Le Glorieux and Le Superbe by Heller

jtilley,

I certainly appreciate your comments. It seems irrational to even attempt to build a serious ship model without careful research (that's the historical researcher in me!)

Bill Morrison

We've discussed these kits several times here in the Forum.  Here's a thread that pretty well covers the subject:   /forums/750276/ShowPost.aspx .  It also contains at least one link to another relevant thread.

I never suggested that there was anything categorically wrong with a manufacturer's using the same basic hull components for two kits.  These two French ships-of-the-line apparently were, in modern parlance, sister ships, so the use of identical hull and deck castings probably was appropriate.  (I say "probably" because I haven't done enough reading in French sources to know much about these particular ships.)

In the other thread I brought up some rather significant criticisms of the two kits, based on some pretty stale memories.  (I bought one of them, and reviewed it for a British magazine, quite a long time ago; I can't recall having seen either kit recently.)  They were, as I remember, among the last sailing ships Heller released, and by then the designers had learned something about how real ships worked.  In terms of accuracy they're certainly light years ahead of the Soleil Royal.

The lack of deck camber strikes me as a significant but not insurmountable problem.  (If I remember right, we established that the complex rails and other ornaments at the stern do have camber; that's arguably more important than the camber of the decks themselves.) 

The fact that the designers apparently thought the entire hull had been hacked out of one, enormous tree poses a somewhat bigger problem, but it certainly could be dealt with.  (There's no indication of the edges of the planks; just some grossly over-scale "wood grain" that runs without interruption over the whole hull.  One does wonder what on earth was going through those people's heads.) 

Generally, my recollection is that they were nice kits - certainly capable, with application of sufficient time and research (the kits' rigging diagrams, as I recall, were utterly irrational), of being turned into serious scale models.  If a person wants to build an eighteenth-century ship-of-the-line from a plastic kit, and doesn't want to build one more H.M.S. Victory, these kits are certainly worth a look.

I am inclined to agree. Building ships to similar designs is not uncommon.  As for the details, cambered decks are not hard to replicate using wood, and the heavy woodgrain can be sanded quite easily.

Bill Morrison

P.S.  I have finished painting the hull of the Soleil Royale according to the painting by Berain that you provided. It looks terrific!

Well, Prof Tilley has issues with these kits, in that they use the same hull, but different stern, quarter pieces and figureheads.  He also dislikes the fact that the decks are flat, rather than cambered, and he doesn't like the woodgrain either.  These are all valid points, but that said and with a little care, I still think they make up into very nice models, and are quite accurate in just about every other respect (the French, as did the British, built a lot of ships to the same plans, just varying the decorations)!