Hello everyone,

Welcome to this thread, where I will be trying to reconstruct the missing frame plan for Elephanten 1703, a 90-gun flagship of the Dano-Norwegian navy in the Great Northern War (1700-1721).

First, a bit of history to understand the context:

Throughout the 17th century, the Danish kings had used foreign shipwreights employeed either in the Danish warfs (especially English/Scottish masters like David Balfour and James Robbins) or contracted to work at their own, usually northern German, warfs. This meant that the Danish fleet was a bit unhomogeneous throughout the 17th century, varrying in construction method between British and Continental building practices.

In 1692 the ship building was nationalised and the first ship that was buildt was Dannebroge of 94 guns. This ship was constructed by H. Span, who was an experienced Naval Officer, who had also worked with the administration and inspection of the foreign shipwrights at the dockyards. However, even if Dannebroge (named not after the Danish flag, but after the Order of Dannebrog, the second highest Order in Denmark) was relatively successful as a first attempt, Span was old and did not possess the mathematical background to truly drive the ship construction. Already from the start, Span had help from a young man named Ole Judichær - he had studied theology and mathematics with Ole Rømer, the famous astronomer and mathematician, and was apparently substancially involved with the construction of Dannebroge. He was later promoted to 'Fabriksmester', the title that would become synonomous with Danish ship-building for the next 150 years.

Judichær had a long carreer as Fabriksmester from around 1696 to 1628, and designed at least 26 ships for the navy, mostly ships of the line. The following is a list of his ships, as far as I have been able to find in the the drawing acrchive of the National Archive:

An impressive list! Note that 'Orlogsskib' is a ship with 50+ guns (Ships of the line) and anything below is called Frigates (as long as they have 3 masts). The two 'skytsskib' are floating batteries not meant to be propper sea going vessels.

The surviving drawings from Judichær are relatively fewer than for later Fabriksmesters, and for each construction, usually only an elevation profile, a frame plan and a set of ornament drawings were made. In the case of Elephanten, the frame plan is regrettably missing, most likely lost in the fire of 1795 which started at the Dockyards. Around 650 drawings were lost then. However, we have something rather rare: a full colour stern decoration drawing that also shows the middle frame and the rearmost frame! I believe, that with the existence of frame plans for several other of Judichær's ships, that this is enough to allow a relatively faithfull reconstruction of the frame plan for Elephanten.

I got really interested in this ship, both due to it's history and fate (more on that later), but also because it is one of the few 3-deckers that were build that seemd to have been an actual successfull construction for the Danish conditions. I visited the Archive to view the H-series of drawings that has not been scanned to the digital archive, and came across the fantastic ornament drawings for Elephanten there. These are photograps of the H40, H41 and H42 that I took at the archive:

I then found the elevation drawing A924:

It lists the armament as: 26 x 36 pounders, 26 x 18 pounders, 26 x 12 pounders and 12 x 6 pounders for a total of 90 guns. The length is given as 169 feet 10 inches (53.31 m, 174 feet 11 in in british measurements) between perpendiculars or 160 feet 8 inches along the waterline. It's width is given as 45 feet (14.13 m, 46 feet 4 inches in british measurements). Judichærs signature is there as well as the approbabtion by King Frederik IV. Also shown are the possitions of the 7 (or actually 8) master frames.

Note that the figurehead is quite different from the one shown in H42. Whether the design was changed (to that of H42) of if H42 is a later figurehead for the ship, or if H42 simply has been miss-attributed to Elephanten, I do not know. Anything is possible.

I metioned the colour drawings of the decorations, these are A925 and A926. These are not scanned into the digital archive, and I did not know to ask for them when I visited the physical archive - but a high resolution image of A925 is available online:

This is the image that makes me believe a reconstruction is possible, due to the inclusion of the middle frame.

A low resolution version of A926 can also be found:

The details are very blurry, but as I have a high resolution version in H41, this is only really needed for colour reference, as far as it can be trusted.

