Waldemar

Yes, it's entirely possible, albeit somewhat unpractical. Firstly, most of the data on this ship is scattered in many documents concerning the entire fleet, and secondly, you may not have any use of them as they require extremely difficult transcription and translation. It would be more convenient for me to provide ready-made information that I have already derived of these documents and published more than ten years ago. As an example, I include a copy (both in low and high resolution as PDF) of a document dated 4 May 1624, just after the purchase of the ship and its delivery to Götheborg from Netherlands (Inventarium oppå det skeppet Papegoian, Riksarkivet, Stockholm). There you can read, among other things, that the Papegoian was simply referred to as a square-tuck/transom ship (spegell skipp, or in German Spiegelschiff), that it was then one year old, had one boat (referred to as a galley), length between posts of 86 feet, depth in hold of 11 1/4 feet, an upper deck (bognet, or in Dutch bovenet) 5 feet above the main deck, 14 gun carriages, sails: mainsail with bonnet, foresail with bonnet, spritsail, mizzen sail, main topsail, fore topsail, sprit topsail (blindhe krÿtz segell), (main) topgallant sail. And some other, supposedly less important information (like length of cables and ropes, size of flags etc.). So, if you need just the ready data, I can provide them quite fast, but if you need original documents, it will take much longer to locate and gather them from a set of hundreds of scans. Inventarium Papegoian 1624.pdf

Good question. Indeed, additional effort is sometimes necessary to get a decent curve. – 1st method: simply approximating by eye (sufficient in many cases and evidently used by period designers; allows a slight, deliberate modification of this curve at the stem area), – 2nd method: by defining an additional point on the middle line (better explained in the attached sketch), – 3rd method: by placing the first defining point closer to the stem (the rest of the procedure is the same). And, by the way, the factor can be other than 0.5, yet it is the most convenient number.

The monography of the French frigate La Néréïde 1722 is now being in preparation by the author of many other fine monographs – Jean-Claude Lemineur, and of my utmost curiosity is the exact way the shape of La Néréïde's hull was reconstructed by him. It should be noted that the source plans do not include a line plan of the entire hull, only the profile of the main frame and the longitudinal shape of the vessel. In parallel with the creation of the monograph, an attractive model of the ship is being built by Michele. While it is not quite possible to assess well the hull lines directly from the photos of the model, I get the impression J.-C. Lemineur has taken a similar approach as in his reconstruction of Le François 1683, in which he employed the quadrant type curve for the bow shape. Yet, upon making my own reconstructions, I have discovered that such a curve, while looking good and being very useful for recreating many other parts of the hull, never works satisfactorily for the ships' bows. To put it the other way, it can never be aligned with the corresponding lines in any contemporary ship plans (notwithstanding the many possible modifications of this curve). In turn, the method of deriving this curve shown at the bottom of the attached sketch almost always gives the desired results. This half-distance derived curve can be also modified in many ways to get, say, sharper or blunter bows. Strangely, I have not found this method in any contemporary works on shipbuilding I have consulted, and it was reverse-engineered by trial-and-error.

Okay, if you request it, I will create a new log on this in the Nautical/Naval History section, so as not to disturb Michele's log. Easy, because I kept the backup.

Hello Roman, What a coincidence! You built a ship that took part in a battle in which the flagship was the ship I am currently reconstructing (Polish/German Sankt Georg). An account of this reconstruction can be found on this forum. It is probably too late for this now, as you have already built your model, but in the course of my historical research I also found in the archives in Stockholm quite a few source documents concerning the Papegojan. Amongst other things, these documents contain information on the ship's dimensions, number of sails, armament and crew numbers in the various years of the ship's service. I would follow the 'sea' trials of your Papegojan with the utmost interest.

And also try to look at it from the point of view of an archaeologist doing the documentation. To take my example: I once took measurements of gun barrels in a museum and discovered that, among many other errors, they are not round in cross-section but oval. It would have been unnecessary nonsense to try to reflect this irregular deformation in the dimensioned line drawings. I averaged the measurements, noting this fact in the description, and gave the measurement deviations.... Now ask yourself: how accurately would I want to make a scale model of such a deformed barrel (diameter deformations up to 8 mm and irregular along the length of the barrel). Take into account that all the cannon barrels were deformed in many different ways, even those of the same series.

In such dilemmas, it is also very important for me to answer the question: what was the intention of the original builders? As opposed to what they happened to come up with.

You have already received good advice above. Even the best reconstruction models made by archaeologists are always only an approximation, and a model 100% identical to the original has yet to be built, if that is at all possible. That said, first and foremost you have to decide for yourself whether you want to build a model closer to the archaeological interpretation or a nicer looking display model. As you have already discovered, archaeological documentation is not always precise and you have to interpret. Where numerical data and graphics conflict, I tend to favour the numbers, but not in a fundamentalist way. A lot depends on the context and your choices about the nature of the model.

A, okay, thank you. It was not quite visible on the posted renders. And these unusual scales? 1:22 and 1: 44. Does it mean that the Venetian foot from this period had 11 inches?

This is what I like best - the pure lines of the hull. The thickness of all the frame elements is the same, from the keel up to the top (sheer) line. Is this a deliberate simplification or does it show actual practice?

