ROYAL LOUIS 1668 by Heinrich der Seefahrer - a Heller-SR long-term kitbashing project

[Heinrich der Seefahrer]

46 minutes ago, Hubac's Historian said:

Yes, I made a poor assumption; your shipyard is full!  Colbert would be jealous!

 

I like your layout techniques.  It’s a fine start to the drawing.

😅 "jealous" 

 

@Hubac's Historian okay marc, on the very beginning I have to look precisely for the middels  and the needele of the pair of compasses are put into a hole I picked in with a very fine needle before to meet the lines crossing mostly exact. Hopefully this will exorcise errors, faults and inaccurates and keep them out of the pice of paper.

 

I'm not as far on the track as I hoped to be yesterday's night - but I'm qualitatively ON track that is most important.

 

"A good pice of craftsmanship always needs a craftsmans good pice of lifetime!"

 

is an old German saying (...told to be from

Hans Sachs [1494-1576]) 

Edited April 16, 2019 by Heinrich der Seefahrer
Added picture - as a Wagnerian I just had to do!

[Heinrich der Seefahrer]

Hello friends of the ROYAL LOUIS,

 

ther is a double problem with a drawing of Pierre Puget...

 

I. Mirrowed drawing?

it is mirrowed. The trident of the Neptun is suddenly oh the Starboard side!

 

On all other drawings we do find him on the port side... (as it is of no use to repeat all the pictures uploaded as a doublette again, I ask you kindly to scroll upwards a bit.)

 

But what is more interesting than this is the DOOR! Yes - there is an admirals entrance on the gunport leading towards the mainmast in the upper deck -

 

the rope of the mainsail makes the indentification so complex. This as it camoflaged the door with the wale. And if this is the admirals entrance it has to be on the starbord side - so I did always learn.

 

Hmmm so the Neptun is on the "wrong side" so the picture is mirrowed. Is this the drawing for an engraving palte - that was lost or never realised? I dont know but what do our historians say?

 

I have asked at the Albertina at vienna fo a reprint of the drawing yesterday, to be able to enlarge it in the copyshop easier.

 

II. Guns number...

 

When counting right - on the starboard side I get 44 guns (if I take any shadow on the bow as a gunportlid with gunbarrel.)

 

"So we do get 88 pieces of ordonace at all!"

 

but all the list tell us about 100 to 104 barrels. So what is wrong in here?

Even in the Hayet drawing we do finf 48 guns per side (if we add the 2 under the transom as an additive pair of ordonance) it will be a summ of 100... no barrel more. So the swifle guns may be to add to get 104 barrels by being tricky??? (Also here the Neptun is on the portside of the transom.)

 

III. nearly interesting story told by the way:

The LD bears firstly 28 pieces of fourtyeight (48!) pounder bronze guns - being so heavy that they were unsuable (eating too much payload?) very fast given away to the coastal ordonance to be replaced by usual 32 pdfs. 

 

 

[Hubac's Historian]

I think that the variances you are noting between Hayat’s sketch, the stern drawing of the RL, and the port broadside view of the ship under sail, owe to the fact that that ship under sail is the Monarque, and not the RL.  I have presented my case for this, ad nauseum, on my build page, but on the baseline level - the 88 gun armament is more in line with that of the Monarque than the RL.

 

In all the particulars, great and small, this Puget drawing is identical to this second Puget drawing, from the starboard quarter.

And this drawing is literally inscribed with the Ship’s name - The Grand Monarque:

As I detail, elsewhere, there is strong first-hand accounting of the appearance of both the Monarque and the RL, which suggests that the ships were virtually identical, excepting for their size and armament.

 

Also, I can see the enlarged main deck port, but I do not think that it is an Admiral’s entry port.  Firstly, the entry port does not seem to have been a feature of French naval architecture, at this time in the 17th century.  When they do exist, though, they provide entry to the middle deck level, which leads directly back to the great cabin, at the stern.  The port you are referencing is on the main deck level.

 

In this other Puget drawing, which may actually be the RL, but it could be the Monarque, there also appears to be an un-armed port in this same location:

The size of the port, though, does not appear to be any larger than the adjacent ports.  Interestingly, none of these portraits show the simple waist ladder that would have - at the very least - made it possible to climb up the ship’s side and over the gunwale.

Edited July 6, 2019 by Hubac's Historian

[Heinrich der Seefahrer]

Hy Marc, thanks for your support. I am still in doubt - do to the LE GRAND MONARQUE / ROYAL LOUIS. There are several arguments I'd like to point out. 

 

LE GRAND MONARQUE / ROYAL LOUIS:

aa.

Most German authors (Richenbach, Priesterjahn et altera, ect.) reffering the Great Monarque as a synonym for the ROYAL LOUIS 1668 - as there was no ship with this name in the lists. I have not got my Richfield book about the 1st and 2nd French Navy with me - so I have to ask you to figure out if the RL1668 has a contemporary ship names LE GRAND MONARQUE of the 2eme or 3eme rang. 

 

 

ab.

I don't think there were two ships with a clear copy of the others  transom: the Thetis and Neptun on the very edges giving a soft shift from the boradside towards the transom.

 

ac.

Very intersting for me is this characteristc quartett of atlants in a row longing over two decks, that only on the Le Brun conceptional drawing is missing.*

 

ad.

