La Lomellina by Louie da fly - scale 1:100 - Theoretical Reconstruction of a Genoese carrack sunk in 1516

[Louie da fly]

It's been quite a while since I've posted. I've been busy - life does tend to get in the way. But I re-thunk the sliced 3D shape.

 

And I thunk - the one I've done was sliced into every second frame. But the frames are 5mm apart and the dropsaw's kerf is only about 2mm wide. I could have cut a slice for each frame - they should each end up about 3mm thick - and not have to interpolate between slices to work out the shapes of the ones in between!

 

So I did it all over again - made another 3D model and sliced it into individual frames. And it worked!

Now of course I have to transfer that onto paper and mirror it to get the full frames, but all good!

 

There are a few glitches in the shapes of the frames nearest to the stern - the curve seems to go upward at the keel instead of downward. I'll just have to fix that when I transfer it to paper.

 

Steven

Edited April 2 by Louie da fly

[Lashenden]

I've joined just to contribute to this thread, lol. I'm an art historian and also have some historic ship experience and therefore have a couple of observations (which may already have been made elsewhere in the thread). On the question of overscale figures in fifteenth century paintings - yes, but also no. I used to run the replica Golden Hinde in London (of which more below) but I can tell you that the stern castle on that replica is vertiginous (I would estimate 20'+ from the top of the stern rail to the waterline) and the poop deck is both tiny (about 10' x 6') and slopes at a severe angle. The whole structure looks far more imposing from the quayside than it actually is. You can see much the same effect in Van de Velde drawings from the 1660s; the design of stern castles are meant to look monumental but actually they're quite underscale, almost 'toy' architecture. While the medieval convention of oversized figures goes back hundreds of years before the Renaissance, adults standing on quarter galleries or the poop of a ship with high castles would indeed look oddly over-scale.

 

Further to that point, I'm always cautious about the degree to which we should discount contemporary representations of anything, including ships, as uninformed or inaccurate. In my experience artists have generally tried to give what they considered a convincing or 'characteristic' representation of objects in the world. I would take the fifteenth century depictions of carracks at face value unless there's clear evidence to the contrary. This is especially the case concerning the exaggerated profile of the bow that bends back on itself producing that extraordinary 'bow-curve' profile. That feature is pretty much universal in contemporary depictions - it might be counter-intuitive to a twenty-first century eye but to diminish that feature is a perfect example of the 'condescension of posterity'. A useful example of the benefit of taking this period at it's own estimation is provided by Tobias Capwell's study of armour from the early fifteenth century - he's done amazing work by assuming that contemporaries knew exactly what they were looking at.

 

During my time on the Golden Hinde I had several conversations with Brian Lavery about the errors built into the 1977 replica. One of that ship's most glaring mistakes was the degree to which its beam  was underestimated in the twentieth century design - as many of you will know, the resulting instability and poor handling had to be corrected with foam-filled sponsons bolted either side the hull. Lavery always thought that in early modern ships the widest part of the beam was below the waterline, which would give the ship the kind of stability later achieved with a deep keel. Some decades later the Duyfken replica benefitted from computer-aided modelling of its handling characteristics and featured much more convincing and historically-accurate hull dimensions.

Edited July 21 by Lashenden
incorrect dimensions!

[Louie da fly]

Thank you Lashenden. I agree with you in many ways. Apart from obvious mistakes, I'm inclined to accept pictorial evidence as being correct unless proven otherwise. But there are artists and artists. Some - the ships in Carpaccio's superb Ursula Legend paintings and Botticelli's Judgment of Paris I feel I can accept (almost) wholeheartedly - but even Carpaccio's pictures contain a couple of things I find hard to accept (the blocks that tighten the shrouds, the configuration of the wales at the bow) - because they don't seem likely to work in the real world. Similarly, there are a couple of details in the Botticelli that don't ring true - there is a ladder just behind the after hatch that doesn't seem to lead anywhere, for example. But overall, excellent.

 

On the other hand, there are some pretty abysmal contemporary pictures out there.

 

Oversize figures - certainly there's a tradition of showing people oversized, particularly if they're important. However, though I'm prepared to ignore them in general, every now and then an artist shows people pretty much correct size. Again, it depends very much on the artist.

