HMS Victory and Le Redoutable at Trafalgar (1/300)

[Rui Matos]

Marijn,

So, so disappointed.. you didn't paint the crew members eyes
(blue, brown, perhaps one or two with green eyes?)

Jokes apart:
Excellent dynamics, colouring, positioning and more "ings" that makes this a jewell of a dio, even at this stage!

BRAVO!
Cheers,
Rui

[SG1]

Wow!

[MartinJQuinn]

Wow is right. Amazing.

[Devin]

Astounding, as always, Marijn. Will you have a magnifying glass with you at SMC next month, or should I bring my own?

[EJFoeth]

You should have added a spoiler warning here Marijn, I had no idea Nelson was going to die at the end of season 1.

Anyway, great stuff. Nice 'plank effect' on the barrels and buckets.

[Maarten Sch�nfeld]

You should have added a spoiler warning here Marijn, I had no idea Nelson was going to die at the end of season 1.

I see you even took care of the empty right arm of Nelson's jacket... But I had the impression the guy was really skinny when he met his fate... Barely over ten stones (63.5 kg) I'd say...

[StevenVD]

Somebody probably will produce a decalset 1/300 sailorfaces now... Nice work Marijn.

[marijn van gils]

Thank you very much everyone!

Devin, you can borrow my reading glasses!

Hi Maarten, yes he was not in great health (he even had to take a couple of weeks of holiday to rest after the chase to the West Indies because he was really exhausted, right before the battle at Trafalgar).
But I'm afraid simulating specific body-types is beyond me at this scale. I'm already happy enough to get poses, uniforms and hairstyles somewhat recognizable... The photo's are very deceptive indeed as to the actual size of these figures!

Pieter, yes I did make a kind of mock-up: I put all figures in place with Blue-tac before converting and painting to see what would work best:

[zs180]

This build is out of this world. Words fail. Something never seen before and probably never to be seen again.

[pascalemod]

This build is out of this world. Words fail. Something never seen before and probably never to be seen again.

It will go down as one of the greatest dioramas of all time, no doubt. Such a privilege for us mere mortals to see it being built live.

[Iceman 29]

Yes, remarkable !

The good thing is that the adventure won't end just yet, and we'll still be discovering exceptional things for several more months, if not years...

The modeler's time is not that of today's ordinary mortals... Let's appreciate it.

[Dan K]

Truly amazing work, Marijn.

[Neptune]

[marijn van gils]

Thank you very much for your encouragement guys! You're making me blush!
And sorry for this late reply...

Something never seen before and probably never to be seen again.

Well, at least not by me!
I'm still really enjoying it, more than 6 years into this project, and I don't think I will get bored with it before completion at all, but it really is a once-in-a-lifetime kind of project.


Now, an update has been long overdue; most of the stuff below was already finished by the SMC show in October�

In the last post, I hadn�t populated the poop deck yet, because I first had to finish and install the fallen mizzen mast and its rigging.

So, I painted the broken mizzen mast. I also added the railing with (PE) netting to the platform, and the rope that holds the spanker to the mast:


Probably the most visible part of lower mast rigging is the shrouds and ratlines.
I made these in an adapted version of the method Philip Reed describes in his book �Period ship modelmaking�.
The shrouds are copper wire, twisted together to a 0,2 mm diameter (some ropes on these ships were surprisingly thick!). These had the deadeyes (resin copies of my own masters) and lanyards (thinner copper wire) installed. Then, I glued them to a home-made jig, guided by a paper template.
The ratlines are 0,05 mm copper wire. These were wrapped around the jig, held in place by double-sided tape on the edges of the jig.


Next, the ratlines were superglued to the shrouds, pressed down for a �hanging� look, and everything was cut free and painted:


There are some small imperfections, but overall I�m happy with my first attempt. And the imperfections are completely irrelevant because of the way they are installed on the model.

That installation was in fact by far the hardest part. Since the mast is shot through and lying on the deck, the shrouds and ratlines need to be damaged too and hanging according to the position of the mast. It took quite some thinking, pre-forming, gluing, and more shaping to get this result:


The mast top is hanging to the starboard side, so the shrouds on the port sides are tensioned, maybe even keeping the mast from toppling overboard.
In contrast, the starboard shrouds are hanging loose over the hammock netting and deck.





All other rigging is copper wire too. Down to 0,8 mm, it has been twisted together for �rope� effect (0,8 mm is twisted together from two strands of 0,05 mm wire for example); only the thinnest ropes are 0,05 mm.

I do have thinned wire (0,025 mm), but following my rigging references I couldn�t use these yet. In 1/300 scale, 0,05 mm calculates to a diameter of 1,5 cm, which is not a thick rope for handling masts, spars or sails of this size�

The larger blocks are resin copies from my own masters, while the smaller ones are punched from plastic sheet with a punch-and-die and painted to look like blocks.

At the port shrouds, I installed a party of sailors cutting the shrouds, trying to get the fallen mast overboard.
The rest of the poop deck was filled with (mostly) marines shooting back at the Redoutable, and its mizzen top from which Nelson was just hit.








