it would be - both under the circumstances and in general.

It still looks larger on the first picture, but it is close and could have been possibly enlarged. Which corvette is the plan for, by the way?

I looked up that much (L below), but isn't it about 1.5 to 2 times larger than the regular depiction of it? Or should it be written off to artist interpretation?

Beakhead, IIRC. And the wall behind it is the beakhead bulkhead. As each of them is actually a pair (see Intrepid again), you can divide each of them to two and spread them so they cover as much area as possible. Also their thickness is slightly less near the keel and can be slightly wider towards the wale. The French did not use this method, they had straight vertical pairs up to the hawse pieces at the time, so you can rely on the British sources at this place. One thing of note - the Constitution has her straight vertical pairs until the first gunport (as opposed the Intrepid that had them starting from the forward end of the second gunport of the lower deck), and you can, I think, safely follow that example and make at least two of the cant pairs actually straight. The rest of the hull until the last gunport should therefore be evenly distributed with pair-gap, pair-gap. Very small gaps. But yes, it already begins to look much better

Exactly, it's an enlarged spanker, not an enlarged jib as I thought initially.

Problem is this is about the only depiction I saw of such sail for the period, or I seriously missed something.

I understand it's not uncommon now, lots of large yachts seem to use something of a kind. But was it uncommon then?

It's kind of two times larger than regular main staysails, and is fixed not to the mainmast, but to main topmast.

The idea was to create a walkable and potentially interactive environment, getting as close to Hornblower experience as possible (which proved to be quite claustrophobic at places). But that would have required a completely new game development.

The original file was at Bonhams, I think, under the title "A frigate under tow down the Avon Gorge". But I can't find it now, not on the fly at least. A very similar image, though, is on ArtUK site: https://artuk.org/discover/artworks/the-avon-gorge-at-sunset-188005 And is attributed to Nicholas Pocock. However, when I look closely, it may be possible that the sail is not like a jib, but has a vertical cut forward and is additionally fixed to the foremast somewhere under the top. So it begs the question - whether this was a standard sail supplied to ships for such situations, to emulate fore-and-aft rig (and how effective it could have been?) or this is a local captain's initiative and improvisation?

Does anybody have any idea what the sail on the mainmast is? It looks like an oversized jib.

Seeing all the Indefatigable craze going on, I remembered I had an unfinished model of the ship I did back in 2017. It included quite a lot of details, but I couldn't get past the lower deck as I realized there is no way I would handle all the texturing even if I have most of the yet unplaced meshes at hand, and then moved to another game which had very different model requirements. But I thought I could still show it off. The strange grey cylinders are human-size for scale and comparison. And if anyone would want to give it a go, I can probably share the files.

Pair by pair, as each frame on your screenshot is in fact two frames combined together. Note about the cant frames forward. At that time it appears the standard was to use them up to the beakhead (Intrepid - and remember, your ship is +/- the size of a 64 with unarmed lower deck) Or the catheads, which is the same when the bow is round (Constitution) So I would suggest to rotate and compress the pairs depicted forward like this: It would not be 100% accurate (it can never be, we don't know the real parameters of the frames), but it will resemble real structure closely enough.

If Constitution is of any reference, it appears that she has a) cant frames, British style, combined with b) very densely positioned frame pairs, French style, but with almost no spaces between them And, again, if I remember correctly, the British considered Chesapeake "overbuilt for her size", meaning she had even more wood than a British frigate of similar size would be composed of. North America had no shortage of wood, but in several, especially early, cases it was just not seasoned enough and prone to rot. In short, I tend to think that the frames you have on the plans (if they have any connection to real structure _at all_, since they look as based on British "as taken" plan, and the British did not record the plan stations as correlated with actual frame positioning, rather simply measuring the shape of the ship at certain distances from the perpendiculars) represent pairs (i.e should be divided to two different, but adjacent structures), shown with pairs between them omitted for modelling purposes. Additionally, note that Harold Hahn himself writes in his book 'Ships of the American Revolution and their models' that his plans are highly stylised, primarily in intention to build models faster and for aesthetics. This leaves the question of hull ends. Because the spacing between the cant frames is also totally unrealistic and has to be, unfortunately, completely reworked - either referencing British contemporary models or (if you find it) a structure from Constitution. Also, note that Hahn's reconstruction has also economized on the transoms: comparing to both to British examples and the Constitution.

