Guido wrote:Neal-
This is nothing short of S_P_E_C_T_A_C_U_L_A_R!
Well done, indeed!
Guido
Thank you Guido! Much appreciated.
maxim wrote:Yo, that is really fascinating! Your method to make these decorations is very interesting.
Burkhard also excelled himself with these guns!
Thank you Maxim. The real 'icing' as far as the decorations goes is still yet to come. My friend Bruno Gire is preparing as we speak a custom photo etch set including superstructure paneling. Very excited about this! I will post pics as soon as I get them.
carr wrote:I love the older sailing ships and to see this rendered in this scale is just amazing. Well done!
I'm not, in any way, a student of this time period but I've always been bothered by the artistic depictions of carracks as having such extreme curvature of the sheer line that the forward and aft sheer lines approach parallel! What I've found is that the paintings and drawings seem to display extreme curvature and exaggerated forecastle and stern heights while scholarly representations seem to be much "tamer".
Hello Carr. Thanks for posting. I agree with you. The question is, which one is right? The Artists or the Scholars? On the side of the scholarly representations, they are working from a knowledge of how ships work, hydrodynamically and aerodynamically, and, in some cases have the remains of actual ships to study and determine building practices. Unfortunately, almost always, there is only the lower part of the ship that survives.
On the side of the period depictions we are speaking of people who actually saw these ships in the flesh. The drawback, in regards to the period artist's depictions are 1. Did he have understanding of Naval Architecture and Ship Rigging? 2. Did he have the opportunity to draw, paint, or carve 'from life'? and 3. What are the limitations of his medium, the scale of the depiction, and the purpose for the artifact? In the case of, say a Medieval Cog on a Hanseatic coin, it might look round, to the point of almost literally a banana shape. This may partly be the misconception of the artist, it might also equally be because he is putting a ship on a round coin, and trying to fill a circular space with it.
carr wrote:Here is an example of the extreme type of drawing where the ship almost looks to be folded in half and the angle of decks at the fore and aft ends is such that crew must have been at continual risk of sliding off!
Carrack4.jpg
Here's a somewhat more moderate example of a painting which shows extreme fore and aft height such that it looks like a tunnel was carved sideways through the ship.
Carrack2.jpg
Here's an example of a more researched (before you ask, I don't know the source) representation. Note the much flatter overall look.
Carrack1.jpg
And, finally, here's a middle of the road representation.
Carrack3.jpg
Of course, the term carrack represents a wide range of variations so perhaps all are plausible? Personally, the extreme depictions strike me as topheavy, unstable, and impractical. I'm more inclined to accept the flatter versions but, as I said, I've not made a study of this period to be able to offer any kind of informed opinion.
So, to address your concern about the size/height of your foreward works, I agree that it looks a bit extreme but there's certainly enough "evidence" to take it in whatever direction you wish.
I really appreciate you posting these and beginning this discussion. This is part of the reason I'm posting this build at all, I'd like not only to show what I've done, but to learn and improve. Let me tell you some of my thinking and maybe we can see together if it 'holds water.'
I've been looking at these ships and thinking about them and what they might actually have been like even longer than I've been modeling (as an adult.) My initial impression (like you) was that they were absurd. They certainly look absurd from a modern point of view. But as I began to read about these ships, how they were used, and why they were built the way they were built I began to reconsider the issue of sheer and superstructure height. As I understand it (and anyone with knowledge feel free to correct me) carracks were conceived in an era in which sailing technology and ship design had improved immensely, but combat was still primarily a question of soldiers fighting soldiers, rather than ships fighting ships. The chief aim during the era of carrack warfare was to board and capture the enemy vessel, not to destroy it. On land at the time, the way to defeat an enemy in a fortified position, say a castle or walled town, was to build siege towers and roll them up to the enemy walls. The enemy of course would attempt to repel the attacking towers, but it was very much men on towers fighting men on walls. So these very same soldiers, when it came to thinking of warfare on the Sea, naturally transplanted these ideas to a nautical environment. This means that a carrack, essentially is a siege tower with sails, with the difference being that it is a question of siege towers versus siege towers, rather than towers verses castles.
