La Reale de France by Ferrus Manus - Heller - 1/75 - the Sun King's finest ship

[Ferrus Manus]

Yesterday, I hacked up the two spare awning support pieces and turned them into passable footboards. Today, I decided to start working on the oar benches. 

These are the starboard side oar benches, having had their mold lines scraped and having been painted: 

And installed on the ship: 

I will forego any and all weathering of this whole setup until the port side benches are in, so I can get it all done in one sitting. 

 

For weathering (depending on purpose and extent) I use either Citadel Agrax Earthshade, or (preferably) diluted Folk Arts Antiquing Medium, with the level of dilution varying based on color and extent of weathering. 

[Ferrus Manus]

I repeated the same process on the port side, then weathered the entire thing. 

[Ferrus Manus]

The painted boat gallows and cooking area: 

[Baker]

The floor of the cooking area is usually made of bricks.

[Ferrus Manus]

I thought they were metal plates. You are probably right. 

The cooking area and boat gallows are in place: 

I shaded the "bricks" with a bronze color, then covered them completely in different shades of wood ash. This image better shows the ashes. 

Edited August 6 by Ferrus Manus

[Ferrus Manus]

I prepped the awning supports last night. My modus operandi at this point is to remove all visible mold lines and fill any visible injector marks, where possible. Today, I painted the supports a brown wood color. The reason I did this is because I have found that painting gold straight over unpainted plastic requires about 3-4 coats, and still doesn't look quite right. So, this time I'm trying a new method. 

I intend to put a layer of gold directly over this throughout, and see what happens. 

[Ferrus Manus]

I proceeded to paint them gold (two coats) and glue them onto the ship. 

After around 10 minutes of fiddling, this is as well-aligned as I got them: 

 

Edited August 7 by Ferrus Manus

[Ferrus Manus]

Now that I have finished the stern and all the decorative elements (mostly), I now need to decide where the line between extravagance and utilitarianism will be. I am thinking the line will be close to where it is in the painting. I am thinking the railings will be painted a light brown color, with the stanchions a darker brown. I will be excluding the railing flags. I have a sneaking suspicion that Heller designed the flag layout as would be displayed in a galley festival. Some of the flags, I suspect, would cause serious unwanted windage in normal use, when sailing or rowing. The painting shows very few flags, and seems to depict the Reale in normal operation. Heller sees the railings as being painted the same red color they came molded in, but I disagree.

Edited August 7 by Ferrus Manus

[Ferrus Manus]

I put on the stanchions for the railings after painting them. I would almost rather have painted everything red because I had to absolutely cake paint onto the pieces to get the red plastic to stop showing through. I aligned them decently enough, I think, and had to cut off parts of some of them to get them to fit around the oar supports and thole pins. 

None of these are directly aft of a thole pin, meaning there will be no issue fitting oars at the end. 

Then, I painted and installed the bottom four railing pieces. I still think I would have been better off using wood pieces, as they did not turn out completely straight. 

I doubt the top ones will be this bad, because they weren't as warped on the sprue. Some of the bottom ones looked like snakes when I took a good look at them. 

[Ferrus Manus]

The upper railings: 

They aren't horrible, but they aren't as good as Michael D. managed to get his. I think the main culprit was me pressing too hard on each stanchion when gluing them into place, and the ugly glue-jobs I had to do on several rails, that then got covered with three layers of paint. The re-painting I had to do in areas where the paint was ripped off during gluing didn't help matters. They aren't as offensive in real life as they are in the pictures. 

[Ferrus Manus]

On to the ship's boats. The ship has two boats, a caique and a canot. The caique is the larger one, and I have just taken all the parts for it off of the sprues. 

You know what that looks like to me, on the second thwart? mast partners. You know what that means? Masting and rigging. 

I was originally going to display the caique on the boat gallows and the canot on a separate stand. Now, I think I will rig the caique with whatever sail plan it might have had, and display the canot on the gallows. 

 

[Ferrus Manus]

The context of this is that I am no stranger to doing complex rigs on tiny boats. This is a 1/96 scale model of a fishing smack I made a few months back:

Now a 17th century ship's boat would never have a rig anywhere near this complex, but it is at least worth mentioning that I have been waiting for an excuse to spruce up at least one of the ship's boats. 

A caique, as per Collins Dictionary, possesses a spritsail rig: 

Edited August 8 by Ferrus Manus

[Ferrus Manus]

This is the finalized paint scheme for the caique: 

The locations of pins and eyebolts on the thwarts: 

I might make some more strakes to put in the hull, just to make it look a little better. 

The holes in the hull are for the shrouds and stay. The holes in the midships section are for toggles, which will hold the lower deadeyes of the shrouds in place. The three holes in the bow are the sheaves for the stay lanyard. 

 

Edited August 9 by Ferrus Manus

[Ferrus Manus]

I put in a keelson/stemson, and painted the entire thing: 

[Ian_Grant]

Ferrus, ship's boats look more alive if you add ribs inside the hull; fairly easily done with fine Evergreen plastic strips.

 

Keep up the good work!

[Ferrus Manus]

I added the frames inside the hull using some very light cardboard. 

The frames should be more visible after everything is weathered. After that, the only thing to do before beginning the rigging is put in the mast step, put in the eyebolts/pins, and prep the mast. 

 

Edited August 12 by Ferrus Manus

[Ferrus Manus]

I put in the mast step, glued in the pins and eyebolts (most of them) and chose a yard for the mast. I also did some prep work on the mast. 

Edited August 12 by Ferrus Manus

[Ferrus Manus]

I have now stepped the mast and put in the lower deadeyes using the aforementioned method: 

[Ferrus Manus]

These are the smallest deadeyes I have ever rigged, and so far, I am happy with the first one. the entire deadeye/lanyard system is smaller than the width of my index finger. 