One last drawing in the archive is of the beam layout of the 1st and 2nd gundeck, A924:

There is one more historical reference in existence, a fully framed model of the hull from the time of the ship's construction:

Unfortunately, I don't believe this particular model is currently on display anywhere! This image is from the 1939 publication 'Den Historiske Modelsamling på Holmen' (The Historical Model Collection at Holmen) by P. Holck. But this image alone is a nice additional reference to have!

This initial post was just the background. Next I will show how I have used other Judichær frame profiles to make what I belive is a plausible reconstruction of the frame plan. I have also started to make consolidated drawings that include the frame plan, planking, ornaments, etc. I hope for this to become a resonable complete set of drawings that are internally consistent and as faithfull as possible to the various sources. I will also make at least one post about the service history of Elephanten - it was, a first line observer to the explosion of the aforementioned Dannebroge in the Second Battle of Køge Bay in 1710.

BR

TJM

Hi Thorbjørn,

A brilliant project, especially as you’re planning to fully recreate a large, complex vessel. Good luck.

Let me take this opportunity to ask about something that particularly interests me. How do you intend to recreate the hull shapes? Will you just use the waterlines from plan A922 (top view) without attempting to recreate the specific design procedures applied by Judichær, or do you also intend to carry out what is known as a ‘conceptual reconstruction’?

A very interesting project. I am looking forward to seeing how it develops

There is a thesis on Judichær that was published in the early 2000's that may provide information on the framing of this ship:

https://www.academia.edu/6915299/Ole_Judich%C3%A6r_and_Danish_Naval_Ship_Construction_and_Design_in_the_late_17th_Century_A_preliminary_analysis_of_the_model_of_the_54_gun_Prinz_Wilhelm_in_the_collection_of_the_Royal_Danish_Naval_Museum?email_work_card=title

@Waldemar , thank you for your interest and encouragement!

I do not possess the skill to do a proper conceptual reconstruction, so I will be taking what I can from the drawings and, working mostly if not exclusively in 2D, will try to make set of drawings that fit the sources as best as possible. Basically transferring measurements from one drawing/view to another.

Regarding the waterlines on A922, I am not sure how helpfull they will be, as I don't know there vertical position! I don't think it correspond to the various load lines given on A924, and it may be difficult to elucidate their positions based on just the middle frame and the transom frame.

I will shortly post how I have come up with v 1.0 of a reconstructed frame plan. While surely not perfect, I think it gets pretty close, and perhaps the waterlines can be used to tweak them.

I am happy to have you around - I hope you will be willing to lend your expertise when I encounter problems!

BR

Thorbjørn

6 minutes ago, druxey said:

There is a thesis on Judichær that was published in the early 2000's that may provide information on the framing of this ship:

https://www.academia.edu/6915299/Ole_Judich%C3%A6r_and_Danish_Naval_Ship_Construction_and_Design_in_the_late_17th_Century_A_preliminary_analysis_of_the_model_of_the_54_gun_Prinz_Wilhelm_in_the_collection_of_the_Royal_Danish_Naval_Museum?email_work_card=title

Ah, wonderful! I had not seen this one before, many thanks!

I also believe there is a striking resemblance between Elephanten and the French Saint-Philippe from 1693 - I have Jean-Claude Lemineur's excellent monograph and will be taking cues for many of the non-structural elements, like deck layout, from that. At this point in time, the French shipbuilding methods became prevalent in Denmark, and I think it likely that the design choices were, if not directly inspired by specific French ships, then at least comes from an overall approach that was derived from them.

19 minutes ago, TJM said:

I do not possess the skill to do a proper conceptual reconstruction, so I will be taking what I can from the drawings and, working mostly if not exclusively in 2D, will try to make set of drawings that fit the sources as best as possible. Basically transferring measurements from one drawing/view to another.

