Paladin

You guys really raided my Brickshelf didn't ya! Well...again I humbly thank you all for your kind words and interest in my models. Yes this is the sum total of three carribean clippers plus an extra mid-hull segment. I was going for the Black Seas Baracudda look and build type for it. I also agree that the cannon placement is hardly realistic, yet it makes it slightly more formidible on this scale. The paradigm to which it was built is from my more youthful days when this ship would have actually "seen action" in mock wars with my Lego building buddies in grade and middle school. Therefore maximum firepower was paramount in the design and construction. The colours come from the compromises me and my buddies made which is a bit...unorthodox...but each of us chose our own colour scheme based on what we like and which country we represented... England's ship colours were blue and yellow, the blue soldiers flags represented England, red-coat soldiers were the marines for England. England was represented by my friend Robbie's fleet. Since this is ship is built to that standard, that is why this ship is the colours it is, and also why it carries the British naval flag. France's ship colours were grey and black. My friend James represented this country although he preferred to be a French Privateer, so his ships carried pirate flags, although I made a French tri-colour for him to fly on his flagship during battle. He later started making Iron Clad ships that's what this reflects, the blue soldiers flag on the ship in that link is not correct, it should have been a pirate flag. James tended to use any pirate minifig for soldiers and sailors, however french marines used one particular pirate torso, the blue one with a v-shape and brown strappings. These make an excellent soldier if you put tricorns on them and give them muskets. America's ship colours were black and red, the red soldiers flags represented America since it resembled the stripes on the stars and stripes. I likened it to a naval version of the Culpepper Flag used during the American Revolution. However American marines were blue-coat soldiers. The last friend was Robbie's brother he represented the Confederacy and built very little but mostly used white and green on his ships. He made his own confederate flags for his ships and used random minifigs as soldiers. Our wars were between America backed by England and the Confederacy backed by French privateers. This ship has a sad note to it's construction. I built it shortly after my friend Robbie was killed in an automobile accident in high school. It's sort of my personal memorial. However it often goes to IndyLUG shows and is frequently featured on layouts. Here it is fighting a Red Beard Runner (...and some sort of sea creature I think) in a recent IndyLUG layout.

Another of my models on here, thanks again for the heads up bonaparte! I appreciate the interest and the kind words! However LOL at the confusion...ok this model is really really based on what the 13 year old mind divises not so much one learned in history that's the first thing to say... Way back in 1993 or so I had a group of four friends that used to play with Lego together. We alternated between space and castle/pirate themes for our playtime. When doing pirate stuff I built a ship of this style. Yes the name comes from Star Trek...I had a Star Trek Encyclopedia and I used it to find a name for a ship that I thought was cool. Therefore Potempkin has absolutely nothing to do with anything in Russian history. One of my friends suggested "Republic" as a name which in afterthought would have been much more fitting for an American ship but alas...it was not to be. The ship didn't always have the side wheels. I read the story of the CSS Alabama round about 7th grade that was where that idea for a steam sloop came from. I found pictures of the side-wheel steam ships used early in the days of steam. That and it gave me an advantage it the naval role play with the friends...since my ship could move under power I could manuver better (well just faster...LOL) The barrels...again LOL looking back. Back in the day this was a compromise. The four of us didn't have very many actual lego cannon. We would have wars with these ships and to make it fair you had to have actual cannons on your ship. Since we maybe had 20-30 TOTAL cannon between the four of us in our collections...we compromised to using barrels as Carronades (since barrels were somewhat rare but not so much as Cannon). This seemed appropriate because they wouldn't have the range of a cannon but would do more damage close in. That's why you see them mounted on this ship like that. The red slopes down the side were supposed to be iron plates that deflected cannon balls, and help minimize destruction if ramming occured. Hardly practical or even realistic, again remember I was 13 when I came up with this. Alas...Potempkin no longer exists. I dismantled it about a year ago and built this with the hull pieces. I am moving my ship building towards not using standard ship hulls. I have distant plans to perhaps build a more realistic U.S. Civil War era side-wheel steam sloop-of-war similar to the image Asuka posted. It will still be called Potempkin though *sweet*, that and I'd also like to build the famous iron clads USS Monitor and CSS Virginia (aka Merrimack)

