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[Dread Pirate Wesley]

The HMS Praetorian is a 5th rate 32 gun frigate whose sole purpose is escorting important persons through dangerous waters. She is well armed and extremely fast with an unusually high number of soldiers for boarding actions. On this particular voyage, her cargoes include a governor and his lovely daughter, accompanied to his new dominion by an admiral and a colonel in command of the contigent of marines.



The ship itself started out life as Brickbeards Bounty. I had never before owned a lego ship and couldnt pass one up on sale at a local store. Needless to say shes grown a little since then. She is now 8 hull sections long, 14 studs wide on deck at the bow and 12 at the stern. Like most frigates of the day, she has a 5 to 1 length to beam ratio. It is a different building technique than Ive mostly seen on here, such as Captain Green Hair's excellent technique. Mainly this ship was built for strength, and despite her length can be held in one hand without any flex in the hull.



It has a full interior including a spacious cabin for the captain, or in this case the governors daughter.



As well as a stove to serve up grog to the hungry crew.



Her main armament is twenty-four 18 pounders on the main gun deck. Quite formidable especially when facing the four gun broadside of the Imperial Flagship.



She also carries up to eight 6 pounders on the quarter deck, two in the forecastle, and two 12 pound bowchasers. Besides the marines, there are also 4 swivel guns to sweep the enemy decks.



But a ship is nothing without a brave crew to put her to sea!



Hope you enjoy this ship, comments are always welcome. More images can be seen here:
Brickshelf Gallery

The Dread Pirate Wesley

[patroclus]

Very cool.

[Jack Bricker]

Really nice ship. I was curious how many mid-hull sections you used. I am really impressed by how you did the stern with the new hull pieces. I looks just a little squareish but other than that it is really great. I think that we will all have to start resorting to using the new hull pieces since Lego has stopped using the old ones for its sets and also since they use the reddish-brown instead of their older brown. Great job and I can't wait to see here with all of the sails.

[curtisrlee]

Very cool. I always wanted to build ships this big but sadly I dont have enough hulls

[Admiral Ron]

This is a very beautiful ship, nice color scheme and loads of cannons! You should make a tutorial on how to make a ship like this, it has inspired me!

[Admiral Croissant]

Welcome to Classic-pirates! I don't think there is a better way to introduce yourself than with this magnificent MOC
It's a very nice ship with a great colourscheme, I really like it
The rigging could use some more work but for the rest it's stunning, so:

In case you don't know what that means, you will be on our frontpage soon

[SlyOwl]

Really nice ship, I especially love the front. Are you planning to give it a full set of sails?

I'll echo your comment about Lego being one of the few media where people are easy to incorporate. I've done my share of dioramas and ships in non-Lego media, and without people they feel empty.

Liverpool on!

[Dread Pirate Wesley]

Thank you all for the warm welcome! To answer some of the questions, the masts and spars I eventually plan to make all reddish brown, once the price of reddish brown supports goes down on bricklink. Once that is complete I will do full sails and stays and other rigging. The top gallants are the same size as the mainsails on the imperial flagship, there is one in some of the photos I used to get this shot.



The rest I would like to do in the same pattern to keep it Lego-esque but they will need to be much larger. She used to have the same spar style as BBB as you can see in the photo below, but after I got the Imperial Flagship I had to use that method for all my ships, it really is brilliant!



As far as building technique, there are some interesting and extremely frustrating techniques I developed to make the bow look correct. I will try and take some photos or write a basic tutorial if that's desired. Unfortunately I didnt take too many pictures in development since it kept changing almost everyday, but thats another great thing about Lego, you can disassemble without destroying! Glad it inspired you, come on you Reds!

DPW

[Captain K.]

What a very nice ship! I like it.

Good job!

Capt. K

[Dread Pirate Wesley]

My brickshelf folder seems to be having problems, so here's a link to the same photos on MOC pages:
HMS Pratorian Gallery

Im new to all three websites so maybe I did something wrong Im learning though!

Dread Pirate Wesley

[Commodore Hornbricker]

A wonderful ship. The colors are very nice and there are lots of details I really like and the bow is my favorite part. I like her design. It reminds me of the longer one gun deck 80 gun ships (tonnent class?) that the French built. The British captured many and even built some of their own in that design. Very well done and welcome!

[Fires-storm]

An excellent design, the sails are actually pretty cool, rigging or no:P My new moc was a little two masted Caravel, so this just blew mine out of the water utterly, and me as well, lol, excellently done, I love it and can't wait for more

[Big Cam]

he size is very impressive, I didn't quite grasp the scale until I saw you holding it.

Most impressive.

[Dr. Steve]

Looks great! I like the use of the brick on the bow (on the overhead shot) to accomplish the curved look.
I think she could take down most ships out there!

[Commander Laquiet]

This looks great. Very nice colour scheme and layout.

Great work.