Just a little bit. But there is a manner of making framed models with omitting one or several of the frames each iteration, so it may be a little dangerous to fall for that and take that as the real structure. And it's best to notice early. Also, IIRC, the term "main frames" refers to the pairs of frames in British structures, and in that sense all the frames in French structure are "main". The single frames are called "filler frames". But the composition of the two frames in the pair is different. One would have a single floor extending to both sides, the other would look like your last screenshot. Although I am not sure you want to go that deep into the structure

If by using the term "main frame" you mean each gap is filled by a secondary frame it is possible. Also, each frame is not solid and consists of several parts, main or not. If not, however, consider two factors. First, here is an example of contemporary British frigate (the Triton of 1773), which was considerably smaller: https://www.rmg.co.uk/collections/objects/rmgc-object-83032 Or a contemporary British 64-gunner (a ship of a comparable size): https://www.rmg.co.uk/collections/objects/rmgc-object-66486 The French framing differed in having no cant framing on the ends (they were all vertical) and having each pair placed together (and not 2-1-1-2 or 2-1-1-1-2 as the British did). And look in the thread here. https://modelshipworld.com/topic/33702-frames-on-early-18th-century-french-ships/ Even the French construction in very extreme cases had a ratio of 2:1 wood:space. Usually it would be between 4:1 and 5:1. Your model shows 1:1. Even brigs did not have such a light structure. Is the room-and-space parameter known for the Confederacy, just in case?

Are you absolutely sure about the frame structure? Do those frames, depicted on the plan, represent single frames or pairs, and are you sure there should not be another frame between them that was omitted for model style purpose? I have seen at least one model of the Confederacy that shows very different set of frames: Taken from here: https://www.shaffers-ships.com/usf-confereracy.html The structure depicted here is British style, with pairs separated by filling frames. It may be possible (I don't know) that the ship could have been built by French style, where there are only pairs separated by slightly wider gaps, but it is very unlikely to be as you have on your model now.

And sailing test:

Finished yet another iteration of Cambridge - the same fix of the fore part, more or less, that was applied to most of the ships already, with various little adjustments to head rails and texture. If more detailed testing will not reveal serious deficiencies, it will be possible to begin backporting the hull to make a new version of Christian VII... And possibly, something else.

I wonder how peer-review system passed a reconstruction that does not provide a clear comparison to the original and did not attempt to compare 3d meshes of both.

RMG has a set of deck plans, should you need them, and an original lines taken off her. https://www.rmg.co.uk/collections/object?vessels[0]=Confederate (captured 1781)

@Richard Endsor, As an initiator, in a sense, of this thread - as it was I who suggested to @Waldemar to look into this plan, I feel an obligation to reply. When we saw your interest in the topic we were delighted and hoped that - knowing you were a leading expert in the field and working on the subject - you may provide some information that you possess but which have eluded us, the ship's timbers and their sizes, for once, or anything regarding reconstructing the profile. Were you reluctant to share this information, you could have left us to play our games of numbers and lines, and stayed a celestial being, an author to be cited and referenced. You could have waited until we ran - if indeed we ran - into a wall and deliver the coup-de-grace. We had a plan B exactly for this event. And if we didn't run into a wall - well, there would be a one more version of reconstruction, and the final comparison would still depend on whether any parts of the original ship's structure are raised and measured, provided they survive that long. We had a discussion here not very long ago concerning the difference between the reconstructed replica of the Hermione (which was built referencing a contemporary treatise by Morineau) and the remains of the real ship, which case is even more striking as the remains of the ship were measured and known before the replica project began. In my worst nightmare couldn't I imagine to see a thread degrading into a comment referring to somebody's knowledge of any language or personal traits with an impossible amount of condescending as a final argument in a dispute over existing and readable texts, even with understanding this comment is fueled by an obvious conflict of interest. I sincerely hope that the above comment will be removed and forgotten.