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Hi Guillaume,
It is important to be aware that Ancre's goal is not to provide selfless assistance, but rather to run a typical commercial venture aimed at making money. Consequently, they do not offer reprints of works on shipbuilding from that era for sale in order to later ruin their own business by providing free information on demand, and which can be found in these paid reprints by Ancre, or by doing other people's research for them. To be clear, this does not refer to Ancre's numerous monographs on the modern reconstruction of specific ships, but to reprints of older works on shipbuilding of a more general nature. I happen to buy and read these reprints (in addition to Ancre's modern reconstruction monographs), but indeed, from what I can see, the overwhelming majority are not even aware of the existence of the former, let alone their content. And yes, one has to spend many thousands of euros on all these publications.
Returning to your specific question about the bowsprit. A few weeks ago, in response to your query, I showed you the layout of the decks of French capital ships by reproducing some graphic plates from the original work of that time. If you hadn't ignored those graphics, you would have also found the answer to your current issue with the bowsprit there.
In addition, I was also able to easily find a fairly short but very informative text description of the important principles of installing bowsprits on French ships in a reprinted manuscript originating from Toulon and dating from 1683. but what is the point of quoting it when, in practice, at least 95% of such help provided on the forum (and, after all, requiring some effort and time to prepare) turns out to be useless and pointless for various reasons? And I don't think I have as much determination and consistency as Allan, who is truly tireless in this particular activity, despite the enormous inertia he encounters
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I am curious to see you post information that you find from the curators if you can reach out to them.
