Bowsprit of Soleil Royal

-Waldemar- said:

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Yet, apparently they care about time and money and that’s their business model, or perhaps they simply enjoy being asked the same thing over and over again. It’s a fairly common trait among many people, and one has to take it into account. I, too, had to remind them a few times to send the missing plate from the album La Marine Française by Morel Fatio, which I had previously bought from Ancre, before they finally sent it after several dozen months of reminders .



Apart from the plates from Colbert’s album, there are many other period illustrations and plans depicting 17th-century French ships, showing the bowsprit precisely over the stem, rather than off-centre (see sample graphic at the bottom of this post). I do not know why model-makers, instead of consulting the sources, have an unstoppable tendency to copy even the most absurd solutions from one another.




You can find all the information regarding the purchase of the so-called Colbert album on the Ancre website. The quality of the reproductions is excellent, and what’s more, this particular reprint includes commentary, and perhaps most importantly for some, a transcription of the original French text for each plate and its English translation. It weights about 1.33 kg.

ALBUM DE COLBERT - Anonyme - 1670 - Ancre

The priceless ALBUM DE COLBERT, which is preserved at the Service Historique de la Marine in Paris, is the main illustrated document bearing witness to the ambition of Louis XIV.

ancre.fr

If you’re not yet ready to spend money on such trifles as period sources, I can send you the entire set of plates from the Colbert album via PM, which I found online; however, their quality is incomparably worse than the Ancre reprint and they come without any commentary, transcription or translation.

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Just a very small selection of contemporary graphics displaying French 17-century vessels, both naval and merchant, sporting on-center bowsprits:

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Thank you very much, Waldemar!!
Have a nice week-end...

Guillaume Saucier said:

Thank you very much, Waldemar!!
Have a nice week-end...

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Thank you too, Guillaume. However, perhaps it is still too early to express appreciation, as there may well be a chance that others will also make a valuable contribution and even offer a different solution or perspective on this issue — for example, the individuals or institutions suggested by Allan and Wojtas. I’d be keen to hear what they have to say, should they decide to take the time to share their expertise on this very matter.

Guillaume Saucier said:

Thank you very much Allen!!
I spent about 6 hours on internet, wasa museet, Pinterest, model ship world, the finished gallery of models of SOS, and all I can see is centred bowsprit.......

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Hi; I have done quite a bit of reshearch on the subject; the reality is there is very little direct information on anything of the 1670 Soleil Royal.
All that I found which potentially relates to the first ship is that since it, and the Royal Duc were from the same master ship builder ( Laurent Hubac), it must be assumed that the Royal Duc was the ''little brother'' of the Soleil Royal of the period, so the best visual reference would be from the couple of drawings Van de Velde made of the Royal Duc, later renamed Reyne in 1671. As for the Tanneron Soleil Royal at the museum, the ship's structure is somewhat of an interpretation, the information of the exact ship being very sparse; I personally don't see any reason for the bow sprit to be offset, except for the construction of the model having been made in 1823, and therefore the wood bowsprit might have bent or offset with time.
If you are very interested on the subject of the Soleil Royal, and you read french, I can send you the document I did with all the information I gathered

Guillaume Saucier said:

But I wonder now why everyone says bowsprits in France were deported to the right in the 1700, when I see the drawings of Colbert?

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As far as I know, the only ships that had the bowsprit offset to one side are those that have insufficient length between the front support of the bowsprit and the foremast to mount the bowsprit step and give the bowsprit sufficient support. The above drawings clearly show the bowsprit ends just before the foremast, so no offset is necessary. If the bowsprit continued past the foremast, then it would clearly have to be offset. This does not just apply to French ships, but many other nationalities, like my Ragusian Carrack. The plans for the Carrack show the very short distance between the front of the forecastle and the foremast, necessitating running the bowsprit aft alongside the foremast to the rear of the forecastle:

Green shows the support for the bowsprit.

This photo shows the bowsprit entering the forecastle offset from center:

While the Carrack drawings showed the bowsprit parallel with the ship centerline, my research showed they usually were mounted at an angle so that the end of the bowsprit was at or near the ship centerline. You can kind of see that in this photo:


Anyhow, it's my opinion that you can pretty much look at the bowsprit, foremast and forecastle and see if an offset bowsprit would have been necessary.

I don't have a good pic of Soleil plans, but the ones I'm seeing show the distance between the front of the forecastle to the foremast fairly close:

so IMHO there's a decent chance it should be offset. But I think you could make a case either way, which, I realize, doesn't help you much.

On the other hand, I ran across this drawing of the L'Ambitieux, which clearly indicates the bowsprit step mounted before the foremast, so there would definitely be no reason to mount the bowsprit off of center on this ship:

I guess my "rule" is more of a possible suggestion. Well, at least I think I've given a reason for some ships having an offset bowsprit. Hope this helps.

Signet said:

I don't have a good pic of Soleil plans, but the ones I'm seeing show the distance between the front of the forecastle to the foremast fairly close:
View attachment 584237
so IMHO there's a decent chance it should be offset. But I think you could make a case either way, which, I realize, doesn't help you much.

On the other hand, I ran across this drawing of the L'Ambitieux, which clearly indicates the bowsprit step mounted before the foremast, so there would definitely be no reason to mount the bowsprit off of center on this ship:
View attachment 584251
I guess my "rule" is more of a possible suggestion. Well, at least I think I've given a reason for some ships having an offset bowsprit. Hope this helps.

