Sovereign of the Seas by 72Nova - Airfix - PLASTIC

[Ian_Grant]

Michael, obviously your idea of fun differs from mine. 😁 What was it Andersen said?......"The sprit topmast backstay was one of the places where the early 17th century rigger let himself go." 

 

Just kidding; I look forward to seeing it in the "flesh".

 

Ian

[Kenchington]

2 hours ago, 72Nova said:

the sprit topmast backstay

Before you go too far ahead with that, I'm going to offer a thought on an associated detail.

 

We have two contemporary images of the rigging around the inboard end of Sovereign's bowsprit, one in the drawing that was long in the Pierpont Morgan collection (too often ascribed to one of the van de Veldes, though almost certainly prepared in 1638 -- just possibly by Peter Pett himself) and the other in the Payne engraving. Those two images are very obviously closely related, the one copied from the other. I won't repeat my reasons here but I am confident that the Morgan drawing was one of the sources from which the engraving was prepared, rather than the other way about.

 

The beakhead shown in the Morgan is:

Note the mainstay collar, the gammonings and the pairs of deadeyes tensioning six lines that lead upwards and forwards immediately abaft the tail of King Edgar's horse -- their extent cut off as the drawing does not show the rig beyond stumps of masts and bowsprit.  Note also that those six lines (whatever they were) have no ratlines shown. And finally I will point out that, as was universal at the time, the bowsprit is set to starboard of the stemhead (identifiable by the cupid astride a lion set atop the stem). That offset meant that the six lines could be on the ship's centreline and yet pass clear of the bowsprit, without chafing against it.

 

As for Payne's representation of the same thing:

The mainstay collar has been reduced to a loose loop that looks more like handrails for men descending the steps into the beakhead. The gammonings are still there if less realistically shown. So are the six lines abaft the horse, though they have been reduced to five and each doubled (as though there are two ends, one to starboard and the other to larboard). They are shown reaching to the underside of the bowsprit and no further, while there is just a hint of ratlines on them.

 

Most (maybe all) modern reconstructions, whether in 2D or as 3-dimensional models, interpret those lines much as Payne showed them, though each passes over the top of the bowsprit, while the ratlines provide a sort of ladder for men to climb from the beakhead to the bowsprit. Yet that makes no sense. The bowsprit was held down by the gammonings (and the rigging of the spritsail yard) and did not need extra shrouds. Men going out to the spritsail or spritsail topsail yards will have climbed along the bowsprit (as Payne showed one man doing), not walked out along the narrow, wet and dangerous beakhead before climbing a "ladder".

 

I suggest that the engraving misrepresents what was on the ship and that what the Morgan drawing portrayed was the lower ends of six stays that held the forestay down and back against the forward pull of the sprit topmast backstays. I further suggest that, when someone (I'm inclined to blame Heywood, designer of Soveregn's decorations) combined the details of the drawing with a different source that showed the rig, in preparation for Payne to engrave his image, he didn't know what to do with those six lines and so ended them at the bowsprit. Seeing no obvious purpose for them there, they were given ratlines. The outcome was just one of the multiple technical errors in the engraving.

 

There's no basis for any definite conclusions but Payne's version, as so often realized in model form, just doesn't seem sensible. I think that alternative arrangements merit some thought and, if not stays to take the pull of the sprit topmast backstays, some other hypothesis should be considered!

 

 

Trevor