A few years ago I purchased from A.N.C.R.E. the research monograph written by Jean Boudriot and Hubert Berti about the "Brick de 24" Le Cygne. The underlying idea was to start an experience in admiralty style (or POF), starting with a simpler sailing ship such as a "brick" (French) or "brig" (English).
The brig is a sailing vessel with two masts, foremast and mainmast, with a single gun deck and generally armed with 18-20 guns or carronades. Initially, there were traditional guns of 6-8 pdrs, then the armament evolved using 24 pdrs carronades while maintaining a couple of long guns for shooting during hunting.
During the period of the wars between England and France, the Revolutionary Wars first and then the Napoleonic Wars, a large number of these sailing ships were built on projects belonging to three/four french engineers (Pestel, Sanè, Forfait, etc.) and builts in several replicas in various French, Dutch and Italian shipyards.
The monograph about Le Cygne proposes a model of brick designed by the french engineer Francois Pestel and was reproduced twenty times plus two additional ships faithfully reproduced by Sanè, for a total of twenty-two historically established ships.
Upon receipt of the monograph I noticed, however, that the plans were not useful to build a "Plank On Frame" model as the drawings in the monograph didn't show the frame layouts, so my attention veered out of other ideas.
Recently I finished the building of the Soleil Royal and I found myself to decide on which to build a new model. After some researches I took back the monograph of Le Cygne and I carefully re-read it. Immediately, I was very intrigued by the fact that almost all of these brick had a very short lifetime in the French Navy and the monograph itself was unclear, in a table list, specifying only the year of "radiation".
At the beginning I thought about some structural defects that made them short-living, although the same was also true for other bricks designed by French engineers. Then, going deeper, I discovered the truth, hidden in the monograph of Boudriot / Berti probably from the usual and by now well-known "french chauvinism".
In short: of the 22 "Brick de 24" designed by Pestel, 18 were captured by the Royal Navy, 2 were transferred to the Italian navy and 2 have gone missing, coincidentally the year that were struck off in the table is the same the ship was commissioned in the Royal Navy, participating with great success in the war against Napoleon. So, ironically, the French Navy seems to have been the major supplier of brigs for the Royal Navy !!!
Hence the idea to complete the historical research in relation to the British viewpoint in order to have a complete picture of the operational life of these ships. Consequently, I have identified a number of these brick in service in the Royal Navy, sometimes with similar names and sometimes totally different, and I decided to build one, although at the moment I do not know exactly which.
According to the monograph, the only distinguishing features were the figurehead and bottles aft .. and, obviously, the armament.
The story continues in the next message which will follow shortly. . Yours sincerely, Jack.Aubrey.
The brig is a sailing vessel with two masts, foremast and mainmast, with a single gun deck and generally armed with 18-20 guns or carronades. Initially, there were traditional guns of 6-8 pdrs, then the armament evolved using 24 pdrs carronades while maintaining a couple of long guns for shooting during hunting.
During the period of the wars between England and France, the Revolutionary Wars first and then the Napoleonic Wars, a large number of these sailing ships were built on projects belonging to three/four french engineers (Pestel, Sanè, Forfait, etc.) and builts in several replicas in various French, Dutch and Italian shipyards.
The monograph about Le Cygne proposes a model of brick designed by the french engineer Francois Pestel and was reproduced twenty times plus two additional ships faithfully reproduced by Sanè, for a total of twenty-two historically established ships.
Upon receipt of the monograph I noticed, however, that the plans were not useful to build a "Plank On Frame" model as the drawings in the monograph didn't show the frame layouts, so my attention veered out of other ideas.
Recently I finished the building of the Soleil Royal and I found myself to decide on which to build a new model. After some researches I took back the monograph of Le Cygne and I carefully re-read it. Immediately, I was very intrigued by the fact that almost all of these brick had a very short lifetime in the French Navy and the monograph itself was unclear, in a table list, specifying only the year of "radiation".
At the beginning I thought about some structural defects that made them short-living, although the same was also true for other bricks designed by French engineers. Then, going deeper, I discovered the truth, hidden in the monograph of Boudriot / Berti probably from the usual and by now well-known "french chauvinism".
In short: of the 22 "Brick de 24" designed by Pestel, 18 were captured by the Royal Navy, 2 were transferred to the Italian navy and 2 have gone missing, coincidentally the year that were struck off in the table is the same the ship was commissioned in the Royal Navy, participating with great success in the war against Napoleon. So, ironically, the French Navy seems to have been the major supplier of brigs for the Royal Navy !!!
Hence the idea to complete the historical research in relation to the British viewpoint in order to have a complete picture of the operational life of these ships. Consequently, I have identified a number of these brick in service in the Royal Navy, sometimes with similar names and sometimes totally different, and I decided to build one, although at the moment I do not know exactly which.
According to the monograph, the only distinguishing features were the figurehead and bottles aft .. and, obviously, the armament.
The story continues in the next message which will follow shortly. . Yours sincerely, Jack.Aubrey.