Now there's no doubt in my mind that most, if not all carracks built during this period were terrible sailers, probably requiring tremendous skill just to keep on course and very
very slow. But then again, that wasn't the point. From the point of view of the soldiers (lords and knights and dukes etc.) the only thing that mattered was getting your carrack close enough to the enemy's carrack to board and capture the ship. Not only that, but the 'enemy' was usually one's neighbor, close at hand, which did not require long voyaging, and thus, a great deal of seaworthiness. It also didn't require logical or comfortable accomodations. A high-sheered stern was an easy way to raise the height of the commanding officer and give him a better view of the ship's heading, as well as the surrounding sea. It didn't need to be comfortable. He would be quartered on a lower deck, and, at any rate, only as long as was needed to cross the straits of Gibraltar and fight the Moroccans, or across the Adriatic to fight the Turks, or across the Channel to fight the British, (or the French...) If you think about IJN cruiser designs that went into combat seriously top-heavy, and US destroyers being loaded down with more and more weaponry, with the same results, and that Renaissance Military Commanders had even less understanding or experience with geocentric height and ship stability, and even more motivation to build their ships high, the towering, absurd-looking carrack begins to make sense, not from the point of view of ignorance or tradition, but from the point of view of their needs and expectations. I expect that Lord Admirals of the era would have put sailing qualities very much below fighting qualities, and would have been more than willing to push the stability of a ship to its very limits in favor of men and weaponry. All that mattered was winning the fight. That, after all, is what these ships were for.
From the point of view of late medieval warfare the shape of the high-charged carrack made perfect sense. The wasp-waist is the funnel into which the enemies boarding parties will naturally be channeled in a fight, and, once there, trapped between the murderous overhead crossfire of the fore and aft castles. Much better (but much more difficult) to get atop one of the castles of the enemy's ships, but this requires that your ship be taller... or else a lot of luck... or both.
What is absurd about the Carrack is that the ship itself incorporated two technologies that would eventually transform both the ship itself and the way that ships were used. One of them was the hybrid square/lateen sailing rig that made it possible for the first time in history to build a ship that could sail anywhere in the world, and thus capture, supply and defend territory anywhere in the world. What the builders of the carracks did not realize was that this would require long distance sailing, a navigation revolution, a logistics infrastructure, and permanent standing professional navy. It would also make Global Empires possible.
The other technology was Gunpowder, which, as anyone in our time can see made nonsense of high, lightly built wooden towers filled with pikemen and arquebusiers, etc. On land gunpowder technology changed the shape of cities, from the high curtain wall of stone of the Medieval Castle, to the low star-shaped ramparts of the Renaissance Fort. On water it produced the Galleon. From that point, warship design was evolutionary� the 16th Century Galleon gave way to the 17th Century Great Ship to the 18th Century Man-o-War, which was clad with Iron in the 19th Century, given turrets and boilers and screws, and emerged in the 20th Century as the Dreadnought.
None of this answers the question 'how high' or 'how
much sheer.' I have to say though there is a sense of satisfaction in attempting to realize these ships in 3d as they were depicted in their own era. The carrack offends our modern sensibilities for designing ships that are rational and functional� not to mention seaworthy.
I think that's what's makes scholars skeptical of period depictions. To us building a ship for long distance travel and long term habitation is a matter of course, but, I suspect for the average Renaissance battle commander, didn't make any more sense than building a posh siege tower� you're only in it as long as you need to be.
Having said that the sheer probably
IS often exaggerated, particularly if we imagine an artist in a boat looking UP at a nearby anchored ship as he sketched it. The sheer would naturally seem exaggerated at close quarters looming overhead. Only in places like Malta could an artist really have a good clear view of his subject, looking down from a high hill etc. I think also it's possible that sheer varied from place to place, shipwright to shipwright, and also depended a great deal on the necessities or prejudices of whoever was paying for the ship to begin with. One additional comment I have read from scholars is that rigging is often schematized by non-sailor artists who did not understand the operations of a sailing ship, which means a depiction with accurate rigging (such as a Breugel) is probably more trustworthy in other details as well.
That is the state of my thinking, at any rate. I've gone on at length here because I really want to know if it holds up. I'm not an expert, these are all just assumptions on my part... I guess you would call it 'armchair-shipbuilding...' or something like that.
I was very happy.
but I do really want to try and do the Constitution this year, if I can get all of that other stuff out of the way. If I do a Frigate soon it will probably be her. 
That's one of the reasons I'm scratching in 700th, because I want to incorporate the kits and the scratch builds into a single collection. I used to gripe and moan that the model companies lacked the gumption to go into these uncharted areas, and then quite unexpectedly I discovered I didn't need them to get me there� I could go there myself.