Druxey, you received a reply, however I later decided to delete my posts regarding this curve, sorry. After all, this is a forum mainly for ship modellers and not geometry enthusiasts or analysts.

A big 'like' awaits completion of the work 🙂

Thank you Michele for starting this log. And you are right – a Venetian capital ship is a real gem among all other ships-of-the-line of this period. I have a special attitude towards Venetian shipbuilding in the early modern era (meaning 15-17th cent.), as I consider it as a kind of ancestor for the later constructions of the north of the continent. Back to the Venetian 18th century ships-of-the-line. Somewhat ironically, the best monograph on them I have in my home library, among quite many other books on Venetian shipbuilding, is the work in German by an Austrian Karl Klaus Körner – Das Erbe der Serenissima. Rekonstruktion und Restaurierung eines venezianischen Linienschiffsmodells von 1794 (Heeresgeschichtliches Museum, Wien 2010). Just from curiosity – have you consulted this monograph too while doing your historical research? I judge this particular work to be of the same high standard as other, much better-known monographs.

I see and am not pressing the issue further. I would only add that you are very lucky to have so many contemporary plans to work with. Thank you very much for your reply, Gérard.

Gérard, So many important and excellent news in your post, thank you very much for them. However, I would try to talk on La Néréïde only, to not risk pushing Michele into the discomfort area 🙂. And the hopes are that Michele would be interested too. Okay – while it is true that La Néréïde main vertical section is quite similar to that of Le Jazon, why not to try to reconstruct the whole hull shape of La Néréïde basing on the known conceptual methods from this period, so splendidly explained by Jean Boudriot in his works? Provided of course that such an attempt would suit the highest rigours of your work. It must be said that it is always some arbitrary choices are simply inevitable in such reconstructions anyway. And the reconstruction of the hull shape by contemporary methods, especially those of B. Ollivier, known to us after all, could be much satisfying and even better than that done for Le François 1683. In this place I must explain that IMHO, while J.-C. Lemineur made an excellent overall job, I am not quite happy with his choice of the curve of the greatest breadth forward in plan (tracé de la lisse du fort avant en plan) and the non-tangential arcs of vertical sections at the height of the greatest breadth line. And I suspect that the general approach adopted would be too detailed and too complex for the 17th century craftsmen/shipbuilders. Having said this, I am waiting impatiently for the monograph of La Néréïde, which is now so beautifully executed by Michele. I expect to find there detailed answers on the so much interesting issue of La Néréïde hull shaping.

Gérard, we are very happy to have a top expert like you on this forum, who have created the world's best and the most reliable ships' plans available. Not sure if I may, but you have also stated the striking news that you have started a monograph of La Néréïde a few years ago. Should we expect two monographs on this ship? Or perhaps you collaborate with J.-C. Lemineur? Or do you work on another monograph now? Or something else? Apologies if my questions are too indiscreet.

Thank you very much Gérard. I found your comments very informative, and the most surprising was your statement that J.-C. Lemineur adapted vertical sections of another ship to make his plans of La Néréïde. This explains much, as until now I have assumed that he has reconstructed the whole hull shape basing on the main frame profile as shown on the original plans/sections of La Néréïde (he had already made a similar try while reconstructing the frigate Le François 1683). Indeed, all the frigate plans show these visually very attractive forecastle 'wings', but only very few of those 'wings' are as much large as in this case, which made me curious. Now it is clear... Thanks again.

And I am curious as to why the forecastle on this ship is so extremely wide at the bow? Unfortunately, just this particular detail can not be derived directly from the original plans of this ship. Is it simply a more or less personal choice of the modern plans designer, J.-C. Lemineur? Perhaps Gérard Delacroix, present on this forum, can answer this?

This frigate has an incredibly sexy hull shape. If this were my build, I suppose I would probably stop building the model at this stage 🙂.

I had another look at the book La Frégate. Marine de France 1650–1850 by Jean Boudriot and Hubert Berti, and have now found 'all' the information on the frigate La Nereïde. The original plans are both extremely detailed and beautiful, and seem to lack only rigging and armament. Even complete drawings of the ship's decorations have survived. Indeed, the source documentation for this frigate is simply a dream.

Thank you very much in advance Michele! I was hoping you would elaborate on this issue.

And it is very interesting to note that in Venice, as late as the 2nd half of the 18th century, large ships were actually still being built with single frames („ad ordinata unica”), despite a comment above that they should be (or actually were?) built with double-frames („a doppia ordinata”).

Many thanks for posting these photos. After a quick browse through my books on the Venetian Navy, I found the following (these particular scans/photos are from a must-have for anyone interested, fantastic modern work – Vascelli e fregate della Serenissima. Navi di linea della Marina veneziana 1652–1797 by Guido Ercole). And I assume that your model is one of these four 1780 class ships shown below. Please don't forget to open a log on this model too. 🙂

Hello Amalio. Just to say, that until recently, I thought it was impossible to build a model of a wooden sailing ship so precisely and beautifully. Thanks.

What Venetian vessel? Is it shown somewhere? From what period and of what type?