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This would be a fine diagram for the bowsprit enchor location; from the early 1600's to the beginning of the 1700's, the bowsprit would be enchored along the foremast on the bottom deck; In 1692 when the second Royal Louis was beng designed, it was the first ship to have its bowsprit enchored on the middle deck, changing the angle of it, and from the literature gave a better handling characteristic to the ship; but changing all of the bowsprit from all the ships then would have been too costly, so the modification would ony be adapted on ships during a full reconstruction or new generation. the only three decker constructed in the early1700's was the Foudroyant, therefore it would be the only other ship to actually have that modification up to that point besides the Royal Lous of 1692....As for the other constructions of 1692 and 1693, the designs were too far advanced to have them modified at that point without significant re-designings of the bows

Guillaume,
Not much I can add to the knowledgeable comments of others, but here are a few relevant photos of the Tanneron model taken from other posts. There are so many odd unprototypical features and proportions about the Tanneron model that I wouldn't take it too seriously. It's more art than historically accurate. The best researched modern source of information I have is Jean Boudriot's The Three-Decker of the Chevalier De Tourville, which details ships a generation or two younger than the original Soleil Royal (there were, according to how you count rebuilds, three or four), but still has an enormous amount of actionable information. It, by the way, indicates all-centerline bowsprits.

As has been remarked upon, reproductions of these contemporary 17th C. manuscripts, along with modern reconstructions based on these sources, can be quite expensive, but for French subjects, Ancre is Sans Pareil.

The question of the bowsprit, at this point, seems sufficiently answered. I will say, though, that I am not always feeling so flush with cash to buy these sources, but I have made a habit of screen-shotting imagery of interest that Waldemar, Martes and many others post, here, on the forum. Just today, in fact, Waldemar’s posting of Le Trident - a plan I had never seen before - went into my album titled “17th C. French.” Doing this often enough, I begin to get a better sense for which of these resources might best fill-in my knowledge gaps, and therefore, which sources are worth the money.

To repost a couple of Waldemar’s images:




One can better appreciate the higher quality of these reproductions, as compared with thumbnails of the same images, on-line. Obviously, they provide important structural information, and the annotations of the original Album de Colbert explain variances between artistic representation and what is understood about the actual architecture of the time.

As any sort of developed plan set for individual ships of the 1660’s/70’s did not exist, the Album remains a key resource for extrapolating correct detail into subjects previously un-explored. For his part, Waldemar is providing us with the tools to arrive at correct hull geomotry.

These plates, though, are useful for other kinds of information. The ornamental oeuvre of Jean Berain is very well understood, as there are so many preserved examples of full ornamental programs of ships from 1688, onward.

Prior to that time period, though, ornamental resources are less well understood. The things I do presently, definitely fall more firmly in the category of artistic license than technical rigor, as I am always looking to strike a compromise between what is and what should be.

However, the geometric studies Waldemar has done, along with the contemporary resources mentioned and those not mentioned, make it possible to reconstruct a plausible hull form. For example, Tony DeVroude is quite successfully reconstructing the Dauphin Royal of 1668:




If I can design a plausible hull form, I can use what is known about the early ornamental program of Soleil Royal, and the Royal Louis, along with the drawings of Puget:





LeBrun:







Girardon:




Van Beecq:



Belle Veue:





and, the Album to arrive at a fully coherent allegorical program that conveys something of the artistic style of the times. The beautifully drawn figures bracketing the captions on each plate of the Album, for example, corroborate elements of Puget’s Genoese influenced baroque style.

The things I do will always be artistic works of interpretation, but I do think one can arrive at a well-supported educated guess.

Hi Marc. Yes, you’ve surprised me (in a good way) with your comment, in which you’ve aptly summed up my general intentions — many thanks . I think that’s what spurred me on to take a look for any details regarding the mounting of the bowsprit at the available 17th-century French written sources as well.

Indeed, Georges Fournier, in his Hydrographie of 1643, does not have much to say on the subject:

“[…] le mast de beaupré est couché sur l’éperon […]” (i.e. “the bowsprit lies on the beakhead”; which most likely simply refers to the general position of this mast, unless by “beakhead” he meant “l’étrave”, i.e. “stem post”, but that is merely an interpretation).

The entire passage concerning the definition of masts in the Fournier's Hydrographie, including the above-quoted fragment on the bowsprit, was copied verbatim by Dassié in Architecture navale of 1677. However, Dassié also includes in his work a schematic diagram displaying not only the bowsprit itself, but also a specific feature, namely the desired distance between the stem post and the bowsprit itself:




In contrast, the description by François Coulomb in his 1683 manuscript is far more comprehensive and informative:

“Le Mast de Beaupré sera placé audessus du premier pont. Il sappuye sur le mast davant et est soustenu par une guirlande à fin quil ne porte point sur le bout de l’Estrave […]” (original spelling) — “The Bowsprit will be placed above the first deck. It rests against the foremast and is supported by a breasthook so that it does not bear down on the tip of the stem post”.

By deduction, this must refer to a layout in which the bowsprit is above the stem post, rather than alongside it.


Furthermore, in addition to French sources, there are also plans of French ships from this very period drawn up by the British, including the one below, most likely of the Triton from 1697, and pointed out by Martes, which shows yet another method of mounting the bowsprit on large ships:




Generally speaking, it can probably be said that both of these somewhat different practices for securing the bowsprit were common to known Dutch practices of that era.

That is interesting that the bowsprit was never intended to rest or bear down on the stempost. This had always been my assumption, but it makes sense that the heavily through-bolted breast hook should be the weight bearing structure, and that the fore stays would also help distribute the load.