Rigging Question and More

I'm having trouble visualizing the rigging arrangement you've described, but it sure doesn't sound like anything on board a real ship.  On such a small scale a certain amount of simplification is almost unavoidable, but in a real ship ropes don't just emerge out of holes in decks.

Heller rigging diagrams are notoriously awful.  The folks responsible for most of the Heller sailing ship range seem to have shared at least two characteristics:  enormously talented artisanship, and a near-total lack of understanding of how a real sailing ship works.  Some of those rigging diagrams go beyond the boundaries of mere inaccuracy and into the realm of the totally irrational.

My suggestion is to throw out the Heller rigging instructions and get hold of a book or other source that shows how the real ship was rigged.  If I remember correctly, we've discussed this particular ship and her history in another thread.  I think we established that Taubman Plans Service ( www.taubmansonline.com ) carries a set of plans for her.  They're on the expensive side; I suspect there are cheaper ways to find out how a French frigate of that era was rigged.  I'm not as familiar as I'd like to be with sources on the French navy, but a good start might be Historic Ship Models, by Wolfram zu Mondfelt.  It's a good, basic book about sailing ship modeling, including the basics of rigging - and a new, reasonably-priced paperback version of it hit the bookstores recently.  Maybe Michel, if he's reading this, can recommend something else; he's our resident expert on Continental European sailing ship sources.

Whether anything will be visible at the bottom of those ladders is hard to say.  My guess is - no.  On 1/200 scale the hatchways must be pretty small, and the inside of the hull pretty dark.  You might try dry-fitting the parts together and considering how they'll look from normal viewing angles when finished.  If in doubt, it wouldn't be difficult to fit some sort of false deck at the foot of each ladder - just big enough to fill the field of view through the hatch.

There are various ways to handle the problem of glass skylights.  Not having seen the kit, I'm not sure how big the items in question are.  The most realistic appearance, of course, would be obtained by drilling and filing out the openings and fitting clear styrene "glass" in them.  (For some configurations of skylights and windows, stripes of decal paper make convincing "frames.")  If the opentings are too small for that approach but you do feel confident in opening them up, you could use Microscale's "Crystal-Clear" or Testor's "Clear Parts Cement and Canopy Maker" (I've probably garbled the name a little) to represent the glass.  If the "panes of glass" are too small to be opened up, either black or dark blue paint probably is the best solution.  Give it a coat or two of clear gloss, so the shininess of it will make a bigger impression on the eye than the color does.

I'm afraid I haven't helped much; not having the kit in front of me I can't really deal with the specific problems.  Good luck.

Hmmm....I wonder if the online version is identical to the book.  The printed version would, in any case, be a worthwhile acquisition - and the new paperback edition isn't too expensive.  For that matter, you might find a cheaper used copy on the web.

There's a mass of good material out there on the rigging of British ships from the period, but if there's a similar body of literature about French ones I'm not aware of it.  One superb French scholar and draftsman, Jean Boudriot, has published a series of books about individual French sailing warships.  I think (I'm not sure) he may have done one about La Belle Poule.  Boudriot's books are incredibly detailed, beautifully illustrated, and, unfortunately, astronomically expensive.

Another possibility is that set of plans from Taubman's, which I mentioned in my earlier post.  You can see the ad for them at www.taubmansonline.com .  (They're listed under L.  Somebody needs to fix that.)  Unfortunately they cost $90.  I'm reliably informed (Michel - are you there?) that there are ways to acquire that series of plans (from the Musee de la Marine, in Paris) for considerably less, but it probably would take a while.

About the best other suggestion I can offer is to get hold of a book that describes British and/or American practice and hope for the best.  There were some differences between French and British ways of doing things, but on 1/200 scale they probably don't amount to much.  The best basic source is The Masting and Rigging of English Ships of War, by James Lees.  It contains enough information to rig any British sailing warship of any period.  Another good one is Seamanship in the Age of Sail, by John Harland.  It's a wonderful, well-illustrated book about how rigging worked - and it does cover French practice.  But it doesn't contain as much detailed information about such things as belaying point plans as Lees does. 

Wish I could help more.  Maybe some other Forum member knows more than I do about convenient French sources.

Ok, the loops look like (to me) simplified versions of the ends of the main and mizzen forestays.  In Britich practice, there'd be an eyebolt where the lines pass under the deck.  The stay would be made up with a bullseye set into the end of the stay, and whipped down to the eyebolt (or to another bullseye stropped to the eyebolt more properly--at 1/200, that would be a couple of very tiny loops, 3" bullseye would be 0.015", less than 1/64").  Forestays on warships are often doubled, so one runs from one side of the preceding mast (or the bowsprit for the foremast) and up to the eye that goes over the top; the other passes on the other side to its own eye.  The doubled stays were often seized together abaft the mast.  The end result might look a tad like knoting the stay to the 'round the mast loop which would then terminate around the mast top.  Would not be "scale," neither would it be prototypical.  Might look "close" (especially if e'erybody squints a bit <g>).

If you were desparate keen on the correct order, Underhill's Masting & Rigging, gives ver detailed information.  In this case, the shrouds loop over the mast first, starboard, then port, fore to aft, then the back stays, and finally the fore stay or stays.  So, the forestay can be thought of as a loop from the top of its mast which then passed down to the deck to be tied off.  Which is probably the reverse of the "intention" in the Heller destructions.

Now, the two "stray" lines abaft the foremast in the photo might just be the ends of the topsail yard & topgallant yard halyards.  To increase the mechanical advantage, the halyards ran from the center of the yard, up through a sheave through the mast (or a block in the trees above) and back down to another block.  The hoisting part belays to the deck at an eyebolt in about the right spot, then up through the block and then to a luff tackle, which then belays to a pin at the side.

