Le Superbe by PqLear – Heller – PLASTIC – Built as “HMS Vanguard”

[PqLear]

Oh boy, here goes.  Yes, I've read Ye Olde Cautionary Tale in the New Member introduction section here, and...  100% spot on!  Great advice.  I feel almost daily like I have bit off more than I can chew, but progress thus far has been great.  It's technically not my first build (in fact it's the second time I'm building Heller's Superbe - kind of - plus I built a dozen-so other plastic kits in my youth), I'm quite pleased with the results, and I thought I'd start sharing some progress with the membership, hoping that feedback feeds progress.  I'm hoping to get some ideas, feedback (all types!), and answers to a few questions.

 

Quick background: I stumbled across MSW last year and was so inspired by the many amazing builders and builds that I decided to reengage in the hobby, although it's been almost 40 years since last time I assembled anything requiring glue.  Specifically, my jaw simply dropped over Blue Ensign’s Superbe/Praetorian, and dafi’s Victory masterpieces, and I asked myself how close I could get.  After a few WWII builds – aircraft and tanks – to get back in the saddle, and some research incl. sourcing all four volumes of Boudriot’s The Seventy-Four Gun Ship, I kicked this off this past New Year’s Eve.  Rabbit holes aplenty!

 

The build is Heller’s Le Superbe converted to HMS Vanguard.  Okay, I know… they are two completely different ships – different dimensions, lines, proportions etc. and I’ve learned there are plenty other more accurate/appropriate examples of converting a French 74-gunner to an RN historical equivalent (e.g. Spartiate, Belleisle, Hercules), but… it’s the Vanguard!  Nelson’s flagship at his, in my mind, most consequential battle, and possibly the most well-known 74 in history?  If I invest a few thousand hours in a project, I want some name recognition! 

 

First, about the kit itself.  I’ve heard there’s a new re-release but this is an old version; not dated but guessing 40-50 years old (the Glorieux box art looks like it’s a 1970’s design).  I have actually built this kit before, in my teens circa 1983, and still remember the poor fit and overall atrocious molding quality…  You can expect to spend 75% of your build time cleaning off chaff and excess, and the rest spackling and sanding to fill in gaps and injection holes.  Compared to contemporary plastic kits (I’m a big Tamiya fan) this is night and day.  I often found myself cursing using the plastic pieces instead of scratch building, and if you have the skills and tools, I’d strongly recommend following Blue Ensign’s example and scratch building as much as possible.

 

Also a note about historical accuracy of this kit: Heller’s Glorieux and Superbe are identical kits except for stern, quarter-galleries, figurehead, hair brackets, railings, and name plate.  In reality of course, they were completely different ships; different designs, classes, sizes, ship builders, and built almost 30 years apart.  With 99% certainty, Glorieux did not have a coppered hull.  It’s a headscratcher to me why Heller decided to pick these two particular ships to recreate with the same molds?  Especially since neither of them had a particularly illustrious career. 

 

In general, I’ll admit I’m a little confused and was hoping the forum could help straighten some things out? 

• Boudriot states explicitly his plans are not of a ship designed by Sané – which rules out the Téméraire or Annibal classes – but doesn’t elaborate further which one it actually is.  I only see him say it’s “the 74-gun ship of the 1780’s” (Vol I, p. 6) - am I missing something?
• Heller’s Superbe looks identical to Boudriot’s plans; but the historical Superbe was indeed a Téméraire-class ship.
• The historical Glorieux was a unique design all together, not part of any class (and certainly not similar to Superbe).
• Blue Ensign’s build log is “Le Praetorian after Boudriot” – but I haven’t found any record of a Praetorian ever having sailed in the French navy? 
• The model's hull measures 370mm at its “perpendiculars” (Boudriot, Vol I, p.18).  At 1:150, this would be 55.5m, whereas Boudriot’s 74 is quoted as 55.75m (Vol I, pp. 18-19); close enough.  As per trusty Wikipedia, Superbe (standard Téméraire-class) was 55.87m (close enough), and the historical Glorieux was 53.35m (=not close enough). 