Regarding the waterlines on A922, I am not sure how helpfull they will be, as I don't know there vertical position! I don't think it correspond to the various load lines given on A924, and it may be difficult to elucidate their positions based on just the middle frame and the transom frame.

I will shortly post how I have come up with v 1.0 of a reconstructed frame plan. While surely not perfect, I think it gets pretty close, and perhaps the waterlines can be used to tweak them.

Thanks, Thorbjørn, for the explanation. I must admit that after reading your first two paragraphs above, I felt tempted to take on such a project myself, out of personal curiosity and as part of my own investigation, but after your third paragraph I had second thoughts, as I don’t really want to interfere with your efforts.

In any case, I’m at your disposal should I be able to help with these dark, conceptual matters .

6 hours ago, Waldemar said:

Thanks, Thorbjørn, for the explanation. I must admit that after reading your first two paragraphs above, I felt tempted to take on such a project myself, out of personal curiosity and as part of my own investigation, but after your third paragraph I had second thoughts, as I don’t really want to interfere with your efforts.

In any case, I’m at your disposal should I be able to help with these dark, conceptual matters .

Thank you Waldemar! I am sure you could do a much better job than I - this is my first time trying to reconstruct anything like this, until now, I have just been copying plans directly. Feel free to explore this, I'd be interested to see what you come up with!

I had actually planned to post about my frame reconstruction earlier, but your comment had me do a re-think and I have already made substantial changes. But I am getting ahead of myself, I will try to explain what I did first, and then what I have tried today.

As meantioned in the first post the middel frame and the transom frame can be seen in A925:

I then went looking in the archives for other Judichær ship plans with surviving frame drawings. I found a couple of options: Dannebroge 1693, Justitia 1707, and Sophia Magdalena 1727. For the last one, two different plans survive, litra B and litra C. Litra C is the one that was actualy used for Sophia Magdalena.

It is hard to see on the overlay, but Sophia Magdalena Lit B is the best fit and requires only a little modification to overlay Elephanten.

This is the full frame plan:

And here the original Sophia Magdalena with my initial frame plan for Elephanten, where I have modified the mid frame to overlay Elephanten's and then adjusted the other frames to it as best I can at this stage.

At this point, it is done mostly by eye - not very rigourous or scientific, I know! But we will improve on this with the other plans of Elephanten!

This is my re-drawing of the side profile, A924, with a few minor changes to fit the ornament drawings, mostly slightly thicker wales:

The whole project actually started with me redrawing this and fitting in the side galleries.

I adjusted the frame to the correct heighs:

Now I though this looked pretty good, if a tad wobbly in a few places. Something I could fix with minor adjustments. But I also knew I had to match the A922 deck plan.

Using this frame plan and the deck and wale lines from the drawing above, I could map out the run of the decks (as well as the widest point on each frame) and match that to the two original deck drawings in A922:

1st gundeck:

2nd gundeck:

The aft-most two thirds of the decks follow the original drawings remarkably closely - rememer, these are drawn independently of the original drawing and just overlayed. But the foremost third of the decks are not quite wide enough. I may look like a small difference, but Elephanten was much wider and boxier at the bow than what the use of Sophia Magdalena frame plans results in.

So I knew I had to modify at least the first 4 frames. This is where I was when I started the thread. Waldemar's comment made me look into the weak, pencil drawn waterlines that I have re-traced in the images above. I initially though I could not make it make sense. I didn't know the vertical position that the waterlines correspond to on the elevation plan, and when I tried to use the middle frame as a guide, I got into something I couldn't make work.

At some point, I realised I had to ditch the Sophia Magdalena frames 2.5 to 0.25 and rely on the fix-points I knew: for each frame, I had it's width at the 1st gundeck, 2nd gundeck, the five waterlines and the point where the frame terminates at the keel. The rest would have to be done by eye and by ensuring a smooth run of both decks and wales on the frame plan projections.

