Brederode put to sea

But it looks way better when when she's put to the sea.... 

Time to move on to the next part of this project!

The finished Brederode

After months of work, i finally finished the model of the flagship Brederode.

She was launched in 1644 and served as a flagship in the first Anglo-Dutch war. Since this war didn't go very well for the Dutch, she took quite a beating in an number of battles, but managed to survive. 
She served as a flagship for the three most famous dutch admirals, Michiel de Ruiter, Maarten Tromp and Witte de With. Unfortunately, the last two admirals were also killed on her deck. 
She had her last battle fighting the Swedish in 1658 in the Battle of the Sound. This battle was won by the Dutch, but the ship got surrounded and boarded by the Swedish. She got so damaged and burned that she was deemed unsalvagable.

Brederode reference

Here are the images that I could find as a reference for the Brederode model.
Fortunately, there are quite a few of them, and the quality is pretty good.

Van de Velde the Elder made 3 studies of the ship, which tend to be very accurate. Unfortunately all his ship studies miss the masts and the rigging.

Here are three van de Velde studies,
A peculiar feature on this ship is the cloth and the dark covers on the sides of the deck.
I did put them on my model, but since I don't know exactly what their function was, I decided to leave some of it out.












Here is the third study, where she seems to be pretty damaged from a previous battle. Her masts are missing and her hull is full of holes

below: The Brederode off Hellevoetsluis by Simon de Vlieger. Awesome painting and my best reference for her colours, although the ship colours are pretty dark. On her stern she is flying the bloodflag, a red flag with an arm which carries a sword. This flag comes back on a number of other painings and drawings from around 1640-1650. I don't know it's exact function, but it seems like a pretty clear warning not to mess with it.... It show the ship with only 2 sails on the fore- and mainmast. I found this rather interesting, since it's successor flagships Eendracht and Zeven Provincien but also it's predecessor Aemalia seem to have three sails for each mast.

below: The battle of Scheveningen by Jan Abrahamsz. Here the Brederode is shown in a fight with the 'Resolution'. This was the last battle of the first Anglo-Dutch war. Admiral Maarten Tromp lost his life on his flagship. She seems to be getting a beating and losing her mast. Although this is a very nice painting, it is less realistic than the other drawings and paintings. Also the details on the Brederode don't seem to match with some details on the other works.   

A scene by van de Velde with the Brederode on the background.

Work in progress: the Brederode

Currently, I am working on the model of the Dutch flagship 'Brederode' which sailed from 1644 to 1658.
I was building it as a background piece for a scene I have in mind about fluyt design and the Danish Oresond.
But as usual with modeling; if you start it, pretty soon you get sucked into doing it properly. So now it just needs some more details, better texturing and some rigging improvements, and then it will be finished.

Tasmans Voyage

The scene depicts the voyage of Abel Tasman in 1642, when he discovers New Zealand. Before this expedition the world map had a giant blank spot on the place where it now shows Australia and the south Pacific.
The Dutch East India Company VOC had gained a pretty dominant position in the East Indies, but they had no idea what lay south or east of Indonesia. Several ships had sighted Australian land and even shipwrecked there, but still virtually nothing was known about the mysterious Southland.
The VOC decided to send the experienced sailor Tasman to explore this vast area. He got command of two ships; the yacht ‘Heemskerck and the fluyt ‘Zeehaen’ The expedition first sailed to Mauritius near Africa, then set sail to the east. He missed Australia, but discovered Tasmania ,New Zealand, Fiji and number of Pacific Islands. 
For the VOC, Tasman's explorations were a disappointment: he had neither found a promising area for trade nor a useful new shipping route. In the 1640’s the Dutch were already pretty occupied with their bases in North America, Brasil, Africa, India, and the Far East. New adventures in this remote region didn’t fit in the plans of the VOC. It would take another 130 years for another European explorer named James Cook would visit the region.

Welcome

Hi everyone, Welcome to my brand-new blog. I am a 38 year old creative director from Amsterdam.
Besides a busy life I have an odd hobby; recreating the maritime history of my country through Computer Generated Images (CGI).
In the future this will be the place where I will post my latest creations. I am sorry if the layout of this page is a messy in the beginning, I am kind of new to having a blog......