Which sounds like a great fuss for two yards hoisting lines.  Except the that the topsails and t'gallants are the most "worked" sails on a rig.  First to be set, and last to be furled.  That "standing" part on the deck means having a place a sling could be bent to the line, and a tackle clapped on, thus puting "norwegian steam" on both ends of the halyard.

Now, for the lights in those skylights--there's almost nothing that ever quite looks "right."  Black (with a good coat of Future) is better than blue to my thinking.  Better still is to steal the "periscope" method from a few FSM ago, using pearescent paint.  That gives a continually varying color shift which will probably be much better than cobbling together some sort of interior space at 1/200.

It's hard for me to figure this out on the basis of the pictures (at least on my none-too-big monitor screen), but I think CapnMac82 may have it right.  In other words, two odd things have happened here.  One - Heller decided to simplify the prototypical method of securing the main and mizzen stays (not such a bad idea in 1/200 scale), by omitting the eyebolts and bullseyes (or whatever other devices were used on the real ship).  Two - in a typical Hellerism, when the designers looked at the plans (probably the Musee de la Marine ones) they didn't know what they were looking at.  The real stay consisted (if we're right) of a single, extremely heavy rope that started at an eyebolt in the deck on one side of the mast ahead (that is, the foremast in the case of the mainstay, and the mainmast in the case of the mizzenstay), went up through the lubber hole in the top, around the masthead, and back down to another eyebolt on the other side of the mast.  The two parts of the stay were then seized together in two places - just below the top, and just aft of the preceding mast.  In the eyes of somebody who didn't understand the system, that arrangement would look like two loops of rope with another, single rope connecting them.  Our ancestors had more sense than that.  And from the modeler's standpoint, the prototypical arrangement is simpler to rig.

The one virtue of the Heller arrangement is that, by dispensing with the eyebolts, it lets you set up those loops while you can get at the bottom of the deck.  If I were doing it, I think my approach would be to make some eyebolts.  It's easy.  Get some copper or brass wire of an appropriate diameter (i.e., about as small as you can find).  If you use brass wire, heat it over a candle to soften it. A twist drill bit makes a good mandrel.  Form the eye around the drill bit and twist the ends of the wire into a pigtail.  Shove both ends of the wire through the hole in the deck, spread them apart, and glue them to the bottom of the deck with superglue.  Then forget about the problem till you're ready to start the rigging in earnest.  When that happens, my approach would be (in the case of the mainstay) to double a length of thread (the heaviest you're using - this is one of the thickest lines in the ship) around the main masthead and seize it just below the masthead.  Then seize one end to each of the eyebolts, leaving a little slack.  (Just how much slack will take a little practice to establish; don't expect to get it right the first time.)  Finally, seize the two parts together a second time, just aft of the foremast.  The last seizing should pull the whole stay nice and tight. 

It's becoming quite obvious that the rigging instructions in the kit are typical Heller - i.e., utterly worthless.  (On the other hand, the photos make it clear that the detail on the plastic parts is pretty good.  And I like what you've done with the deck planking.)  It's equally obvious that describing this sort of thing verbally is quite a challenge.  In order to rig this model without going crazy you're going to have to get hold of at least one decent book about rigging - one with a good set of diagrams.  The Underhill book is outstanding, but a few decades too modern for this ship.  (Underhill concentrates on merchant vessels of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.)  I'm inclined to think the book you need is Lees's Masting and Rigging of English Ships of War.  There undoubtedly are some distinctly non-French things in it, but my guess is that if you follow that book you'll be at least 80 percent right.  (That compares to about 5 percent if you follow the Heller instructions.)  Harland's Seamanship in the Age of Sail goes into some detail about nationalistic differences; if you can find that one in a library it will help.  But the Lees book is the one I'd recommend above all others - unless some other Forum member knows of a French counterpart to it.

It's obvious from the photos that a really nice model is under construction here.  The scale is mighty small; there are limits to how much rigging most of us can handle on that scale. Some omission and simplification are just about unavoidable.  But it would be a shame to do less than a good, sensible rigging job on a models that's off to such a good start.

Hope we're helping a little.  Good luck.

The openings for the 'Belle-Poule's' main stay and main preventer stay are correct.  Their connections at the deck were accomplished by iron bars called 'rack bars' extending from deck level to approximately 1 mast diameter behind the fore mast (one bar for each stay, not looped as shown in the photo - straight load path to deck).  The formed eye in the end of the bars were vertical, with the stays looped through the eyes and siezed, the doubling being in the vertical plane. The main stay passed the fore mast to starboard and was 84 mm in dia.  The preventer stay passed to port and was 58 mm. in dia.  (dimensions based on the 'Creole', a similar vessel) 

From photos of the Belle-Poule Model at the Musee de Marine it looks like the iron bars were also used for the connection of the fore and fore preventer stays to the bowsprit. Presumably the mizzen stays were also tied with iron bars.  At this scale, the use of thread leads to simulate the bars is fine.

Based on the locations of the leads to the sides of the deck, they appear to be for the running part of the fore mast-tackle pendant. There should be similar pairs aft of the main and mizzen masts. I would simply omit these at this scale. 

E-mail me your e-mail and snail-mail adresses and I'll send you a copy of a French Corvette's rigging plan a la Jean Boudriot.

Alan Kemp (aka schoonerbumm)

askemp@att.net

Depending on your interest and budget, the sources (beyond those listed above) that you need are shown below...  They look expensive, but on a $/hour fun scale they beat a lot of other entertainments.

http://www.ancre.fr/vaisso18-e.htm

http://www.ancre.fr/vaisso08-e.htm

and the:

The Visual Encyclopedia of Nautical Terms Under Sail (search on ADDALL.COM for used copies)