I think I have gotten much closer now.

To the left, my orginal v. 1.0, and to the right, the new, modified fore frame plan:

And without the frames to judge the wales:

On this image, the differences are subtle, but I am sure you will agree that the fist of the images, with the frames drawn in, shows a very different shape at the bow. Blunt and boxy. And crucially, this makes the fit with the deck plans very close to perfect:

So this is the new, v.2.0 frame plan:

I am pretty happy with this for now, but also would like to hean any comments or suggestions you may have!

This is how the stern looks:

The planking looks a bit wobbly and likely the aft set of frames need a bit of work as well. I also have the planks suggesting a non-rounded stern - I actually believe Judichær used a kind of hybrid: non-rounded down to and including the plank below the lowest wale, but then rounded below this. I have seen this on contemporary fully framed models at Krigsmuseet, but I don't have good enough photos of these so I will have to go and get some new ones soon. There will be a bit of reconstruction there as well, as I have no plans that shows any filling transoms or the like.

Lastly, an image of the digitalised stern decoration (with just a few elephants and towers missing from the balcony...):

I hope my ramblings here make some degree of sense 😅. I am learning as I go and and I still lack some vocabulary to properly explain. If you have questions of comments, don't hesitate!

BR

TJM

That’s absolutely lovely! I’m particularly impressed by your outstanding skill in 2D drawing — something I must say I rather envy you for .

55 minutes ago, TJM said:

There will be a bit of reconstruction there as well, as I have no plans that shows any filling transoms or the like.

What about a plan of Sophia Magdalena Lit. B you reproduce above, depicting the structure of the stern panel? And quite many others by Judichær (the listing below, hopefully for other readers), which I assume you have already seen? By the way, I simply love Judichær's drawings .

A738

A766

A779

A853

A874

A879

A888

A909

A914

A930

A933

A951

A956

A958 (reproduced above)

A976

A1169-IV

A1218

B35-c

... and perhaps others that I haven’t managed to identify.

I've found in the past when reconstructing drawings that I needed to double check my assumptions about every drawing. Sometimes my assumption that an original drawing was correct was wrong! On my current project, the bow ports were drawn in the wrong places entirely (and this was the 'as built' drawing') as they would have blocked other inboard items such as the breasthooks! I've learned to never take things as 'gospel truth'.

Be suspicious!

I want to feed those drawings to my laser cutter and start building it now. Anxiously watching for further development on this project.

JJ

9 hours ago, Waldemar said:

That’s absolutely lovely! I’m particularly impressed by your outstanding skill in 2D drawing — something I must say I rather envy you for .

Thank you! Just don't ask me to do any views off-axis 😅.

9 hours ago, Waldemar said:

What about a plan of Sophia Magdalena Lit. B you reproduce above, depicting the structure of the stern panel? And quite many others by Judichær (the listing below, hopefully for other readers), which I assume you have already seen? By the way, I simply love Judichær's drawings .

A738

A766

A779

A853

A874

A879

A888

A909

A914

A930

A933

A951

A956

A958 (reproduced above)

A976

A1169-IV

A1218

B35-c

... and perhaps others that I haven’t managed to identify.

Yes, you are right, of course! There must be enough references to extrapolate for Elephanten - thanks for the list of drawings, i will go through them! I have been through all the drawings in the archive a couple of times, but I don't have them cataloged. It really could benefit from a digital catalog!

8 hours ago, druxey said:

I've found in the past when reconstructing drawings that I needed to double check my assumptions about every drawing. Sometimes my assumption that an original drawing was correct was wrong! On my current project, the bow ports were drawn in the wrong places entirely (and this was the 'as built' drawing') as they would have blocked other inboard items such as the breasthooks! I've learned to never take things as 'gospel truth'.

Be suspicious!

