Historic Shipwrecks: Science, History, and Engineering (SO482A)

This was/is a course taught at the US Naval Academy. The link below leads to the course syllabus. Part of it was previously linked by Bobby. That section appeared in the merchantman thread, but many of the photos, etc. are no longer readable after the site hack.

Reading through the syllabus and the thread here reaffirms the need we still have for merchantman ships for Sails of Glory. I especially like the idea of the Bonhomme Richard/Duc de Duras as flip side ships we might see some day?

In any case there's a lot of information contained in the syllabus with even more links and citations to follow up articles, book and websites.

http://www.usna.edu/Users/oceano/pgu...d_syllabus.htm

Jim, I've been trying to lobby Ares to do Bonhomme Richard as a Special with her Groignard 900-ton Indiaman sisters/near-sisters as a regular release. The rub is, other than Massaic, I'm having trouble running down which seven other ships were built as variations of the same basic design... Antoine Groignard also designed a handful of one-off 1100, 1200, 1250 and 1300-tonners too, and all of his EIM designs were engineered specifically for swift transition into warship service, many of his 1100+-tonners joining the French Navy as 64's, and the only reason BHR didn't become a 60 was that John Paul Jones couldn't scrounge enough weaponry to arm her the way he wanted.

The sculpt would be useful as an East Indiaman, but of very limited use as BHR. But I guess that is why I don't care much for the Continental Navy...too many oddball ships of very limited use.

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Originally Posted by Diamondback

Jim, I've been trying to lobby Ares to do Bonhomme Richard as a Special with her Groignard 900-ton Indiaman sisters/near-sisters as a regular release. The rub is, other than Massaic, I'm having trouble running down which seven other ships were built as variations of the same basic design... Antoine Groignard also designed a handful of one-off 1100, 1200, 1250 and 1300-tonners too, and all of his EIM designs were engineered specifically for swift transition into warship service, many of his 1100+-tonners joining the French Navy as 64's, and the only reason BHR didn't become a 60 was that John Paul Jones couldn't scrounge enough weaponry to arm her the way he wanted.

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Ironically, I was just reading this section of the syllabus:

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No plans of the Duc de Duras have survived, but that is not to say that scholars today have no idea how she was designed and built. This is because her principal dimensions are known, along with those of several of Groignard’s other 900-ton ships, including the nearly identical Duc de Pantièvre. Better yet, the plans of the Massiac of 1758, another Groignard design of the same length as the Duc de Duras, are still in existence. Using these and the plans of the Bertin of 1760, a 1200-ton Indiaman also designed by Groignard, the pre-eminent French naval scholar, M. Jean Boudriot, was able to reconstruct a sheer draught of the ship’s hull, to include the arrangement and length of the decks, the number and placement of her guns and gunports, as well as her hull lines from the keel to the top of the sides (Figure 5). Using these plans, several excellent models have been constructed, two of which are in the Naval Academy Museum’s permanent collection.

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That's almost verbatim from the intro to Jean Boudriot's forensic reconstruction of BHR plans, too.

My bet is BHR could probably pass for a G-900, but I'm not so sure about the bigger ones. JPJ had her bulwarks built up a little more IIRC, but it should be a negligible difference in this scale, since a typical 900t EIM was usually up-gunned to about 54 or 56 in naval service--the extra two pair wouldn't be that much for Jones's intended 60-gun monster commerce-raider. Since there are some subtle differences between SGN108 (Generic First Rate) and SGN201 (Victory Special) even though they're both based on the same digital model, I think it would be easy to do the same for the stock G-900s and BHR, if even that much difference is required.

Bobby, you've NAILED the problems of the Sailing USN in a nutshell--a fleet of mostly one-offs, designed by individual shipwrights given a latitude of design that the French and British had started phasing out in favor of standard designs over a quarter century before.

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Originally Posted by Diamondback

Bobby, you've NAILED the problems of the Sailing USN in a nutshell--a fleet of mostly one-offs, designed by individual shipwrights given a latitude of design that the French and British had started phasing out in favor of standard designs over a quarter century before.

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A problem the likes of Langton, GHQ and Davco have mulled over for years, along with their 1/1200 wargaming counterparts. The "solution" follows the same line as AoS player have taken whenever there have been gaps in ranges before - improvise, adapt, overcome and convert (either by simple paint job or more detailed surgery) what is available. And TBH most AoS players are pretty content with having a model that is "close enough". That comes with the subject being fairly niche and the manufacturers either being small operations (Langton - but the scope of his ranges is actually quite amazing and he does do a fair number of "specials" - of course the nature of his operation means that he can keep everything available pretty much all the time; if you buy direct from him he casts to order, a flexibility that the likes of Ares and anyone else going prepaints can never have) or where AoS models form only a very small part of their overall portfolio.

My entire Continental Navy collection is an assemblage of converted Langton and Davco models (mainly the former - better range of masts and "mix & match" options). Some of the renditions are closer to the originals than others but when viewed on the wargames table from a foot or more away they work just fine (and fight just as well :happy: )

Do you think that Langton will ever start producing a 1/1000 scale range?

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Originally Posted by Naharaht

Do you think that Langton will ever start producing a 1/1000 scale range?

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No, I don't think Langton will, but David Manley has hinted that there's one company out there who might consider it? I suppose it could be Rod Langton, but I just don't see that happening.