 

Which ship is which?  Thoughts?

 

FWIW, here's my hypothesis/attempt to unpack this -- I really look forward to being corrected on all these accounts! 

• Boudriot’s plans are of a Magnanime-class ship (first launch 1779). 
• Heller designed their kit/mold based on Boudriot’s books, which were released in 1973.  I’m guessing the kits were released ~1977?  (The Glorieux box design looks distinctly 70-ies; but I haven’t found any dates anywhere in the box.)
• For some reason only known to a Heller employee ~50 years ago, they picked the names Glorieux and Superbe for this kit, entirely ignoring that both of these historical ships were of a different design and class than documented in Boudriot’s books.  After all, they’re pretty good product names to put on a box – certainly more eye-catching than say Dugay-Trouin or Mucius – and they also work okay for an English or German-speaking audience.
• Le Praetorian - BE's build is so amazing I literally cannot care less what it actually is, or if it existed or not -- it obviously exists now!

 

Anyway… pulling myself out of this rabbit hole… and enough knocking Heller quality and accuracy - it’s a beautiful ship!  Personally, I find the 74-gun ships-of-the-line the most beautiful and awe-inspiring naval design framework ever conceived – but that’s just me, who’s only seen a small fraction of all ships ever designed.  The lines, proportions, elegance, and understated raw power make this a gorgeous, gorgeous model.  (Especially with the yellow/black “Nelson checker” pattern; which I believe the Vanguard had at the Nile?)

 

After ordering a few components (notably, sails and standing rigging components) online (HiSModel), my second order of action was to contact igorcap to check if he’d be able to help me with a figurehead and taffrail; the two components I knew I’d never be able to get right on my own.  Much gratitude, thoughts and prayers go out to Poltava/Ukraine – I can honestly say without Igor, this build would still be in the box.  Thank you, Igor.

 

Also – huge thanks to greenskin and Lukasvdb for their Superbe build logs on this forum, as mentioned for Blue Ensign and dafi for inspiration, and of course… glbarlow; I’ve very liberally used your pictures in your *amazing* Amati/Victory Vanguard build log as reference for pretty much everything.

 

Conversion and scratch build efforts (some complete, some still at planning stage):

• Adjust number, position, and size of gun ports (see more below)
  • Upper deck: closed port #1, made ports #4-#10 smaller
  • Quarter deck: converted windows to gun ports; moved port #1
• Extend and modify profile of poop and quarter deck railings, incl. extending poop deck forwards
• Reposition masts and channels (see below)
  • Main- and mizzen mast ~10mm (~5ft) further back
  • Fore mast 16mm (~8ft) further back
• Remove drift rails and add new ones
  • I left the wales in place simply because it’d be way too much work to correct them.  On the model / Boudriot plans, the wales generally follow the curve of the gun ports/decks, whereas on Vanguard / RN 74s they have a distinct curve; with gun ports cutting into them.  I understand this was an intentional ship design feature, intended to add stability to the ship.
  • I seem to have forgotten the sheer rail – oops!  Perhaps I’ll add them later, although could be tricky now as I’ve attached the channels where it should be 😕
• New figure head, taffrail, and stern name plaque (thank you Igor!)
• Modify/rebuild quarter galleries.  Attach stern and rudder with magnets for easy removal = allow better view of the hull interior
  • Add quarter gallery interiors, incl. floors, cupboards, and of course - easements/latrines
• Rebuild head, incl. beakhead, catheads, cheeks, hair brackets, etc.
• New details throughout: railings, stairs, binnacle, bell, lantern, bitts, pumps, capstans, cannon balls (ball bearings from McMaster-Carr) in racks, gratings (mostly Amati), hatches, cabins, etc. etc. etc.
  • Build Brodie firehearth based on Model Monkey’s 3D print as reference (I later found a better reference on RMG’s site).
  • Okay it'll never be dafi / Blue Ensign / Greenskin / Lukascdb level of detail and quality – but I’ll be doing my best and keep practicing/torturing myself!
• Ship boat storage: resting on beams spanning the upper deck between the gangways, vs. sitting on the upper deck
  • If I decide to go down the diorama / Battle of the Nile idea, I assume these would be in tow anyway; not on-board the ship?
• Align the copper plating pattern on the model with waterline
• Add breech lines, cap squares, and loops over the cascabel buttons (“pomellions”?)  
  • My understanding is these loops were standard on Blomefield guns after 1794; and it’s possible Vanguard at the Nile would have had these? 
  • Either way they make positioning the breech lines easier (and look nice)
• All standing and running rigging components using Amati thread and either Amati walnut blocks, or 3D printed/resin blocks from igorcap.  
  • Add chain stays, preventer plates, channel knee braces, etc.
• Insert metal rods into lower masts for extra stability
• Move steps on side of hull, add the rails that protect the hull when lowering the ship boats (whatever they’re called?)
• Fabric sails and flags from HiSModel
  • I’m imagining Vanguard bearing down in SE direction on the French line at Aboukir with a light (3 knots) wind from NNW, at two-three points on the larboard quarter, so I’d anticipate this to be… top sails (no reefs), top gallants, jibs, and mizzen; yards trimmed to be nearly perpendicular with the keel; perhaps 10 degrees off?  At 300ft range, possibly with crew top side about to take in the top gallants and a reef or two in the top sails, as she prepares to engage.  Am I close?
  • I found a historical reference that English ships flew four lanterns horizontally in the "mizzen" (crossjack?) yard arm, and a white Ensign; whereas the French ships flew the Tricolore.  Thoughts, anyone?