True! and good advice, thanks! I have already had to make slight deviations from plans, when cosolidating different ones. Later drawings sets match very closely, but these very old ones are more like individual drawings than a set that fit eachother. And then, when reconstructing, a bit of slack is needed to make everything fit. I belive the smoothness of lines in the final set of drawings is more important that always adhering 100% to the drawings. For this, I try to make the elevation plan the master that everything else must conform to.

8 hours ago, Scrubbyj427 said:

I want to feed those drawings to my laser cutter and start building it now. Anxiously watching for further development on this project.

JJ

Oh, I know exactly what you mean! I have so far been successful in fighting off the urge myself... 🤣 Let's see if I can stay strong... 😄

Thank you all for your interest and helpfull comments! It is nice to have your encouragement!

Goodness me! I simply have to show this, so I ask for your understanding .

Today I carried out a quick proof of concept for the unrealised variant ‘B’ for Sophia Magdalena 1727 (drawing A958). The results are, from my point of view, extremely promising, as they confirm my assumptions regarding Judichær’s actual design methods and, indeed, those of the period in general.

I won’t bore you with all the details, suffice it to say that the contours of all the bends consist of ‘standard’, geometrically regularly arranged pairs of conic curves (in this specific case, above and below the individual diagonal of each bend). Plus, where applicable, hollowing curves, as here for bends 1 to 5.

This state of affairs makes me happy, as it lends even greater credibility to the intended conceptual reconstruction of the Danish frigate Stormarn 1703, but perhaps even more so to the Gyldenløve 1669 from my favourite 17th century and earlier.

1 hour ago, Waldemar said:

Goodness me! I simply have to show this, so I ask for your understanding .

Today I carried out a quick proof of concept for the unrealised variant ‘B’ for Sophia Magdalena 1727 (drawing A958). The results are, from my point of view, extremely promising, as they confirm my assumptions regarding Judichær’s actual design methods and, indeed, those of the period in general.

I won’t bore you with all the details, suffice it to say that the contours of all the bends consist of ‘standard’, geometrically regularly arranged pairs of conic curves (in this specific case, above and below the individual diagonal of each bend). Plus, where applicable, hollowing curves, as here for bends 1 to 5.

This state of affairs makes me happy, as it lends even greater credibility to the intended conceptual reconstruction of the Danish frigate Stormarn 1703, but perhaps even more so to the Gyldenløve 1669 from my favourite 17th century and earlier.

That does look very nice! I guess this means it would be relatively trivial to construct the in-between frames as well? Are there a fixed progression in terms of center, diameter etc that could be extrapolated to the non-fixed frames? That would be a full reconstruction from pronciples.

26 minutes ago, TJM said:

I guess this means it would be relatively trivial to construct the in-between frames as well?

That’s right, this method allows to predefine all the frames along the entire length of the keel at any point. It was only in the design drawings that the number of frames was limited to a smaller number, referred to as ‘bends’, as this was sufficient for design purposes while at the same time reducing the scope of the drafting work.

26 minutes ago, TJM said:

Are there a fixed progression in terms of center, diameter etc that could be extrapolated to the non-fixed frames?

Essentially, yes, but this requires the longitudinal design lines to be reconstructed first to that end. That said, strictly speaking, one cannot speak of centres or diameters in the context of frame contours here, as these are normally conical curves rather than circular arcs.

Yes, I am aware that many sources (Dutch, Danish, Swedish) refer to circular arcs as the geometric components of frame contours, but this is, at least in some cases, a fiction that misled me (and others) for a long time. The thing is that, often or usually, this was merely the result of later, simplifying conversions of the original designs — which used conic curves — into circular arcs, most likely to facilitate drafting and the production process itself. If the opportunity arises, I shall try to explain this phenomenon using the example of the project for the Danish frigates Prinz Carl & Prinz Wilhelm 1697, which beautifully illustrate this process or circumstance.

