Who is wrong? DeAgostini vs Mantua/Sergal Sovereign of the Seas.

[Ulises Victoria]

Who is wrong???

 

DeAgostini SotS:

MODEL DETAILS

1:84 scale
OVERALL DIMENSIONS

Length: 1100mm  
Height: 900mm
Beam: 400mm              

 

Mantua/Sergal SotS:

1:78 scale

Length: 1100mm

 

????

[PietFriet]

Best bet is that they are both wrong😏

[ccoyle]

Lengths on real ships and their model counterparts are notoriously tricky items. Are we talking about waterline length, overall length, length on deck, length between perpendiculars, or some other dimension? And what source material did the kit designers use to establish scale?

[ccoyle]

Plus, if the ship is moving at speeds approaching the speed of light, special relativity shows us that its length will contract in its direction of movement. 😮

[Ulises Victoria]

I always thought that the measurements given in kit boxes were taken from the most protruding part in the rear, to the tip of the bowsprit. I mean something like what you'd measure to build a case, for example.

 

[Jaager]

On 5/27/2021 at 12:51 PM, ccoyle said:

Lengths on real ships and their model counterparts are notoriously tricky items.

And in the 17th century the length that seems to be in lists of ships and their dimensions is "touch".  That is the length of the keel that actually sits on the baseline.  The additional length forward involves - for most of the century - the arc of a circle, whose center is on a line perpendicular to the baseline at the fore end of the keel touch.  

It increased  the length on the gundeck ~20%.  The sternpost was also at an angle, which also added a few feet at the gundeck level.   "Improvements" towards the end of the century changed the forward part from the arc of a circle to a more acute angle that may have been a complex curve.

 

There once was a kit that was designed from plans that used touch from a table of dimensions as the value for LBP.  This made things a bit crowded at the waist.  I think it was HMS Prince.

 

Look for other discussions here about Sovereign - especially the one about John McKay's book.

[catopower]

On 5/27/2021 at 9:59 AM, ccoyle said:

Plus, if the ship is moving at speeds approaching the speed of light, special relativity shows us that its length will contract in its direction of movement. 😮

But, their heights would remain unchanged!

[allanyed]

Ulises,

 I suspect Piet is correct.  Also, which version, 1637 (beam 46'6"; keel 127') 1660 (beam 47' 6"; keel 127') or 1685, (beam 48'4"; length on the gun deck -not the keel- 167' 9") Assume the length of her gundeck was 51.13 meters after her rebuild in 1683.   (51.13)X1000/1100 = scale of 46.48.   Both kits  mention the ship being originally built in 1637 but neither states which version they are supposedly replicating in the kit.  If you look at the contemporary drawing held at RMG (Sovereign of the Seas (1637) (ZAZ0047) the length from the aft of the taffrail to the tip of the figure head is 2,595"   If this length was 1100mm, the scale would be 1:60.   Based on this, I think both kits are probably using the sprit and aft tip of the mizzen yard which of course varied with how it was set. 

If you can find the maximum beam of the hull of model, you can figure out the real scale of the model more easily.  

Allan