 

A few notes…

I have taken quite a few liberties and shortcuts for the sake of aesthetics and convenience.

• Most notably…. the Magnanime is a full 15ft (4.6m; 30mm at this scale) longer than Vanguard, which I understand can be attributed to a few reasons: a larger/longer hull provided room for an extra gun on the upper gun deck (30 vs. 28); which in turn provided more space (=more comfortable accommodations for officers) on the quarter deck (12 guns here instead of Vanguard’s 14), more space for crew and marines (~700 total complement vs. 600 on an Arrogant class), and perhaps most importantly, more space for provisions for longer journeys, as France did not have the same access to friendly ports as the British.  My understanding is the ship’s length in and by itself did not meaningfully impact ship handling or gunnery – rather it’s the lines below the waterline that would determine sailing and handling characteristics – but I suspect I may be missing or misunderstanding something here.
• Anyway, Heller’s Superbe model has 15 gun ports on each side of the upper deck, whereas Vanguard had 14.  While it was easy enough to close port #1, it means the spacing/position of the remaining 14 ports is off; impacting position of the channels (which I wanted to keep in the same place relative to gun ports), although of course this also in turn impacts the position of the masts – it would look strange if the shrouds were pointing forward, at an angle.  Final result: on “my” Vanguard, the forecastle and head will look like it’s extending a bit too far, like she has a weird little snout.  I’ll try and compensate by adjusting the length of the bowsprit and position of the anchors, but for sure this will irk naval historians – sorry.  (Well, not really )
• I have used glbarlow’s Vanguard (Amati/Victory) build log as my main visual reference, even though there are a few inconsistencies compared to the National Maritime Museum (NMM) plans – which, while dated 1774, are of the 1761 Arrogant, but quoted as having been used for the Vanguard, too.  I’m sure there were quite a few tweaks between 1761 and 1787 when Vanguard launched, and while I might have the time and curiosity to research this further, I didn’t have the patience for this particular build.
• I didn’t have plans or images of Vanguard’s gun deck (no such thing in the Amati/Victory model), and so instead have relied on dafi’s Victory build, with some inspiration from Boudriot.
• The trunnions on the Heller model are not in the center of the gun barrels; they’re distinctly offset from the bore.  The sketch in the Heller instruction sheet specifically indicates the trunnions should be “up” = the barrel should “hang down” into the gun carriage, quite significantly.  I believe in reality, at least on an English ship, it should be the other way around; trunnions “should” be either in the center of the barrel, or slightly below; meaning the barrel would sit a bit “above” the carriage.  Unfortunately, on Heller’s model, both solutions cause problems: if the trunnions are “up” / “higher”, the bottom of the gun barrel hits the front of the carriage, whereas if the trunnions are “down” / “lower”, the gun barrel will point up and hit the top edge of the gun port (=you’ll need to sand down the wheels of the gun carriage to make it fit nicely in the center of the gun port).  Oh Heller.  I went with the former solution – “trunnions up”– and filed a semi-circle in the front of the gun carriage.  It means the gun barrels now point down slightly, which I think gives them a nice, aggressive look, but more importantly they sit well centered in the gun ports.
• Like others on this forum, I scored planking (freehand) in the exterior hull and gun deck (with ruler).  Note in this soft plastic this can result in quite significant “ridges”, which I recommend cutting/shaving off, rather than sand down (which grinds the plastic dust into the grooves).
• I contemplated getting wooden decks but (a) I don’t have a workspace for sanding wood at scale – too much dust in a relatively small apartment – and (b) scratch building deck beams to lay down a wooden deck instead of the plastic deck is beyond my current modeling comfort level; and the alternative – laying down wooden planking on top of the plastic decks (as I’ve seen some users do on YouTube using the wooden decks from HiSModel), would elevate the guns too high in the gun ports.
• Except for copper hull (Testor Enamel rattle can), I’ve used Tamiya acrylic paints throughout; either air brushed (decks, guns, hull interior) or hand painted (hull exterior, all details).  I love the Tamiya paints but note they have to be thinned by as much as 2/3 when air brushing; for hand application, I usually add about 1/4 thinner.  (You can’t really work with this paint undiluted.)