I’m already feeling a little guilty about my perhaps excessive activity in what is, after all, your thread; nevertheless, I’ll take the liberty of giving one more example of the actual use of conic curves in a 17th-century ship’s hull designed in the tradition I’ve termed ‘Northern European’ — rather than simply ‘Dutch’ — precisely because these very methods were also used by other peoples of the North, including the Scandinavians.

Below is the master frame of a ship previously identified as the Gyldenløve 1669 (though I am beginning to have my doubts about this identification), with the frame contours perfectly approximated by the two conic curves I have added. If one were to try to approximate these contours sufficiently well using circular arcs, one would need to use 5, 6 or 7 such arcs, which seems completely unreasonable. You can try this yourself, as you are very skilled at drawing.

That does look convincing. I am wondering how they would have manage back then? Conics are a bit advanced to describe mathematically, they must have had a practical way of doing them. I know you can just slice a cone, but controlling the e/rho values and scaling them to fit the purpose does not seem trivial to me.

The program I am using, QCAD, actually does not support conics. It can do eclipses, but I would not be able to do parabolas or hyperbolas. This is one of the first limitations of QCAD that I have come across.

I would also be interested to hear why you believe the ship here is Charlotte Amalia, and not Gyldenløve? I have not read Probst's article where he identifies it recently, but I seem to remember that he had decent arguments for Gyldenløve?

I thought Charlotte Amalie was originally called Prins Christian from 1650/51 and a much larger ship at around 90 guns?

2 hours ago, TJM said:

I would also be interested to hear why you believe the ship here is Charlotte Amalia, and not Gyldenløve? I have not read Probst's article where he identifies it recently, but I seem to remember that he had decent arguments for Gyldenløve?

I thought Charlotte Amalie was originally called Prins Christian from 1650/51 and a much larger ship at around 90 guns?

Thanks. As for identifying the vessel on the plan, its dimensions would indeed be quite close to those of the Gyldenløve 1669, but only on the condition that the length of the scale bar marked on the plan as 50 feet is taken as 45 feet. That is quite a significant difference of 10 per cent. On the other hand, such scaling of designs during that era by just altering the scale was quite common, so this may well be, for example, a proposal for a 136-foot ship obtained by simply rescaling the drawing of the 122-foot Gyldenløve.

The ship dimensions for comparison, to which I have access, are listed in Henrik Christiansen’s Orlogsflådens skibe gennem 500 år. Den dansk-norske flåde 1510–1814 og den danske flåde 1814–2010 (2010), whilst a reproduction of the Gyldenløve’s plan, fortunately including its length, is also found in Dansk søfarts historie, Vol. 2: 1588–1720. Skuder og kompagner (1997) by Ole Degn and Erik Gøbel:

Christiansen’s list actually refers to two ships named Charlotte Amalie. One is indeed the Prins Christian of 1650, renamed in 1666, and the other is a 60-gun ship built in 1670. Strictly speaking, the former is listed as Charlotte Amalie, and the latter Charlotta Amalie, but I do not know whether this has any practical significance.

2 hours ago, TJM said:

I am wondering how they would have manage back then? Conics are a bit advanced to describe mathematically, they must have had a practical way of doing them. I know you can just slice a cone, but controlling the e/rho values and scaling them to fit the purpose does not seem trivial to me.

I, too, doubt that conical curves were determined mathematically at that time; nevertheless, this was by no means necessary, as they could be successfully determined using carpentry methods, by bending a flexible strip, or by means of fairly simple to apply geometric methods. Rather than writing an endless treatise, I shall cite, by way of example, one of my diagrams, which illustrates some of these practical methods:

For example, if one wished to construct a parabola (i.e. rho = 0.5) geometrically, it would suffice to divide the tangent lines into several even segments and connect the resulting points with lines (on the diagram these tangent sections are only divided into two segments), and then draw the parabolic curve as a tangent to these connecting lines.

