Hello guys.
I've been talking about my old ink drawings that I drew some 25-30 years ago. Well here are a few for your viewing, including the Grace Dieu which is mentioned in the Sail topic:
This was my pen/pencil line drawing attempt at the Swedish naval architect Fredrik Henrik af Chapman's draught for a Swedish 110 gun ship to counter the menace of the Russian three-deckers in the Baltic:
This was the biggest Royal Ship completed during the Scanian War (1675-79), where the Swedish fleet met disaster after disaster in the hands of inexperienced naval commanders such as Count Gustaf Otto Stenbock and Baron Lorentz Creutz. Excellent commanders such as Claas Johansson Uggla, Eric Sjöblad, and Johan Bergenstierna were overlooked due to their inferior social status, whereas Hans Clerck and Hans Wachtmeister still were too young to command (though, in 1677, finally, the latter was made C-in-C at the young age of 35, after the latest and last of a series of lost battles gone horribly wrong (Falster and Stevns Klint, July 1, 1677). The Carolus Undecimus, named for the King, Charles XI, a brilliant soldier, and a consumate administrator, was Wachtmeister's flagship for the duration of the conflict.
Here are two representations of the large Swedish Royal Ship Svärdet. The second one is the most accurate one. I'm posting my first line drawing of her to show the rigging and flag shroud: It is the flags and command pennant of the commander of the Yellow (2nd) Squadron at the Battle of Öland, June 1st, 1676, Admiral Claas Johansson Uggla, who, after a heroic defence against severela Danish and Dutch ships, perished when the ship blew up underneath him:
This is the Henry (yes, no H.M.S. as of yet!) of 65-82 guns. She began life at Deptford, in 1656, named after one of the Protector's three great battles, Dunbar. She saw exextensive service both in the Baltic, during the wars of King Charles X of Sweden against Denmark-Norway and Poland, 1655-60. Later she served with outmost distinction in numerous battles, was captured by the Dutch, at least twice, and as many times recaptured! One of her most famous commanders was Sir John Harman:
Here's something for our Danish and Norwegian members (you know who you are!): Christianus Quintus of 86 guns. She began life as Prins Christian, but was renamed in 1670 upon the accession on the throne of Christian V (1670-99). She was the Danish-Norwegian fleet flagship during the Scanian War, hosting such illustrious admirals as Cort Sivertsen Adelaer, Cornelis Martenszoon Tromp and, of course the "Nelson of the North", Niels Juel:
A note on the absence of rigging: when drawing manually by hand on a regular sized drawing pad, the hull becomes your focus. After all, the rigging looked pretty much alike regardless of the ship! Every nations' sailors understood the fundamentals of how to sail and handle a square rigged ship. So, they rigged them virtually the same!
In almost all my drawings, my primary focus has been the ships themselves; their hull characteristics, decorations and gun-port configuration.
Also, it is worth noticing that an official cert or draught would never have shown the rigging; masts were reduced to stumps, representing where the masts were situated and at what angle. A simplified sail plan was often made, where only the merest outlines of the ship were shown. In the 17th c. even these were extremely rare.