 

Some general build notes:

• On this model, you likely won’t be able to insert the upper gun deck into the hull, if the lower gun deck is already solidly glued in place (which it will have to be, in order to position the 32 pounders where they should).  Chances are the hull will crack/break trying to squeeze in the upper gun deck.  I ended up cutting he upper deck into two pieces lengthwise and mounted them separately.
• As mentioned, the fit on this model is not great and you’ll need to do a lot of spackling and sanding to close gaps.  On this relatively small model, this requires a lot of manual handling, increasing the risk of breaking off any small or protruding pieces.  I recommend thoroughly thinking through the assembly order, e.g. finalize beakhead and hawses before adding gun deck details, gun ports, channels, and similar pieces that may easily break or break off while manually handling the model.  Same goes for painting; even basic priming could (should?) wait until all main “architectural” components are assembled.
• The hardest part to get right (thus far; by far) has been the quarter-galleries; which needed to be modified both for shape/design, to fit new positions of drift rails and wales, and new shape taffrail.  (They don’t fit that well out of the box, for that matter.)  I have not modified the number of windows (Heller: 10, Vanguard: 8), at least not yet.
• I’m posting this very first build log about 7 weeks/180 hours in, ~90% of which is scratch-building or modifying existing conditions.  I’m doing a lot of this for the first time, so takes a bit longer for sure.

 

Current state: hull nearly complete, channels in place, head ready for beakhead and gratings, stern ready for galleries.  Then (1) deadeyes, (2) gun deck, (3) upper deck, (4) quarterdeck/gangways/forecastle and poop deck, (5) masts and standing rigging "one tier at a time", (6) running rigging and sails, (7) anchors.  Easy! 

 

Original: most/all quarter deck gun ports have moved, drift and sheer rails have been replaced, profiles of poop and quarter deck railings altered, and head, hawses, cheek, forecastle profile changed. (Note this black hull is from the Glorieux "sister kit"; same hull as Superbe, despite being two entirely different ships historically.)

 

Original head & hawses

 

Note new cheeks & hawse holes.  Greek warrior figurehead courtesy of Igorcap, using the Victory/Amati model as reference.

 

Scratch built Brodie stove.  Someone said somewhere "in this small scale, if it looks too big, it is too big". 

