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Batavia III

  • Thread starter Thread starter Rubedo
  • Start date Start date
  • Watchers Watchers 3
Joined
Sep 6, 2026
Messages
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Hello everyone!

This is my first post here, and it's not just an introduction, I have something that might be interesting.

I should start by saying that I'm not a shipbuilder, though I do like historical ship models, building 'em isn't my cup of tea.
What led me here is a different kind of project - a remake of a sail ship themed map for a certain videogame. I went through various publicly available line drawings of galleons, fluyts and east indiamen while searching for a ship that would both be true to the map's name (kinda) and have the proportions that would work in the game.

Galleons and fluyts were disqualified almost immediately, greatly pronounced tumblehome and a pear shape is a no go for my project.

This left east indiamen. And of all of them, only the Batavia had the shape that almost fit, not perfectly, but there's simply no alternative.
The shape I'm after had to have a high enough sterncastle, boxy hull in the middle and a noticeable forecastle. That disqualified Prins Willem.
But I still wasn't exactly satisfied with the hull's shape or how it fit over the old low poly reference after adjustments.
Eventually, I've found this article:


After reading it through I learned that the publicly available line drawings of the Batavia are actually of the modern reconstruction from Lelystad.
The digital reconstruction approximated from the surviving fragment of the hull and transom is noticeably different. It has a wider sterncastle, rounder silhouette and narrower hold.

From my experiments with the available line drawings, I understood that these key differences would allow for a better shape and a better fit over the old reference after adjustments.
But there are no plans for the Batavia III (as it's called in the article), nor is the 3d model publicly available.

And so, I've made the plans. I have no idea if they're any good in terms of mathematical correctness, and the lines for the ship's bow are completely made up because there's no fore view in the article.
But just as I thought - the shape and fit did turn out to be better for my project, compared to the Lelystad reconstruction.
If anyone here is interested - I'll post the the line drawings in this thread as an SVG file. If anyone here can correct them - even better.

I used the attached image (an upscaled version) to draw the lines, as well as the Lelystad drawings (because the bulwark heights fit my project).
Batavia III is depicted in the upper left corner regarding back view and on the bottom regarding side view.

41636_2023_399_Fig13_HTML.png
 
Thaks for the welcomes, folks!

I have to admit, I thought there would be some more interest in the drawings, maybe I should've posted this in another thread section.

But here they are, cross sections in a standard PNG format and an SVG for those who might want to tinker with the lines and possibly correct what I did wrong. The upscaled image (the back and side views) file size is too large to be attached, but the scale factor was 4x. So, you can just download the image I posted in the beginning and upscale it yourselves.

To use the image as a reference for the SVG - open the SVG file (in Illustrator or some other program), then copy-paste the image.
For the back view the image needs to be scaled to 125% after pasting and also mirrored vertically, drag it until the bottom and side of the hull line up.
For the side view I'm not sure.

In regards to waterlines for cross sections, top bulwarks line up with the Lelystad version heightwise, so those are recommended for further tweaking. Cross section count is also the same.

Batavia_Realistic_Cross_Sections.png
 

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