Since the Zeven Provincien is one of the best documented 17th century ships, it was a good starting point for me as a modelling subjest. I made a version of it two years ago, but is wasn't good enough. last months I remodelled the entire ship. I hope it looks a little better now.

Michiel de Ruyter's flagship ''Zeven Provincien'' is without question the most famous Dutch warship in history.
I already made a version of the ship when I started modeling ships two years ago, but now know a lot more about ships and modeling them, so I practically can start over again.
I started to build the hardest part first; the richly decorated stern of the ship. There are quite a few differences between both contemporary and modern sources about how the stern decoration looked, but I tried to make it as accurate as possible.

The stern of ''De Zeven Provincien''

British 3rd rate ship of the line (1665)

After modelling the Royal Charles I needed a ship to serve as a typical British ship of the line from around 1665. The most regular type of ship in the British fleet would be a 3rd rate. The ship I build is not any ship in particular, it is composed of several ships of that period.

Together with the Royal Charles

Royal Charles finished

So finally, after more then half a year's work, I completed the 3D model of the Royal Charles. I am pretty glad with the result, but never satisfied... Because what's a flagship without a fleet eh?

Here is the hull of the Royal Charles with improved textures and materials.... Time to do the rigging now....

So here is the first version of the untextured model of the HMS Royal Charles.
It still needs some final touches, but soon I can begin with the rigging and texturing.
I never put this much detail into a model before....

After doing a number of Dutch schips, I am now modelling a Brittish one.

I choose the HMS Royal Charles, the giant Brittish flagship built in 1655. Since the ship was lavishly decorated, so it is quite a challenge to recreate it.

The Royal Charles was originally called the Naseby, after a battle won by Crowell's army over Royalist forces in 1645. After the restauration of the monarchy her stern was drasticly modified, removing everything that reminded of  the parliamentarian rule, and called after the new king, Charles II.

She was the Brittish flagship in all major battles of the second Anglo-Dutch war. In 1667 she was captured by the Dutch in the raid on the Medway. She was not taken into service by the Dutch as she was too big for Dutch waters and was auctioned for scrap in 1673. Her Royal coat of arms sternpiece is still on display in the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam.

Confusingly, a second Royal Charles was built in 1673, which was renamed Queen in 1693. This makes it a bit confusing to find proper reference material..

Fortunately Abraham Storck made a great and detailed study of the ship. This is one of his finest sketches and the high resolution makes it very useful for reference.

This is a model of the ship when she was still called the Naseby. The model was made in 1943 and on display in the National Maritime Museum. It looks very similar to the Van de velde Drawing

The stern of the Naseby model.The mid section of the stern would later be replaced by the Royal coat of arms, but the rest of the extensive decoration is exactly the same as the Van de Velde drawing.

A painting of the ship by Jeronymus van Diest as she is carried to Dutch waters. He didn't quite capture all the detail on the ship, but it still looks pretty accurate. This is very useful for the colourscheme.

I have been working on it for a number of weeks now, as soon as I have something finished, I will post it......