Pirate 'Frigate' c.1670

What started as a simple project, to turn my little pirate ship scribble into something respectable and to try to bring up the accuracy of my rigging, quickly grew into a drawing that ate part of my life. This took two solid months of work, and including research amounted to around 300 hours (besting my previous time record at least fourfold). I attempted to be as close to 100% accurate as I could with the rigging, with varying success.


The ship is based on an English 34- or 36-gun man of war built in 1660, which I had only a small photograph of a model to work from at first. (The photo is found on page 153 (plate 231) of Dr. Frank Howard's Sailing Ships of War 1400-1860, Mayflower Books, 1979.) The photo is from the front quarter, hiding the stern, so that part I made up (loosely based on the stern of the Mordaunt of 1681, and therefore quite anachronistic). Naturally enough, about halfway through the project I found more photos of the ship when I discovered that the National Maritime Museum has excellent photos of everything in their vast collection, giving me all-round references. But, by then, the drawing was too advanced to make the hull completely accurate. (The ship may be found here -> collections.rmg.co.uk/collecti… )

Just to be clear, although the ship is referred to as a "frigate", the term doesn't correspond to the common notion. The true frigate wouldn't come about for almost another century; in the 17th century, "frigate" seemed to refer to a quality of hull shape(greater length to beam ratio) rather than a type of ship. The 90-gun Naseby, for example, is referred to as a "frigate".

The rigging is based almost entirely on James Lees' magnificent The Masting and Rigging of English Ships of War 1625-1860, which I cannot recommend highly enough. I chose to depict the ship rigged as she would be in 1670. There are one or two deliberate departures, but I doubt you'll find them!

Anyway, here she is, and I hope you enjoy her. I could natter on about all the things that are wrong, but I also think only an expert would notice most of them! One note -- the boat is mostly speculation, as there is a dearth of information on 17th century ship's boats. Also, much the decoration is a pure figment of my fancy, the ropes are mostly too big, etc. etc.

Some full-size details here ->

References: Besides the Lees and Howard books, which I again recommend, and provided the vast bulk of information, I also used the following:

The Art of Rigging, George Biddlecombe, Dover Press 1990 (1848 Edition)
The Arts of the Sailor: Knotting, Splicing and Ropework, Hervey Garrett Smith, Dover Press 1990 (orig. 1953)
The Elements and Practice of Rigging and Seamanship, David Steel, 1794, which can be read online courtesy of the HNSA: www.hnsa.org/doc/steel/
Text-Book of Seamanship, Commodore S. B. Luce, USN, 1891, again available from the HNSA: hnsa.org/doc/luce/index.htm
Boy's Manual of Seamanship and Gunnery, Commander C. Burney, R.N., F.R.G.S., 1883, read it online here: www.pbenyon.plus.com/B_S_M/Con…

Painter X, Cintiq, elderly iMac