Deadeyes are very simple and easy to rig, and they scale down very well. 

[Ferrus Manus]

The rest of the standing rigging: 

I now have a name for the caique: Elise Royale. Reale, as in a flagship commanded directly by a nation's monarch, seems to have no direct translation to English, at least not that I'm aware of. 

I have a few ideas for what the name of the canot will be. I am unaware as to whether or not ship's boats ever had names of their own in this era, but we can only hope. I am sure that if names existed for ship's boats in this era, they would have fallen completely out of use by the time of the classical age of sail. 

Edited August 13 by Ferrus Manus

[Ferrus Manus]

I have completed the initial mounting of the spritsail yard onto the mast using a standing truss, and rigged the forward tackle. 

My problems with unwanted rotation around the yard's longitudinal axis will be solved with the tension applied by the peak halyard. The raising of the yard tensions the forward tackle, which straightens out the yard. 

[Ferrus Manus]

This is what the finished rigging of the spritsail yard looks like, without rope coils:

I cut the sail out of silkspan, and placed it onto the yard/mast to get a general idea of what it will look like.

Like a gaff sail, you can rig a spritsail in any number of ways. As this is a ship's boat, I will likely only attach it at each of the four corners of the sail. This is owing to the fact that a ship's boat would have to set and take down rigging quickly to be stowed aboard the ship. Shallops at least sometimes went on voyages longer than the jobs a ship's boat would perform would require (John Smith's expedition, Mayflower's shallop, etc) and in those cases, it would make sense to have the sail attached to the mast at the head of the sail. Modern reconstructions use mast hoops and an otherwise flying rig. The head and peak of the sail will have both uphauls and downhauls, and the two lower corners of the sail will belay to the thwarts. 

I drew in the sections of the sail with pencil, then stained the sail in black coffee until it was the correct color. I took advantage of how damp the sail was by forming it to the yard (this boat is on a port tack) with rigging spools as weights. 

This is the finished billow:

Mind you, nothing is attached to anything as of right now. The lines on the sail will be set to keep the billow as intact as possible. I am thinking I might use wood glue to attach the sail to the two ends of the spritsail yard, before belaying any rigging. 

[Ferrus Manus]

This morning, I put the rigging lines on the sail, before gluing the sail itself to the spritsail yard with wood glue. This is the result:

[Ferrus Manus]

I proceeded to belay all of the mainsail's lines. 

[Ferrus Manus]

I finished the rigging of the caique today. I knew before starting work on the stay sail that I had failed to make stay hoops out of rope before rigging the stay. The way I solved this was to tie loops around the stay and a sewing needle (five of them) and then pull the sewing needle out. I also made rope coils for the entire thing. The one issue I have consistently experienced is with the red paint on the exterior. It keeps coming off onto my fingers, at which point I rub it onto various parts of the rigging. It has not been that much of an issue, however. 

The caique has twelve belayed lines and associated rope coils. Because of the positioning of the sails and rigging, it isn't feasible to have the oars sitting on the thwarts, so I will put them on the thole pins as though they were in use. The way I got the stay sail to billow was to put a tiny dot of glue on the starboard fore upper deadeye, and allowed the sail to rest on that, as shown in the pictures. The rudder and anchor, and maybe some moorings lines, are still in order. 

[Ferrus Manus]

The positions of the oars on the thole pins: 

I quickly realized the infeasibility of having the oars sitting on the thwarts, owing to how their size and how many there were. Had they been sitting on the thwarts, the boat would have been unsailable. The other thing I wonder is why a ship's boat that's only slightly larger than a pinnace would need twelve oars? I could see a ship's launch requiring twelve or more rowers, but not this. I would say 3 pairs would be sufficient, but both the kit and the Landstrom book agree on twelve for the caique and six for the canot. The oars are positioned at an upward angle in relation to the waterline. 

[Louie da fly]

Looking good,mate. It's certainly hard to know how the caique could have been sailed with those oars aboard. It doesn't look like there'd be room for the crew - even if there were only six of them (a pair of oars each) plus the coxswain. And I can't see it being practical to slide them beneath the thwarts, either. Unless there was some form of 'holder' for them running down the centre of the boat, like unto the histodokai (crutches for the lowered masts) on a dromon - see post # 802 at  https://modelshipworld.com/topic/10344-10th-11th-century-byzantine-dromon-by-louie-da-fly-finished-150/page/27/

 

 

but perhaps supported along the centre of the thwarts rather than overhead.

 

Steven

Edited August 18 by Louie da fly

[Ferrus Manus]

Now, it would be reasonable to believe that the anchor aboard the caique would actually be some kind of spare/maneuvering anchor for the ship. However, I used it anyway even considering its excessive size. 

 

One would wonder, with the anchor stowed in the bow, how this boat would possibly remain level in the water. It must weigh almost half a ton. 

This is the finished caique: 

Apart from the anchor and its line, I put two mooring lines on the thwarts, and put in the rudder. The tiller looked sad, so I replaced it. I intend to do the same with the canot, which I might start tonight. 

[Ferrus Manus]

I am getting a good start on the canot. 

The canot will be getting the same treatment as the caique, with a few exceptions. While one of the thwarts is braced as though there was going to be a mast, there is neither a mast step nor partners. Even then, this boat will be stowed on the gallows, so a mast and its equipment would rest on top tied down to the thwarts. The canot is slightly longer than the caique, but only has six oars. No anchor is provided so I will be making my own, more reasonably sized one. 

[Louie da fly]

Making good progress, mate!

 

Steven