I have a question about the oar ports (sweeps) shown between the lower gun ports on the plans. They do not appear in the artist’s illustration shown in the Wikipedia article.

However, they do show up in the Gorges Fournier (1667) drawings.

There was also a picture of a model built in the 1940s that has since been lost. The 1940 model had them.

I researched the use of sweeps on age of sail warships and the results told me that they were not used in a ship of this size. My question is which is correct? Do I include them or not?

Any thoughts?

Tom

Only small ships could be moved using sweeps. You can be confident in omitting the sweep ports from this two-decker!

Thanks Dave,

That is what my research told me. I just needed confirmation from real people with experience. I still don’t trust AI chatbots that get half of the rhetorical technical questions I ask at work wrong. 🤪😕

Tom

As my access to the ModelShipWorld forum has been blocked 😊, I would nevertheless like to add a few points and examples here that are relevant to the discussion on this topic that took place there. This is, in a sense, a continuation of the thread at the following link: https://www.modelshipworld.com/topic/ 1327-la-courronne-1636-oar-ports-sweeps/

Firstly, it is worth quoting the correct translation of the source text, an 18th-century description concerning the positioning of scuppers in relation to gunports:

Care must be taken to arrange the scuppers in such a way that they are never situated above a gunport… (Blaise Ollivier, Traité de construction, 1736).

The point of the above example is that one of the participants in the discussion, whilst quoting this description (without citing the source), replaced the term ‘above’ with ‘beneath’, which quite drastically distorted the essence and implications of the source text.

The French Encyclopédie methodique. Marine (1783), which deals in detail with all aspects of nautical affairs and written by a team of the era’s most eminent experts in the field, mentions securing scuppers with a non-return valve in the form of a leather flap on the outside of the planking. Naturally, such safeguards are most necessary for the lowest deck, in contrast to the decks above, which may not even require them at all. This serves as indirect evidence for the use of scuppers on the lowest deck, a claim denied by one of the discussants.

It is also worth pointing out further examples from an earlier era, showing scuppers clustered quite densely in the midship region, whilst being absent at both extremities of the hull; this is directly related to the greater longitudinal curvature of the decks compared to the standards of later eras. Exactly this arrangement, which is most suitable for strongly curved decks, is depicted in the engraving of Le Grand Saint Louis 1626, and there is no basis for disputing the correctness of this arrangement.

Five scuppers grouped amidships on the Christiansøe 1707 (Danish archives):

Four scuppers grouped amidships on a contemporary model of the Anna Sophia 1669 (Krigsmuseet, Copenhagen; photo by Thorbjørn):

Thank you Waldemar for validating what you were saying. I believe the discussion turned a bit hostile on the other site and I do not wish this to be the case here. Having said that, I believe the original question I asked was answered sufficiently so there is no need to further this discussion.

Tom

Hi, there’s no hostility at all — quite the opposite, in fact. It’s just that some people can be a bit more assertive in certain situations, and I’m sometimes on the receiving end of that assertiveness too.

 

In any case, certain issues — which were most likely caused by so-called communication misunderstandings — have hopefully already been clarified in private.

Hi again, Tom. Although this goes somewhat against your wishes, it’s still essential to clear up a certain misunderstanding that arose publicly — and which was later clarified in private correspondence — along with a few other matters. It concerns the relative placement of gunports and scuppers.

Gérard, when he wrote that scuppers should not be located directly beneath gunports, was basing his statement on the recommendations of Pierre Morineau in his Répertoire de Construction from the mid-18th century, though he did not specifically reference this work by name. I, on the other hand, due to the linguistic similarity of the phrasing, assumed that he was referring to a recommendation taken from Blaise Ollivier’s Traité de Construction from 1736. As a result, a mistake occurred involving an unnecessary swap of the terms “above” and “beneath.” It is also worth noting that the recommendations of both French authors are not mutually exclusive.

For those interested, below is a translation of the entire passage concerning this aspect, taken from Morineau’s manuscript, published by Ancre in 2010 (page 307), and indicated by Gérard:

 

— „… and that the scuppers on the second deck should not be directly above the gunports on the first deck, nor beneath those on the second deck. They must clear both, as they would allow water to enter the first deck, and the guns on the second deck would prevent the debris from being cleared from the said scuppers; which are to be shifted as far as possible to avoid these inconveniences”.

 

Another version of the Morineau manuscript from Greenwich (SPB14), transcribed by Gérard, also specifies:

— „On ships with their first battery armed, scuppers are drilled through the side flush with the first deck, in the gaps between the frames, off the gunports of the battery, in order to clean said scuppers” (page 93 of the transcript of the Greenwich manuscript).

— „The scuppers on the first deck are drilled through the gaps between the frames beside the gunports of the first battery so as not to be obstructed by the gun carriages” (page 50 of the transcript of the Greenwich manuscript).

 

My comment on Morineau’s recommendations is that, in practice, it is not easy to find examples that fully conform to such an ideal arrangement of scuppers in every respect; nevertheless, in the contemporary model of Le Sans Pareil from 1757, a certain number of scuppers are indeed arranged in precisely the manner recommended by Morineau, as shown below (photo from Modèles historiques by Jean Boudriot, 1997).

 

Admittedly, there are other issues as well, but my main concern was to clear up this particular misunderstanding.

contemporary model of Le Sans Pareil 1757: