SHIPS THAT WE ARE MISSING

SHIPS THAT WE ARE MISSING

Hello Everyone,

I want to talk about ships we need to fill certain historical gaps. I am focusing on this today because of our ongoing modeling contest. MODELING CONTEST

This thread will not only serve to show where we are missing some critical historical models needed to complete a period environment of total immersion, but ALSO as a guide for modelers to look at in order to get some ideas on what models they should consider building and/or entering into the contest.

Hopefully this article will serve as a little beacon of inspiration to illustrate what we need and possibly educate some of you on a few types of ships and ship classes.

I realize that we already have a TON of models. Some of these are excellent – some are not. Some are as good as I/we could make them, and I would really like to have better ones in some cases. Some I am very fond of and some I am not – which is why I am reviving the Best and Worst ships list I started years ago on PA! http://piratesahoy.net/threads/best-and-worst-coas-ships.16676/

To begin, I am going to generalize on our greater overall missing ship areas of focus. Then I will get more specific within each area of what we are looking for and why.

First off. We are still missing a lot of small Class 6 and 7 vessels that would have been prevalent in the Caribbean of our time-frame. I have plans to convert one of the Spanish Xebecs with a flat front end – over to a large square rigged Barca Longa with a brand new texture. I’ve seen pictures and this is the right ship for it. It will be funny looking, but it will be correct. You’ve already seen what I’ve done with the English and Dutch yachts, small Spanish smuggling vessels, the little English coastal barks and demi-galleys – and various cutters, brigantines and sloops. However, we need more and better ones.

We have an excellent variety of Luggers and Brigantines so I think we are good there. However we need more vessels like the Hoy and Galliot – we need schallops and skaags. We need small Barca Longas and piraguas. The Dutch are very well represented in the mid and large size ship classes, but they are not in the small ship classes. The pirates of the time favored piraguas and barca-longas. Our problem is that there just aren’t many existing plans of these ships. I have managed to find a few and I am loading them online for you even now, but we need more.

To get some ideas about what I am looking for, take a look at Bennerson Little’s website here that features contemporary drawings (many from Labat) of many of the small 17th century craft that I am talking about. Little’s Page of 17th century small ships drawing

Schallop

I would also like to see some other really small working vessels that are fully “ship rigged”. That would also be really great. Models like a four gun Dutch or English bark that look like tiny galleons – armed only with four guns or so – like the Duyfken. I have a few plans for these as well. French ships like the tiny Belle or Curieuse Snow from POTBS.

We have lots of Fluyts. I even have a pretty cool Fluyt model now that isn’t in the game that I’ve been working up a texture for. However it is not really the kind of Fluyt we need. There are a couple of Fluyt types we are missing. I would like to replace one of the OLD Armed Fluyt models we have here with one that is like the Sultana from POTBS.

She is wider and better armed. She is more indicative of the smuggling fluyts the Dutch used in the Slave and Sugar trade and more like the ones the French used for colonization.

We are also missing a small simple fluyt type that is almost unarmed and lacks the front decoration. Simple like a herring buss and somewhat indicative of that type of ship. These were used to transport fish actually, as well as stone and building supplies. Think of an old beat up pick-up truck. That is the kind of Fluyt we need. Take a look at these pics. I even have plans for one like this I am uploading.

The only other Dutch ship we really need is something that could replace the Midden Pinnaschips in the game. Now I love these ships. I even love the old model we have of them in the game. This was one of the great Yo Ho Ho’s first models and I have done a lot to modify and texture this model. I have made eight different skins and two differing variants for this ship just so you know how much I like it!

Obviously I would also love to see more small frigat class vessels like Arnolde de Lange portrays in his paintings.

There would have been thousands of these little warrior cargo carriers and privateer vessels all over the world. For God’s sake the Dutch had 25,000 ships globally at this time. The English trailed badly with only 3 thousand. You see these ships everywhere in the old historical paintings. This is a nice model, but I think we could do better. The bow and stern could be much better defined with much nicer decorations. There are a lot of plans for these ships around I have a couple of sets myself which I plan
to reload. If we had a couple of these come out of the woodwork new, I would retire the old Voyage Century Online Batavia model.

The next ships we are missing are small English and Spanish galleons and frigates. In my book research lately I can’t tell you just how many times I have run into mentions of small Spanish Galleons and Frigates between 18 to 28 guns coming out to defend Spanish ports or being taken as prizes by Dutch Zeeroovers. There are literally dozens of entries in my historical time lines and outlines of these ships being encountered. YET we don’t even have one in the game. Sure I made the Zabra which partially fills this gap. We have the ancient AOP1:Caribbean Tales Light Galleon. I have made so many different variants of this model for the game I am sick of it. I also have the Dutch Geleide pinas and Oorlogsfrigat with Spanish squadrons. This isn’t inaccurate as the Spanish bought tons of these ships from Holland and had their own Flemish shipwrights building them too. Wouldn’t it be nice to have some in that class that are specifically Spanish or English? I think so!

We need something new here and more than just one model folks. I would like to see a new type of well armed small galleon in the game AND small frigates like the Cerberus from POTBS. If we had a Cerberus type model I could make variants of it for the French and English as well and they wouldn’t be out of place at all. Here’s some more pics so you can see what I’m talking about.

I would absolutely LOVE to have a little English warship like this one in the game done by ARTEX

Next up is a large Spanish Galleon with double galleries or balconies. We only have one ship in the game like that now. That’s the Flemish Galleon. It also strikes me that we have the Old Dutch Galleon that is simply Craiggo’s old cleaned up version of the Flying Dutchman that I reskinned. I have considered pulling her out of the game many times. She doesn’t show up that much so I haven’t yet. However, I have been mulling over doing a new alpha map under her bows to clean her up even more and make her look more Spanish. Then I could do a complete reskin of her with lots of exterior ribbing and making a proper large Capitana Galleon of her.

What I’m talking about is the old classic archetypal HUGE lumbering war galleon that we see so often in old paintings and illustrations. The ones with the bells or large arch supported lanterns on the sterns. Here’s some illustrations.

So What we really need here are some old left-overs – not only some that had survived the preceding decades, but a few that were still being built along the old traditional lines or even still retaining a lot of the old practices alongside new ones. If you look at the illustration just above of the San Pedro from the 1650s you can see what I’m alluding to – so even in the mid 17th century. I can tell you that from my pouring over SO many contemporary illustrations – that these ships were still being built and were still out there – and still being engaged in combat.

In addition to this galleon we could really use another large type of heavy war-galleon/man-o-war that is more akin to the San Phillipe. I don’t think most people realize that there is no actual proof that the San Felipe even actually existed. I am someone who thinks she did. This is because I have spied bits and pieces of old plans that look too much like her. If she didn’t exist then a ship very much like her did. What I would like to see is another large Spanish Capital ship like her that really did exist – the 90gun Nuestra Senora de la Concepcion y de las Animas

I tried to skin one of the old large POTC ships with a skin from this ship. I think I did a decent job, but the model is just dated and has problems. It is the Almirante Galleon if any of you are wondering. If someone wants to build this ship, they are in luck, because I ordered an entire two volume book in Spanish on her from the historical archives of Madrid a few years ago – and guess what? THERE IS AN ENTIRE SET OF COMPLETE PLANS in that book of her. I plan to upload these soon. I already put up a whole set of FLICKR images together on her. I realize this is a tall order. I plan to do a modeling contest next year as well if someone thinks it will take them a year to jinn this one up LOL! No shame in that mates! https://www.flickr.com/photos/49225014@N05/albums/72157646545564043

Last for galleons is that we could use one that was of the newer Frigatte design – contemporary to our time-frame of the middle of the 17th century but with lingering galleon attributes. Think of one of the Dutch styled two decked frigates with galleon galleries. Here are a couple of images to consider.

SO the next category we are missing is English Restoration Era warships 1st through 5th rate.

This is probably the biggest sucking chest wound we have in the whole game. I have tried my best to provide some makeshift skinned examples of these ships. For example the English 2nd Rate Battleships (The Link from the Russian Tales of a Pirate (GIC) mod). My reskin looks pretty good, but I would much rather have a Royal Catherine, the Lenox (which I have complete plans for) or HMS Sussex or HMS PRINCE!!!

One of the ships I would like MOST to throw out of the game is the Light (or Fast) Battleship. Here again I textured her to look like a large English capital ship. However, she is an old aging POTC ship that I reworked and there was only so much I could do with her. I would love to get something proper to go in her place and throw her out of the game for good. Everytime I see her, I cringe a little and I still think I did a pretty good job on her texturing.

As far as English 3rd and 4th rates go we have the English 64gunner (Centurion) by Kris Wood even though she is a little on the late side for our game. She is close and looks so nice that I left her in because we are missing so many correct English ships from this time. We also have the 50 gun 3rd rater I got from TEHO and reskinned. She looks really good, but her shape is more French than English – and indeed I have a French version of this same ship but she looks completely different because of my texture work. I
wonder how many of you noticed that she was the same model. Bet not many. LOL

We also have the Mordaunt variants that I put together. This ship was originally the old COAS Arabella and the great modeler Pgargon simply fattened her up to the correct proportions and added ordinance. He changed her rig to the correct 17th century English design, and voila! instant English 3rd Rate. Don’t get me wrong – I am very proud of the texture variants on this ship and she looks really good too (although I really wish a good modeler could go in a smooth out her back side below the gallery – she has
bad jagged polys there that make it really hard to get a nice quality texture skin down there without it distorting.

I have no plans to get rid of the Mordaunt variants, but I would like to see more like her. We have so many great Dutch warships now in the mid and large classes, but we are missing good English equivalents. Our game is set right smack dab in the middle of the Second Anglo-Dutch War and I would love to have some epic battles with both sides well represented.

Now that I’ve established this need, let me say that a good part of this need may be filled already. I was contacted by the great modeler Yo Ho Ho via Email a short time ago and he informed me that he would give us his beautiful English Restoration models he has been working on the last several years if we could just finish the sailors points files for them. I told him that we would be glad to do that. I know he could do this himself, but he is very busy with work. I am just waiting for him to upload them now. I
hope he will have the time to enter these AWESOME models into our contest and I REALLY look forward to playing with them. Even with these models, we could always use more like them.

Lastly I would like to see some more great corsair and large class pirate ships – FAMOUS pirate ships. I would love to get that French frigate the Aurora in the game. There is a version of it on POTBS, Secret Beach, and now Naval Action. Why can’t we have one? I would like to see mid sized French and English armed cargo vessels with nice subtle decoration appropriate to the time. I would like to see ships like

Morgan’s Oxford and Satisfaction. I would like to see Dutch ships like the Fancy. I would like to see ships like Robert’s Onslow (The Royal Fortune). I would like to see an actual awesome and correct rendition of Teach’s Queen Anne’s Revenge. If we could get some ships like these I could retire the Atlantic Merchantman from Voyage Century online and maybe a couple of others like her.

So that pretty much wraps things up. I think our game would be extremely well balanced and every genre very well represented if we could get models in each of the areas I mentioned above. I will leave you with a couple of final images. We don’t need these models, but I think they would really be cool to have in the game. I would love to see the Polish galleon Smok in the game which is very representative of the class and there would have been many Spanish ships that looked nearly like her. Also I would love to see Tromp’s Aemilia in the game in the future. Here are some pics.

I just also want to mention that I have tried to contact some modelers already in the hopes they might help us – and have not had return correspondence. I contacted the people (Docema) who did the movie Broadside. I tried to contact ArtEx as well but have never heard back. http://bloodflag.blogspot.com/2012/10/so-this-blog-is-called-bloodflag.html In addition I have tried contacting modelers who have put their work up on youtube – but no contact. Don’t know if I am getting thru. See these videos as examples of what’s out there. I am ALWAYS on the lookout for good models. It’s a passion of mine really. Someday I will be building my own I am certain of it. I need to entice someone like Orazio to go on a cruise with me and some friends and I will pick up the bill – provided he spends a week at my house behind my computer teaching me everything he knows. I always learn far better with hands on experience. LOL

Well these are all of the things I can think of right now. I am going to also put this up as a forum topic so people can discuss it and so we can share links for plans and upload plans in a repository here for Buccaneers Reef. Here is the forum link: Missing Ships Discussion

Hope this makes things as clear as mud for you mates!

MK

by modernknight1