     

If I understand you correctly, by the 'bow-curve profile' you mean that the bow is shown very rounded, as in this picture from the Beauchamp Pageant, but Carpaccio and Botticelli show a sharper bow, and this is backed up by what archaeology is available. The current reconstruction of Lomellina's lines gives her a bow even sharper than this, though I'm not sure I agree with them.

  

 

On the other hand, perhaps you're referring to the extreme slope of the forecastle and aftercastle shown on most of the ships in the left-hand pic below.

 

Regarding the angle of the deck, there is great variation in how it's portrayed in contemporary images. I'm completely happy to accept some degree of slope, but artists of the time were experimenting with how to portray foreshortening, and I believe some of them overdid the angle. For example, in the left-hand image below, if you look at the ship in profile view the forecastle and aftercastle are shown with a fairly gentle angle, while the ones seen from bow-on both are considerably more extreme. I believe the right-hand image (1455-61 Benedetto Bonfigli. Saint Louis de Tolouse - Miracolo del denaro. Galleria Nazionale dell'Umbria) is a more believable representation.

   

Fortunately, in the Lomellina we have a good idea of the slope of the main deck, as a good proportion of the starboard side has been preserved, including the deck clamps. Unfortunately the forecastle and aftercastle are lost, so there's a fair bit of guesswork involved with them.

 

Though I'm not an expert on 15th century armour, I do understand what you are talking about. In fact I have made armour myself, and I have a colleague who has made himself a complete set of gothic plate which he wears in re-enactment combat.

There is also a robust discussion regarding whether or not contemporary images of Byzantine lamellar armour are to be believed, as to how the stuff was put together. I'm an aficionado of the 'Yes' argument. 

 

Again, regarding hull shape, we are fortunate that enough of the Lomellina survived to give a good idea of her underwater lines, though the bow and stern are lost.

 

Steven

 

 

 

Edited Wednesday at 06:03 AM by Louie da fly

[Waldemar]

 

On 7/21/2025 at 6:36 PM, Lashenden said:

Lavery always thought that in early modern ships the widest part of the beam was below the waterline, which would give the ship the kind of stability later achieved with a deep keel.

 

Hi,

 

If I may, I'll try to start (hopefully) jokingly. These and similar thoughts could indeed quite easily end up like this (most interesting from the 30th second):

 

 

 

 

 

But more seriously, in addition to dozens, perhaps hundreds, of different plans from the period, quite clear (written) indications on this matter can be found, for example, in the shipbuilding manuscript from around 1610 by Lavanha or the so-called Newton manuscript from the first or second quarter of the 17th century. But perhaps this is most spectacularly and instructively demonstrated by Robert Dudley in his work (manuscript) from around 1636. The descriptions of the individual levels in the diagrams below (transcribed in red) practically speak for themselves and probably don't even need any further commentary. Perhaps except that this specific material has almost certainly never been used or maybe even noticed by anyone before.

 

 

[Louie da fly]

By the way, another point with the Lomellina is that she did capsize, so perhaps wasn't all that stable. But as we don't know the exact circumstances of her loss, that may not have been the problem. She was in harbour when a tempest came down from the hills and tipped her over. Was she in ballast or did she have cargo on board? There were some indications that she was not in full sailing condition when the tempest hit - IIRC the capstan was not shipped - but  we just don't know for sure. What we do have is a fair section of her underwater lines.

 

Steven

[Waldemar]

 

Ah, yes, the Lomellina case… Fortunately, for an exhibition model, unlike a full-scale floating replica, stability issues are no longer of the utmost importance in the sense that any mistakes or misinterpretations will at least not lead to some kind of costly disaster.

 

You wrote earlier that you have direct contact with people who are involved in researching the Lomellina wreck, and that you receive materials from them regarding this wreck. Are you perhaps aware of any other attempts to reconstruct the ship's shapes besides those presented or recalled in the 2023 paper attached below? Frankly, for certain reasons I'm not personally thrilled with these attempts and its results, but more importantly, I see that you also decided not to follow the published reconstruction and are creating your own interpretation.

 

Guérout Max, Frabetti Beatrice, Castro Filipe, Revisiting Lomellina, 1516 – The Hull Shape, 2023:

 

Guérout Max, Frabetti Beatrice, Castro Filipe - Revisiting Lomellina, 1516 - The Hull Shape - 2023.pdf

 

Edited Thursday at 06:46 AM by Waldemar