Here starts the research.
Part 1.
This is a tale of modeling one of the truly great Seventeenth Century ships of the English fleet, The Sovereign of The Seas. It is also a tale of differing opinions as to what this magnificent ship looked like coupled with the controversy surrounding the Sovereign ruling in England at that time. Charles I, on a visit to the shipbuilding yard in Woolwich in 1634 to inspect the Leopard, spoke to Phineas Pett, the master ship builder, about building a great ship of such size as had never been contemplated before. A typical ship of that day had (40) guns and a cost of approximately 6,000 Pounds. The Sovereign would eventually cost 65,586 Pounds after Charles approved ornamentation carved in Oak and gilded in gold that surpassed anything seen before. This extravagance proved to be Charles’s downfall as the Ship Tax that was imposed to pay for it was a factor that led to the Civil War and Oliver Cromwell bringing Charles to trial and execution in London in the winter of 1649. Although this ship was probably the most ornately decorated ship of all, the documentation existing to verify its appearance is minimal and mainly consists visually of an engraving attributed to John Payne in 1634 and a sketch by a Dutch artist Van de Velde The Elder from the same period. Written documentation of the ship is also limited and probably the most detailed account is a book printed just prior to the launch in 1637 by Thomas Heywood, a London Playwright and artist.
I decided after completing my first wooden ship model, Artesania Latina’s San Francisco, to model The Sovereign and acquired the Mantua Sergal kit. I see The Sovereign as a San Francisco, only magnified ten times. That is, much more of the same and larger in size. It is, as kits go, filled with surprises, some nice and some not so nice. My experience with San Francisco has taught me that the best plan is to research the kit as much as is possible, and also research the ship in the same manner. There are pitfalls with this kit as there are with any other, and the trick is to 'look ahead' far enough to avoid boxing yourself into corners from which there may be no exit. There are several articles available on building The Sovereign, one as recent as the fall of 1997 in Scale Ship Modeler magazine that are of great help in pointing out some of those pitfalls. I strongly recommend that they be looked at before you go too far with the assembly of the hull.
I decided to research the ship and with the help of my wife, who is a librarian, I obtained a book called "A Portrait of Peter Pett and The Sovereign of The Seas" by Geoffrey Callender. The book was written in 1930 and presents a bit of a mystery novel in fifty two pages about the two existing versions of this portrait, one of which is housed in the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich England, and the other in the National Portrait Gallery in London England.
The portrait is of Peter Pett, the son of Phineas Pett pictured against a cliff as a background with the Sovereign as seen from the stern in the water to the left of the cliff. The book addresses several questions. What is the ship, which was the original painting, who painted them, when were they painted, and who is portrayed in the portrait? I was fortunate enough to have borrowed a copy of this book from a Local University Library for two weeks. The portrait is very beautiful, and portrays the Sovereign as the artist saw it sometime between 1637 and 1675. The ornamentation on the stern is brilliant gold against a black background, with the hull below the waterline depicted in white. This depiction differs from that shown on the kit box. Mantua’s background for the ornamentation is Royal Blue and the hull is finished as natural wood below the waterline. Additionally, the coat of arms and other ornamentation portrayed on the stern by Mantua is completely different than that of the portrait. The portrait shows Victory, holding two mottos, one in each hand, and on one side, Jason holding his oar in hand and on the other, Neptune, the God of the Sea. This ornamentation is the creation of Thomas Heywood who was given the job by Charles I. This presents a problem as far as the model goes. I now had to decide if I wanted to use the 675 ornamental bronze pieces supplied with the kit, or carve them from wood to match those shown on the Portrait and the Van de Velde sketch of the Sovereign shown in Callendar’s book.
More to follow........................................
Regards,
Bill