So, so true - but it's so, so hard to make some details even smaller  

 

Guns

• individually cleaned from chaff
• scored planking in carriage and assembled
• cut space in front of carriage (see above)
• added cascabel button loops (28 gauge brass wire)
• drilled boreholes
• airbrushed barrels: semi-gloss black, and carriages: flat red; hand painted wheels semi-gloss black
• weathering wash using Winsor & Newton raw umber oil color + odorless mineral spirits
• dry brushed barrels: flat aluminum, carriages: buff
• added cap squares (made from excess material from eye bolts), breeching lines, and eye bolts (next picture)

 

Stern, taffrail and stern gallery assembled and primed, awaiting final polish and painting.  Cut off original taffrail and glued on 3D printed one from Igorcap. Cut off sides of original stern gallery to change its curve, created new railing and balusters from 22 gauge copper wire.  Made new bottom part from plasticard, and added horizontal rail under the 3D printed name plate. Cut out the existing four-pane astrigals, will add new ones to make nine-pane windows (but will keep 10 windows instead of 8 as in the historial Vanguard - I think, for now at least).

 

Original stern, with igorcap's new 3D printed pieces overlaid for sizing.

 

New details and rails, made upper deck gun ports smaller, shaved down 4th wale.  My Superbe kit is this milk chocolate brown color for the most part, with the Superbe-specific parts in gold (see stern above) in a distinctly different material that is more brittle and therefore hard to work with; and guns and running rigging pieces in red. 

 

Before left, after right.  Plasticard FTW!

Edited February 11 by PqLear

[Nirvana]

That is looking very nice and a Warm Welcome to Model Ship World.

[PqLear]

As expected, the stern turned out to be quite the project!   There are many similarities between Superbe and Vanguard: both have a semi-circular taffrail, a stern gallery with a walkway outside the captain's cabin, a stern gallery with windows only in the gun room, two chase gun ports, and both have quarter galleries.

 

There are also several differences: the name plaque is straight, not curved, on the Vanguard; the windows are nine panes, not four; the cabin walkway gallery is curved all the way around on the Superbe, whereas on the Vanguard it's only curved in the middle, and straight at the edges; and Vanguard's taffrail is ornamented.

 

The biggest difference however is the layout of the quarter gallery easements and the walkway outside the captain's cabin:

 

• Le Superbe - walkway (green) runs the width of the ship, and easements (in quarter galleries; orange) are in front.

 

• The Vanguard - walkway runs between the easements (orange) only.

 

Original out of the box (and Vanguard name plaque provided by Igorcap)

 

Cut off the original taffrail, and superglued on the one made by Igorcap (see Post #1) instead.  I cut off the ends of the original railing also, and built new endings of the railing from 22 gauge copper wire.  Note magnets at the bottom.

 

Stern, primed.  Glued on a strip of 1mm plasticard at the bottom, to create a straight bottom edge for the name plaque, and for the bottom of the stern itself.

 

Shortened the stern gallery walkway by cutting off the ends of the wall and the walkway itself, and added side walls instead.  

 

Final walkway - made doors to quarter galleries also.  Note the black strip at the bottom of the hull (on gun deck); with magnets matching the position of those in the stern itself.  I'll add one or two magnets at the top also, so that entire stern and quarter galleries can be easily taken off.

 

Added floors inside the quarter galleries, and cut off/rebuilt the bottom (which had a big swirl on the Superbe).

 

Final (almost) inside of the stern.  Note addition of rear walls and windows in the quarter galleries.  Removed galleries at the top of the quarter galleries; the Vanguard had "flat" roofs, which I built out of 0.25mm plasticard.

 

Final quarter galleries.  Built new roofs and added astregals (thin strips of 0.25mm plasticard glued together with Tamiya Extra Thin Cement; I'm not super happy with how it came out, and I'd probably recommend using wire and CA instead) to make windows with nine panes. 

 

Final stern!

 

 

(Compare with the Victory/Amati Vanguard stern, as built by gbarlow, here; and you can get a glimpse of the original out of the box Superbe design here, as built by Blue Ensign.)

 

Edited Monday at 03:43 AM by PqLear