All the ships drawings does show a open guardrail with out any enclosed side gallery. Three curved Tritons bracing the UD balcony.

 

DOOR / LADDER:

ba.

The door is an interesting fact - as in Dafis wounderful thread "Victory ....and beyond" in the German text we discussed ethe development of adminals entrances was examined with great care. So I remenber there were several solutions from the H.M.S. MORDAUNT onwarts. Doors cut into two by a saw groove horicontaly (as a horse door) in particular when the door was used as a gunport also. The pure entrance doors were cut in the middle perpendicular in half.

 

bb.

The ladder started on the lower transom as a rope ladder for the ordonary seamaen and along the board side for officers and captains. To shorten this painful journey to the often quite old and rickety admirals entrance doors were established by cutting out the gunports downwards. The doors could not be too deep in the tiers due to leckage matters an you wrote, Marc.

 

bc.

The early entrances hat a small grating with two rail guards and an open side towards aft. but also there seems to bee a rope ladder before a wooden row of stairs was stablished. This were always with a finger groove in the middle between boardsside and stair to be able to climb up and downwards. 

 

bcc.

 

These wooden stairs were allways parallel towards the CWL said Mondfeld.

And here the proof on the original model of H.M.S. MORDAUNT 1680

 

 

one of the oldest ships with stairs on his side we know is H.M.S. PRINCE. (here the 1672 dated shipyards model from Sience Museum in Kensington). When deas these feature reaches the coasts sides of France?

 

 

On the both sides of ROYAL LOUIS we do miss this feature - okay it is a later rebuild not an original ship yard model.

 

 

 

  the LE DAUPHINE ROYAL 1668 does have this feature of a

 

narrow "stairladder" on its contemporary hullmodel at Rochefort

 

 

As with very much what is single and unique** on the ROYAL LOUIS 1668 this admirals antrance may have been there, too.

So what do you think?

 

_______

*It may be i.m.h.o. they were added by the strong artique influence and sculptural genius of Pierre Puget - so that he would stay at Toulon and doesn't went back to Rome where he has had his wealthy life he left due to the possibility to work at Toulon. In Toulon the dockyards leadership and Le Brun took a lot of influence onto his work and curtails his creativity due to ships stability sapects. InLoui Le Roux d'Infrevill worote to Paris: "If he (Pierre Puget) woud get influence on the ships decoration the hole will be ruined."  Also the heavy wight of the figural ornamentation made inforcements of the inner structure inevitable.

 

**

"I AM UNIQUE OVER THE THE WAVES

AND MY KING IS IT IN THE WORLD"

devise plate mounted on the mizzen mast.

 

Edited July 7, 2019 by Heinrich der Seefahrer
...screaming old people behind me pickung up my headsets from my room as I'm writing on a public pc in the lobby.

[EJ_L]

One thing I would caution on in using these older models on details is that they were often built to show the lines of the ship, her potential sailing qualities and to some extent, the decorative figures on them. Common, everyday or "expected" details were commonly left off the model as anyone viewing them would be expected to know they would be there. Lack of ladders for example, would be a detail they may have left off as the admiralty board would expect them to be on the ship so there would be no need to place them on the model. 

 

Obviously, if this was a commissioned piece or a gift to someone important, the model would be complete in all details, but most of these were for presentation to the board for approval of ships to be built. Also, most of the models have suffered damage and loss of parts over the years leading to rebuilds. That can easily alter details as the knowledge of if they ever existed is also lost or blurred as in the discussions we are having now. 

 

I think to better clarify what would have been on a particular ship, one needs to look at the service records more than the artwork. In this case, if the ship in the year it is being modeled, was to serve as an admiral's ship or house the king, then an admiral's door would be expected. If it was just another ship in the fleet, than perhaps not. Ladders would have been on the ship no matter the use as they had to be there for function. A detail easily overlooked in artistic renderings, but not left off in practice. Even smaller vessels had ladders, larger ones had to have them.

 

One more thing to consider is that ships of the day carried experienced carpenters and mates that could erect or tear dome almost any part of the ship quickly and efficiently with great skill. A feature such as an admiral's door and the associated platform could have been one of those features that was set up only when it was to be used. Due to the delicate position of that landing over the side of the ship, it is not a far stretch to think that it was only set up if the ship were to receive an admiral or king and taken down and stored below decks when not in use. That could be a factor when looking at the different paintings with some including the door and others not.

[Heinrich der Seefahrer]

Thanks @EJ_L

That was very interesting and RL1668 was really very short before the kings visit in 1669/70. So a door is at hand... I dont think the king would like to enter his levante ship over some rope ladder - on some galley I saw a stairway hanging down on some easy and aesthetic mechanism to rise it easily.

 

I will have a look on the items you figured out. As I am in hospital without my naval libary I do feel quite uninformed or ill from some kind of stupidity...

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Heinrich der Seefahrer]

Today I was waiting for 2.5hours and found so some time to doodle arround...  so here my statical profile of a cut through the transom with a first idea of yhe placing of the balkonies and adding of some rods to fix the figures to the ships structure. As I know the sculpturist he would have built 3/4relief figure of the king and 1/2 of the two arabs sitting bondaged to his sides.

[Heinrich der Seefahrer]

And I made her device/motto on the miszzen mast's plate to the sentence in my signature: