59-4 NRJ Inside Pages Version 2_40555_Text_a.qxd.qxd

HMS Ardent: A King’s Ship, But
Which King?
. . . . .
by Ron Neilson
Figure 1. Starboard view, full broadside. The model is 54 inches long. All photographs by the author.
The Historical Perspective
HMS Ardent was a 64-gun, thirdrate ship-of-the-line of the Royal Navy,
launched on August 13, 1764. The warship
was built under contract at Hull, England
according to the plans of Royal Navy architect, Sir Thomas Slade. Ordered nearly
three years earlier, in December 1761,
Ardent was one of Slade’s lesser known
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nautical design achievement; for period
sailing ship modelers he is most famous for
his design of HMS Victory.
Slade also designed Ardent’s progenitor, Asia, the first true 64-gun warship.
The Royal Navy abandoned earlier 60-gun
ships and commissioned additional 64’s
that incorporated alterations learned from
trials with Asia. Subsequent ships were
larger; the first of the new 64’s being
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Figure 2. The starboard stern view.
Ardent, the lead ship of its class.
Slade’s Ardent Class used the lines
of a captured French 64-gun ship, Le
Fougueux, a prize taken in 1747. Ardent
was built to incorporate important elements of the French ship’s design, particularly the increased tumblehome of the hull.
As the weight and total number of armaments escalated during the mid-eighteenthcentury, so did the need to pay closer
attention to a warship’s center of gravity
vis-à-vis its sailing qualities.
The renowned English frigate,
Indefatigible, also built to the identical 64gun plans as Ardent, was not launched
until twenty years later in 1784. Slade’s
successful design was revived in 1777 for
five
further
Ardent-class
ships:
Raisonnable,
Agamemnon,
Stately,
Belliqueux, and Nassau, for a total of seven
ships built to his plans. Slade himself had
died six years earlier, in 1771. The basic
Ardent-class specifications were:
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Length on keel: 144 feet
Beam: 44 feet 6 inches
Displacement: 1,376 tons
Crew complement: 500
Armament upon commissioning:
Main gun deck: twenty-six
24-pounders
Upper gun deck: twenty-six
18-pounders
Quarterdeck: ten 4-pounders
Forecastle: two 9-pounders
Ship and armaments technology was
escalating rapidly by the 1780s. As a consequence, the mid-century 64-gun third rates
were underpowered to stand in the line.
Additionally, most captains preferred
smaller, faster ships (including the razée
frigates cut-down from 64’s) over the “old
school 64” that was much too slow and difficult to maneuver against the faster warships of England’s adversaries. The frigate
was fast becoming a marauder of choice for
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Figure 3. The starboard bow view.
Figure 4. The forecastle and partial bow. Anchors are
shipped and chained for action.
many types of naval engagements.
As noted, the 64 had become an
underpowered warship and 74-gun capital
ships had taken their place as the preferred
third rate ships-of-the-line. The 74’s (and
many frigates) could throw a heavier
weight of ordnance than the outmoded 64.
The technological development and rapid
deployment of the carronade—a devastating, close-range naval weapon—quickly
tipped the scales in favor of the fast frigate
and the 74’s as fleet “staples.” Increasingly,
close-action battles, “cutting out” boarding
actions and prize captures favored this new
armament technology, too, as resources for
both shipbuilding and manning the Royal
Navy were being depleted rapidly.
By the close of the eighteenth century,
third rate 64’s consequently served other
important roles, such as deployment on
colonial expeditions and blockading duty.
Indeed, by the beginning of the Napoleonic
Wars in 1803, the notional total number of
ships-of-the-line in seagoing condition was
approximately one hundred and eleven,
according to noted British naval historian,
Brian Lavery. Of this total, there were no
less than thirty-eight commissioned 64’s
still in service in the Royal Navy. The 64’s
were particularly well suited for intimidation, especially in far-flung colonial ports.
They helped immensely in warding off
pesky privateers. They also became a rou-
tine military escort ship for convoys,
accompanying the Indiamen of the lucrative East India Company.
Ardent had a somewhat tumultuous
career. The ship was captured by the
French in 1779 in the English Channel and
then re-captured by Britain in April 1782 at
the Battle of the Saintes in the West Indies.
My research was unable to uncover
Ardent’s service background for its first ten
years of life; the period from its launching
in 1764 to 1774 remains a mystery. The
only known fact from this period is that
Ardent was one of the first 64-gun ships
put into commission as a consequence of
conflicts with Spain over possession of the
Falkland Islands.
We do know that Ardent was
deployed to the North American station,
based at Halifax, Nova Scotia, in October
1774 under Captain Sir George Douglas.
This appears to be the first record of its
service. In 1778, under the command of
Captain George Keppel, Ardent was posted
to Admiral Lord Howe’s squadron off New
York, defending the British colonial city
from a larger French fleet attack under the
command of Admiral le Comte d’Estaing.
The two forces engaged in battle off Rhode
Island on August 11, 1778, though both
fleets were scattered by a storm over the
following two days. Ardent returned home
to Portsmouth, England and was paid off in
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291
Figure 5. Midships and fore chains. One can see the belfry and galley stack.
January 1779.
Six months later, in June 1779, following storm repairs, Ardent was quickly
re-commissioned under the command of
Captain Phillip Boteler, sailing from
Plymouth to join Sir Charles Hardy in the
English Channel by August. Neither
Boteler nor the captain of Marlborough
(74), in whose company Ardent was sailing, were aware that a French fleet had put
to sea. Ardent encountered this enemy fleet
only two days after sailing into the
Channel. After receiving correct replies to
coded signals, the two English capital ships
ran down to meet the others they assumed
were also English. The fleet they encountered was, in fact, a combined FrancoSpanish fleet, in possession of the Royal
Navy signal codebook that permitted the
deception; a correct response to Ardent’s
“who are you?” signals.
With Ardent within range, the
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French frigate Junon fired two broadsides
before raising the colors to reveal its true
allegiance. Three further French frigates,
and the Spanish ship of the line, Princesa,
joined the action shortly afterward. In
response, Ardent offered sporadic and inaccurate return fire before striking its colors
to the vastly superior enemy force. HMS
Marlborough escaped unscathed and beat a
course back to England.
At his subsequent court martial,
Captain Boteler blamed his failure to
return fire on an inadequate supply of gunpowder for Ardent’s cannons, a statement
strongly denied by the ship’s gunner, who
presented evidence there was enough powder for fifty minutes of vigorous engagement. The court martial rejected Boteler ’s
claims, finding instead that the inexperience of the crew was the principal cause of
Ardent’s failure to respond to the attack.
According to ship’s logs, in 1779 as much
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as eighty percent of Ardent’s crew comprised pressed landsmen. Boteler was dismissed from the Navy for his failure
adequately to defend his ship.
Little is known of Ardent’s career
while flying the flag of Bourbon France
before the English re-captured the ship less
than three years later, on April 12, 1782, at
the Battle of the Saintes, a large naval
action in the West Indies that took place
over four days, April 9 – 12, during the
American War of Independence. It was a
decisive victory for the British fleet under
Admiral Sir George Rodney over the French
led by Admiral Comte de Grasse; the outcome forced the French and Spanish to
abandon a planned invasion of Jamaica, a
British stronghold. The battle is named
after a small group of islands between
Guadeloupe and Dominica in the West
Indies. Ironically, the French fleet was the
very same that, several months earlier, had
blockaded the British army, facilitating
George
Washington’s
victory
over
Lieutenant General William Cornwallis at
the siege of Yorktown.
The following lines of poetry saluting the English victory at the Saintes are
attributed to Charles Cornwallis, captain of
HMS Canada at the battle. He was the
brother of the same William Cornwallis
who surrendered to Washington at
Yorktown on October 19, 1781.
de Grasse in his flagship, crowded by
nine,
Strikes Ville de Paris colours o’er the
brine,
HMS Barfleur, Hood’s flagship takes
the fame,
De Grasse offered his sword, the
Ad’mril’s shame,
Ardent, Glorieux, Hector soon followed suit,
César blew up; a sad final salute,
Thus four ships captured, an Ad’mril
Figure 6. Midships; anchors hauled and shipped, pinnace hoisted from the skids.
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293
as well,
Rodney’s fame and fortune made;
tales to tell,
His dogged tenacity in pursuit,
Showered forth prize money,Vict’ry’s
fair loot.
Following its recapture, Ardent was
recommissioned under Captain Richard
Lucas. On August 28, 1783, the ship was
renamed Tiger. It was sold out of service in
June, 1784.