The spanker gaff is not added yet, but I will have it still be hanging from the mast, with its tip hanging in the sea. This still needs to be finished, and it can only be installed when the ship is fixed into the seascape. But the peak halliard for it is already in place, with its double block at the rear of the mast cap.

[marijn van gils]

You may a noticed some drops of blood.

IMO, a battle scene like this needs it to show that such a battle was not just �happy heroics�, and to enhance the feeling of danger and urgency in the scene.

I painted the blood the day after Halloween, so I guess I was in the mood!
I think I added (much) less blood than would have been present in reality, but probably a little more than is usually showed on the (sanitised) 19th century paintings of the event.

I also added rubble (splinters, pieces of sail cloth, broken glass, a couple of blocks and rope) since I took the model to SMC.

This is by far the bloodiest area, where a quarterdeck gun crew has been badly hit:




Of course, these photos are heavily enlarged (and now focussed on the bloody areas). In reality the blood jumps much less to the eye.

The wounded marine taken to safety under the poop deck by a sailor is my favourite conversion. They are two Ion Model figures, cobbled together with a new arm around the back of the marine.


One more wounded sailor on the quarter deck:


And two casualties on the poop deck:




One on the forecastle:


And my favourite one:



People keep telling me that I enlarge my photos too much, and that it is hard to realize the true scale of the models and figures. So, here is one photo as a reminder:


And an overview of the populated decks:

[dafi]

I wouldnt say a dream, much more a nightmare, but still a dream!

XXXDAn

[wefalck]

It's difficult enough to set up the rigging (at this scale) normal, but that twisted wreckage was a real challenge well mastered

[Maarten Sch�nfeld]

You keep amazing me, Marijn!
I had already figured out that modelling the scene of damaged rigging and particular the crew in disorder, wounded and all, would be the greatest challenge of all for this dio. I believe your extensive experience with figure dioramas is of a great asset here, setting you apart from most of us (plain) ship modelers, like myself.

But most of all it's your very extensive research, plus your deep thinking over what the visual 'story' has to look like what makes the perfection. And that really makes this 'art', much beyond the technicality of the expert realisation. Example: the application of 'blood' and the precise amount you chose, more than the sanitised 19th century paintings but probably much less than what the gruesome reality might have looked like. I think, most of us would turn away when looking at that grim 'reality', not liking the scene anymore. Think of the real pictures of Auschwitz at the liberation: no one can look at those without cringing.

[marijn van gils]

Thank you very much Daniel, Eberhart and Maarten!

It's difficult enough to set up the rigging (at this scale) normal, but that twisted wreckage was a real challenge well mastered

Thank you! I'm not going to lie, it was a challenge indeed.
I don't have a lot of rigging experience, but so far I feel is that damaged is much harder than pristine indeed. There is the small advantage that small imperfections can be camouflaged more easily, but this doesn't compensate for the difficulty of figuring out where all the lines go when they break and the mast goes down, and especially the difficulty of getting everything to hang and lie down convincingly.
So it does take quite a lot time figuring everything out, and installing the lines certainly takes a lot more time than undamaged lines. But it was really fun, and I'm looking forward to doing more of it!

I believe your extensive experience with figure dioramas is of a great asset here, setting you apart from most of us (plain) ship modelers, like myself.

I believe so too. Having experience in other discipline really helps! And as you know, I always say that I really am a diorama modeller and the subject matter is secondary. And no matter what is the main subject, figures are almost always one of the most important elements in dioramas and storytelling. They represent the human element and convey emotion more than anything else.

And while there is absolutely nothing wrong or inferior at all about a more technical approach to scale modelling (its just a bit different, but not better or worse), I think it is true that in ship modelling (narrative) storytelling is pretty rare. But it certainly exists, and I did take a lot of inspiration from people who have done this for a long time like John Leyland, Mike McCabe, and IMHO the best in this Werner De Keersmaecker. And I learned (and still learn) a lot from them.

I think, most of us would turn away when looking at that grim 'reality', not liking the scene anymore.

Yes, exactly! The same reason why the 19th century painters (and most contemporary painters and movie-makers) toned the horror down in their work also applies to our medium nowadays. The only difference is that they work on a much larger scale, so they can show the human suffering more easily with the poses and facial expressions of the crew without the need for much or even any blood. But in our tiny scales, we cannot use facial expression and the poses of individual figures are insufficient to convey the human drama clearly, so some blood is necessary to render it visible. But not too much blood or we will drive the viewer away indeed... Not an easy balance! And that balance looks very different when seen in the flesh compared to enlarged photos too...

[Willie]

Hi there Marijn and all friends,

The mast top is hanging to the starboard side, so the shrouds on the port sides are tensioned, maybe even keeping the mast from toppling overboard.
In contrast, the starboard shrouds are hanging loose over the hammock netting and deck.

AB-SO-LU-TE-LY brilliant in both concept and development. I am speechless once more.
I was longing for this moment (RIGGING!!!) and it is already here. It cannot start better. You seem to have gathered very well the busy life of a man-o-war in battle, and the scene with Nelson is the highlight of them all.

Please keep them coming.

Very best regards from this side,

Willie.