Galleys and Galleons [22]

I assembled the 1/500th scale Heller plastic kit of Le Superbe this evening to see how it matched up against the 1/450th scale Peter Pig pirate ships. The kit went together quite easily even though I had to cut it down to the waterline and shave off all the underscale deck cannons, which I may replace with Peter Pig metal guns and crew or just leave off entirely. I was planning to use the model as a very large merchant flagship for the pirates to capture, so the guns are not essential.

The hull itself is masssive but not at all out of scale with the metal pirate ships, one of which I've parked alongside for comparison, although I have yet to add a base and sea texture. The sails and masts are, however, even more enormous and tower over the ones on the adjacent medium sized warship model. They are also a bit flimsy and could well break off if handled without care, so I'll probably replace them with a more sturdy and scaled down set of masts, spars and sails, so that they are more in scale with the other ships in the fleet.

One way to do this would be to remove the lower sail on each mast and re-model it as a furled sail, then cut down the masts so that the whole lot drops down in overall height. At the moment the masts are detachable so I coulld easily use them as a template for construction of some replacements in brass or thicker plastic rod, then reattach the modified sails and rigging to fit. It's quite a lot of work and probably a bit fiddly but it would give me a very impressive centrepiece for a boarding action scenario.