The Model:
The Best of Kit and Scratch
For my build of Ardent, I drew inspiration from visits to the National Maritime
Museum in London and the Maritime
History Museum in Sweden during the
summer of 2013. Added to this was my
desire to challenge my modeling skills and
knowledge by taking a readily available,
good quality ship kit to a higher level;
much higher. My work proceeded over a
period of approximately eight months from
the fall of 2013 to the spring of 2014. I
estimate that I put in approximately 900
hours into my project.
My model of Ardent is a hybrid, a
quite substantial kit-bash that began with
a Caldercraft Agamemnon kit’s plank-onbulkhead keelformer and bulkheads. The
kit is to 1:64 scale, my personal favorite.
I used the kit’s quite well-documented full-scale plans to extensively modify
and,
in
most
circumstances,
scratch-build the balance of the ship’s
wood components, which included all the
planking, deck furniture, and bow and
stern components. All non-visible skeletal
wood—bulwarks framing, deck beams,
hanging knees amidships, and the like—
was basswood, while the principal hull
planking was crafted from Swiss pear that I
purchased in precision-milled wood strips
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and multiple-thickness sheets from
HobbyMill USA. Throughout the project I
worked in metric units of measurement,
which I find easier.
For both aesthetic and practical reasons, I chose to employ thin walnut strip
wood for the planking below the main wale
down to the waterline. The painted black
wale itself was made from pear strips. I
found it unnecessary to spile or employ
tedious bending techniques for the visible
planked area of the hull. Neither stealers
nor drop planks were required at either
bow or stern, partially owing to the very
thin (0.020-inch) walnut strips I used to
form the severe tucks at the stem and at
the transom line. Beneath the ship’s full
waterline-to-keel coppering is a single layer
of basswood planking. Although the kit
provided for a customary European doubleplanked plank-on-bulkhead approach, I
found this was not necessary. With proper
beveling of bulkheads, adding a carved rabbet and a nicely tapered bearding line, a
single run of basswood strips yielded a
smooth, graceful shape to skin the ship’s
structure. The false keel, attached to the
bottom of the basswood keelformer, was
made from boxwood strip. HobbyMill USA
also supplied all the model’s boxwood, walnut and cherry.
On almost every plank-on-bulkhead
model I have built, I have used balsa filler
blocks at the bow and stern. Ardent was no
exception. Getting these added scratchmade filler pieces properly shaped and
placed contributed immensely to making
one of the most difficult aspects of planking
the stem and stern plank tucks a little easier to do with any plank-on-bulkhead -style
build.
I used the copper plates provided
with the kit to complete the hull’s exterior.
The tedious and fiddly process took a full
two week’s work and required 2,300 of the
thin copper plates. Once finished, I used a
commercial-grade etching solution to
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accelerate the aging of the shiny platelets
so they would present a desirable brownhued patina that over time will continue to
look even more attractive. Following some
experimentation with my aging solution’s
dilution proportions and after cleaning the
copper free of residual glue and finger oils, I
simply brushed the solution on with a ½inch-wide brush and had plenty of wiping
rags nearby.
Typically, I finish the woods on my
models with a natural oil-based stain. On
most components, I use it full-strength,
right out of the can. This was the case for
Figure 7. Quarter and poop deck towards the stern. The ship’s wheel and binnacle was tucked under the foremost support
beam for the poop deck, just ahead of the officer’s movable bulkheads.
Figure 8. The lower yard chain slings and platform swivel guns hauled up to the fighting tops.
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295
the majority of the visible woods for
Ardent. However, I also used mixtures of
acrylic paints on some wood pieces where I
had to match the colors of the painted
pewter or photo-etched brass decorative
components so they would better blend
visually against the tone of the adjacent
pear planking. For example, on the stem, I
colored the pear headrails and carvings to
match the lion figurehead and decorative
trailboard castings provided in the kit.
I used a multi-color, layered painting
technique to make both the cast pewter
and brass pieces provided in a kit look
more like wood carvings. This was especially important in the stern area. I used
primary paint colors, as well as metallic
gold leaf color, very sparingly. Gold (and
any hue of red) does tweak the retina, soto-speak. I used my preferred dark-hued
crimson red acrylic for the inner bulwarks—gun deck and quarterdeck—the
edges (only) of all gunport lids and port
openings, the background for King George
III’s cameo profile and, rather profusely, on
the officers’ pinnace.
I used a black acrylic (typically, two
or three coats) on the main wale and all
other areas that were painted (flat) black on
eighteenth-century warships: yards, tops,
timbers, cap rails, lower stem area, and so
on. I always use non-reflective flat acrylic
paints. Once dry, the black-painted wood
was given a thin coat of Minwax Wipe-On
polyurethane finish to it a subtle sheen.