@TJM this is an incredibly interesting and useful thread. It is great to see your research start to evolve into working drawings. It is fun to see what is possible with the huge amount of original source material available on the internet and other sources these days. Your tips for solving some of the issues inherent in working from old drawings are really helpful.

Adam

Very nice @Waldemar! The scale being off is of course a bit suspecious - It could just be that it is, as you say, or it could be that the ship is really a different one. Hard to tell!

Thank you @Pirate Adam ! I am happy you find it useful!

I have tentatively drafted a simple transom structure that fits the many other Judichær designs:

This projection is easy, but the view top-down is not easy to work out at this point. The curve is very subtle. The wing transom and filling transom is probably nor that hard to do, but the profile below the waterline is dificult and the waterlines on the plan does not match the known transom frame contour. I think it would be easier to make slightly oversized pieces in practise and fair them. Perhaps this was also how it was actually done in full scale? The rounding of the stern below the lower wale is quite subtle on these early 18th century ships - the lack of any good drawings of these pieces, as we see from later masters, mat indicate that this was not something that was predefined in the drawings.

I will let the transom issue rest for a bit, and instead of going back to the very tedious job of re-doing the planking for the new fore hull shape, I decided to work a bit on the decks. Here's the 1st gundeck, carrying 13 36 pounders on each side:

This beam layout is taken directly from the plan A922. The beams are massive, at almost 1 foot 10 inches!

And with 'funiture':

I have taken quite a few elements, that are not shown in the original plans, from Jean-Claude Lemineur's Saint-Philippe monograph. Like the existance of pillars, rough positions of riding bitts, capstan, etc.

A zoom in:

And an image of the 36 pounders:

The design of the 36 pounders warrents some comments. I have a coppy of this 1891 book that catalogues all the known sources for artillery produced for the Navy and Army from the 14th century until 1850.

It is an incredibly dry work, but extremely valuable!

Elephanten was built under King Frederik IV, but there few if any 36 pounders produced under him. And interestingly, the 36 pounder had only recently been introduced, before the half- three quater- and full kartove of around 24, 27-29 and 36 pounds were used (I will not go into the details of the weight measurements here - sufice to say that at this point in time, it had been standardized). The first, proper 36 bronze cannons listed by Blom is in table LIV:

As can be seen, only the first 3 types (which were all virtually identical, except for the decoration and slight variation in weight and lenght), could have been in existance at the time of Elephanten. And only just about enough to arm it with 26 of them!

The only other 36 pounders listed are cast iron ones:

Not quite enough of these existed to fully arm the ship, and we cannot even be sure they were around in 1703 - they were made in 1697-1712, and 23 were around in 1722.

I belive that Elephanten was armed with bronze guns, for the following reasons: 1) The flagships of the time usually got the best armament, and bronze was still considered supperior to cast iron - addoption of cast iron was slow in Denmark-Norway as we had only a little domistic iron deposits. 2) Judichaær often specifically notes that a ship is to be armed with iron guns, 'Jern-støcker', and this is not mentioned for Elephanten. 3) by the tally of guns in existence, it seems there is enough bronze 36 pounders, and not enough of iron to arm Elephanten.

Other large ships, likke Dannebroge had 24 pounder guns on the 1st gun deck. The only other ship with 36 pounders at the time was the huge 110 gun Friderichus Quartus. An argument can be made that the few Bronze guns would have 'belonged' to this behemoth and not Elephanten, but Elephanten saw much more active duty and was considered the Navy's best ship (acc. to P. Holck), so I ellect to go with this design. It could of course be that Blom's lists are incomplete here and that more bronze 36 pounders actually existed!

The image we have of cannon #343 in 'Gammelt Dansk Metalskyts' are from 1694 and bears the Monogram and image of Christian V:

The 36 pounder is cannon A (B is a 24 pounder and C is a 42 pounder)

This concludes first pass on the 1st gundeck. Now I will move on to the second gundeck that carried 18 pounders - or just take myself together and do the planking...

BR

TJM