In keeping with my understanding
of color painting standards for the eighteenth-century English capital warships, I
painted all the outer planks of the gun
ports in black too. Warships of the era
loved to advertise their potency; the more
gun ports spotted by a lookout or visible in
the watch officer ’s telescope, the better. To
scare-off pirates, merchant ships often
deployed a canvas disguise that draped over
the sides of their ships upon which were
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painted black false gun ports.
A careful study of the ship’s plans
while gearing-up for the build led me to a
decision to construct the model’s bulwarks
from scratch; this allowed me to frame all
the ship’s gun ports more accurately while
also yielding a thin, and scale-accurate,
cross section to all the ship’s bulwarks. I
have learned from past experience that this
area of a kit build can be especially problematic; bulwarks (especially those with
significant tumblehome) can be challenging to execute properly; it is frustrating to
realize too late that a series of small but
cumulative building errors in this critical
area can result in a quite irregular sheer
line from stem to stern. Rather than using
a paper template to locate and drill holes
arbitrarily through planked sides that
would have been built much too thickly, I
chose to build up the extensive bulwark
framing so that, when the interior and
exterior planking was applied I had a quite
reasonable replication of the actual full-size
building practice, with sills, lintels and verticals. As well as much better looking topsides symmetry, a much stronger overall
construction resulted from this worthwhile
effort.
This is a good time to mention that,
mid-way through my build, I acquired an
excellent reproduction print of Ardent’s
original 1761 plans from the National
Maritime museum (to 1:48 scale and 84
inches long). I used this document extensively to compare with the kit’s hull and
sheer lines, and also for a multitude of
other hull construction details. This print
will be suitably framed and displayed
behind my completed model. This same
original plan was used to build Ardent’s six
siblings
in
later
years—including
Agamemnon and even the razée frigate
Indefatigible two decades after Ardent’s
launch in 1764.
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Figure 9. The mass of rigging.
At The Bow:
Of Hawse Bucklers,
Gripes and Cant Washes
In the stem and beakhead area I
used various thicknesses of pear and boxwood for scratch-building the beakhead
itself, all headrail, cheeks and hawse pieces,
timbers, roundhouses, seats of ease, catheads, bumpkins and other decorative
wood elements. The lion figurehead however, was a pewter casting I purchased from
an Italian manufacturer.
After doing some research in James
Lees’s and Brian Lavery’s tomes, I decided
to add hawse bucklers (basically, removable
hole plugs) to the normally open anchor
hawse holes. Because I was attempting to
show my model in an action-ready configuration, it made sense to secure the anchors
to frame timbers (with chains) and close up
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the large anchor cable openings at the bow.
Hawse bucklers had a mechanism that
would permit a sailor (inside or topside) to
pull a chain and quickly open them to
ready the anchor cables.
Additionally, I added a layer of protection to the leading edge of the stem’s
cutwater; this was called a gripe. The gripe
was made from a sheet of lead. It protected
the stem from several sea-going hazards,
especially during action when all manner
of debris could hit and foul the stem area.
Another important detail rarely
shown on contemporary models of this era
is the cant wash. This angled piece, located just below the lowest cheeks on the
stem, helped to minimize the intake of seawater through the hawse holes and also
enhanced the stem’s thrusting action in
rough seas.
I took creative license and sourced
some attractive, micro-thin green abalone
(mother-of-pearl shell), cut small pieces,
297
and affixed them to the fronts and rears of
both catheads and the headrail support
timbers, starboard and port. I highly doubt
this embellishment was added in full-size
shipbuilding practice. but I liked the result
on my model, particularly after seeing a
similar treatment on more than one historic model at the National Maritime
Museum.
Stern Details
All the wood components of the
stern were scratch built from pear: main
stern facings, transom, galleries, rails, and
decorative moldings. I used the kit’s gallery
railings, balustrades, columns, and finish
pieces—virtually all of the kit’s decorative
pewter pieces (which were quite nicely
cast). In addition, I included a small handful of decorative carvings (brass photoetched items) from other kits that were
leftovers from previous builds.
The kit provided three stern
lanterns but I decided to mount only two,
purely for aesthetic reasons. My engineering-oriented, historical accuracy sensibilities are continuously doing battle with my
artistic ones. On balance, I lean toward art
because, at the end of the day, I believe
that, as a modeler—and not an engineer or
contract builder pitching a project to an
Admiralty Board—the properly proportioned, visually-attractive ship model
should be an objet d’art.
In addition to rudder chains, I created emergency fall lines seized to the ends
of the chains and tied them off to cleats on
the poop deck. It was a good thing to be
able to quickly retrieve an unshipped rudder, particularly during a battle!
Some may notice the canvas boot
surrounding the rudder where it passes
through the transom. This is a very important detail that I have rarely seen on contemporary sailing model warships. A lot of
water passes across and around the stern,
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not to mention what happens in a following sea. Without a well-sealed rudder boot,
a ship’s captain would be taking non-stop
baths from seawater spouting up and
through his stern cabin’s rudder trunk.
Last, but not least, there was
Ardent’s badge. Most likely it would have
been painted in 1764; I chose to affix
photo-etched brass letters in a creme color
that matched that of the stern and quarter
galleries mullions. I like the appearance of
raised typography, the precise letters casting a slight shadow on the transom’s wood.
The Masts and Rigging
I crafted all masts and yards from
square stock boxwood. I followed the eighteenth-century conventions described by
James Lees and gleaned modeling techniques from David Antscherl’s excellent
Swan series. I made all other wooden rigging components from pear (all channels,
bees, bibs, fids, mastcaps, crosstrees,
planked tops, hounds, mastheads).
I used a combination of kit-supplied
photo-etched brass pieces and various
scratch built items to create the yard stirrups, boom irons, straps, and platform rail
stanchions for all the tops. Although I used
the kit’s deadeyes for all shrouds, I exclusively used pear blocks in several sizes
from Syren Ship Model Company for all
the rigging, which was based on Lees’s rigging plans for third rate vessels. All of the
rope on the model also came from Syren
Ship Models. I used ten different sizes for
both the standing and running rigging.
Concerning rope, I chose to use
dark brown rather than black for all standing rigging (this is particularly evident with
the wouldings on all the lower masts,
including the bowsprit). I was fortunate
that this more accurate color rope was
made available just a few weeks before I
needed it. Created from three strands of
high-quality cotton linen, I found Syren
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Figure 10. Hawse bucklers, the gripe, the cant wash and mother-of-pearl embellishments.
rope, in all sizes, consistently to be of high
quality. Because this genuine rope is virtually fuzz-free it was unnecessary to use a
beeswax coating. The Syren rope made the
very fiddly detail work of making the more
than one hundred coiled rope hanks to
position on pins and other rigging belaying
points much easier. The sheer volume of
rope visible on a square-rigged eighteenthcentury warship means that their colors
and size fidelity are critical aspects for an
accurate portrayal of the real thing.
While working on Ardent’s rigging,
my research revealed that the Royal Navy
used lighter, more efficient blocks on their
ships from the 1790s onward. This advantage reduced the total weight of the blocks
and cordage, so their ships had considerably less top hamper than equivalent
French vessels. Often overlooked, a number
of these small but significant rigging
improvements gave the Royal Navy a technological advantage over their adversaries.
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After more research regarding a warship’s preparations for action, I decided to
rig iron chain slings for the two lower yards
(fore and mainmast). These chains provided additional insurance against crippling
damage in this sensitive area of the rigging
from direct hits by an enemy’s gunners.
The iron chain slings were either used
alone, or in combination with heavy rope,
to support the weight of the spars.
The Cannon and the Fighting Tops:
64 + 8 Still Equals 64!
Sixty-four turned brass cannon were
supplied in the kit and I finished them
with the chemical solution BiOx312 from
Electrochemical Products, Inc. A full soaking in this solution for only a few minutes
imparts an attractive, low luster, darkish
grey pewter-like look; the result makes
brass appear aged after drying and burnish299
Figure 11. Midships quarterdeck close up.
ing. A simple rag was used to rub each cannon after five to seven minutes of soaking.
Nothing more was done to finish the cannon barrels. To my eye, results of this
chemical aging technique look superior to
simply painting cast or turned cannon flat
black—or using the ubiquitous “BlackenIt” chemical.
In keeping with my decision to
depict the ship ready for action whenever I
could, I mounted four turned brass swivel
guns to each of the fore and main fighting
tops. The mini-cannons were finished
using the same BiOx312. The support stirrups were fashioned from brass rod and flat
stock.
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Hammock Cranes For 500 –
More “BiOx”
I used the kit’s supplied photoetched brass—hammock cranes, quarter
gallery lights, ship’s wheel—and some of
the pewter castings (mostly for the stern).
Specifically, I also used the same BiOx
solution described above on all hammock
cranes to match the antiqued look achieved
on the brass cannon barrels.
Modelers have known about tulle
fabric—a finely knit synthetic fabric that is
used in women’s fashion, especially bridal
veils. I was fortunate to locate tulle in a
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Figure 12. The stern with French Bourbon ensign beneath the Union Jack.
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ing.
A
simple rag
301
Figure 13. You can judge a ship by its boats. Here, the officers’ 32-foot pinnace is hauled up. A protective web of overhead
rope netting was spread across the skids to protect the gun crews from falling overhead objects—and to hinder potential
enemy boarding actions. Sharp weapons—like cutlasses and pikes—were at the ready and could thrust up through the netting.
light brown color and I used it to make the
ship’s extensive hammock netting. Tulle
was also used to fabricate the safety netting
on the aft sides of the fighting tops and on
the forward headrails near the heads. In all
instances I tied off small attachment ropes
to the hammock and safety nettings in
addition to using Allene’s fabric glue—a
staple for securing rigging.
The Plinth and the Pegasus
To display my completed model I
wanted something that was, in itself, a
complementary work of art. Fancy, but not
over-the-top. I am fortunate to have had
several opportunities to view numerous
historic models in world-class maritime
museums and paid close attention to the
materials and methods used to display
them.
For HMS Ardent, I decided to design
my own plinth; a slightly elevated plat302
form. The plinth’s complex routed profile
was made from six-quarter cherry. The
baseboard within the cherry rails is halfinch Baltic birch plywood covered with a
glossy paper print of Aegean marble. I created a high-resolution digital photographic
file of real marble and generated a document large enough to cover the entire baseboard. By substituting a mounted print
over the plywood base for the real thing,
the large baseboard was a tiny fraction of
the weight had I employed genuine marble
(not to mention a small fraction of the
cost!). The cherry rails were stained natural and then given three coats of semi-gloss
MinWax Wipe-On polyurethane finish.
The “French provincial profiled” cherry
rails had their inner perimeter edges inset
with 1/16-inch-thick polished brass. This
was done to achieve a visual accent to the
darker marble base piece and separate it
slightly from the lighter cherry rails.
Four serpent-tailed Pegasus cast
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Figure 14. The bow of the National Maritime Museum print from the 1761 Ardent-class original plans. Seven 64-gun third
rates in total were built to these plans.
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303
brass pedestals support the model. I
acquired these from a modeling colleague
and fashioned the keel support mounting
blocks below them. I believe these
pedestals still can be purchased from
European model ship resellers. Once
secured to Ardent’s Aegean marble baseboard, the equine pedestals hold the model
quite securely.
Flags: A Tricolor Becomes
a Bourbon Surmounted
by the Union Jack.
National Maritime Museum, Greenwich,
England
Swedish Maritime Museum (Sjøhistoriska
museet) Stockholm, Sweden
Sources
Antscherl, David, Rigging A Sixth Rate
Sloop of 1767-1780. (Florence, Oregon:
SeaWatchBooks, 2010).
Lavery, Brain, The Arming & Fitting of
English Ships of War 1600-1815.
(Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 1987).
Early on in my model’s “life,” I had
decided to show it recaptured by the
English as a result of the Battle of the
Saintes, with the Union Jack flying proudly above the French Tricolor. Only after
posting some preliminary photographs of
my Ardent on the Internet forum, Model
Ship World, did I discover that I had hoisted the wrong French flag at the stern. An
expatriate Englishman living in Sweden
pointed out to me, via the forum, that the
correct French naval ensign of 1782 would
have been a variation of the plain vanillawhite, fleur de Lis-checkered Bourbon flag
of Louis XVI. I immediately went back to
the Internet for flag research and, subsequently, to my computer drawing board. I
printed out the correct French flag (on
paper) and crafted its folds to replace the
Napoleon-era tricolor that fluttered over
the nation’s ships several years later, following the French Revolution.
——-Nelson’s Navy. (Annapolis: Naval
Institute Press, 1989).
C’est La Guerre!
Electrochemical Products, Inc.
Industrial Chemicals Manufacturer
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HobbyMill
Custom Wood Milling
www.hobbymillusa.com
Syren Ship Model Company
Vol. 59, No 4 WINTER 2014