Well thank you guys for the kind words! Also I have some for you Norro...your MOC "Entrance to the Caves" was recently featured on the IndyLUG forums. That is absolutely spectacular. *sweet*

Indeed I have been contacted! Greetings! I am the creator of this ship you all are discussing. Thank you bonaparte for inviting me into the discussion. First of all this ship does not use lego standard hull sections. It is fully built up of bricks. The base of it is made using mostly 8x16 brick plates, then 45-degree inverse black 2x2 slopes are used to angle the hull up from the water line (which is a close approximation to the angle of a "standard" boat hull). This is done for two reasons, first and foremost because I needed to make the ship much wider than the boat hulls allow to get a proper length to beam ratio that "looked" right, that and it allowed me to use whatever colors I wanted, in this case black and yellow (with some blue trim inboard). The second reason is strength, this model is extremely strongly built. I can grap it up with two hands by the nose and flip it up completely vertical without it bending or breaking and it weighs nearly 20 lbs (and it's fun to watch people wince)! Why overbuild it this strong? Because it does shows, it has to endure loading and unloading at various venues. Were it to have been done with boat hulls you'd need to cut them to spread them wider and then I'd say it's close to 6 or 7 mid-sections long (from stem to stern I think it's something like 18 to 24 inches)...I can measure it at home if anyone is interested in the exact dimensions... However it is mostly hollow, it's not just full of junk-color bricks, it has distinct gun decks, but it is built at about 1/2 minifig scale (1 stud = ~2 feet), although it typically gets figs put on it at shows for the kids. There are lego cannon on the two main gun decks, there are a little over 50 cannon. The upper deck has my version of carronades (which is historically innacurate for Bellerophon, but plausable...USS Constitution's original specification was for the upper deck to be all Carronades, and is her current gun configuration as she sits in Boston after her last renovation). That was mostly done for aesthetic reasons. To keep the upper deck "clean" looking. Plus lego cannon are NOT cheap. I think it was the single most expensive part of the build on that model. In all the ship has a main battery of 80 guns (40 per side) with two bow chasers and two stern chasers. The reason the cannons aren't able to be "run out" is again, because of transportation and maintenence concerns. If they were on wheels and loose there'd be no way I could get into the ship to upright them or align them if they got jostled around in a car ride. The cannon are simply secured down to the plates they're mounted on. They're not permanently out or the gun doors couldn't close...a compromise so to speak. In any case you wouldn't want to get close to this ship's broadside were I to use it in a Lego Naval sim game :-P, if you set a Black Seas Baraccuda next to it the lower gun deck is at hull level on the BSB, the mid gun deck is at main deck level of the BSB and the upper deck would be around the quarter deck and upper masts of the BSB...it wouldn't stand a chance I'm afraid... As for the masts...yes they are shorter than spec but they were as tall as I could make lego masts be without resorting to using some odd looking technic device or building them out of 2/2 rounds (which would have been fairly unstable). Again this was chosen for the robust characteristics of the lego masts. With all the sails on, at outdoors shows this thing has been known to actually catch the wind. Usually the masts hold...if they were less strong they'd often break, either in transit or in outdoor winds. That and, the lego masts are aesthetically "better" looking IMHO. The bulges on the aft-cabin were again a compromise. I wanted to use the lattice-pane windows for a better aesthetic look but mounting them on an angle was difficult and there needed to be a slight bulge there for the aft-cabin (that's where the captain's privvy was BTW...well on some ships!). I ended up playing around with some bits and pieces untill I managed that design. It isn't the best but it's relatively decent. The back of the aft-cabin I feel is somewhat accurate, it would have been rows of ornate windows and such, especially on larger, prestigious ships of the line. I'm not sure on 3rd-Rates but certainly on 2nd and 1st rate SOTL on which admirals of the fleet may have commanded aft cabins would have been opulent in some cases. The window section of the back folds down (it's the same concept as the back of the BSB) and you can access the interior of the aft-cabin. It's not furnished, but the upper portion has a black and white parquet floor. Another notable aspect of this model is that I completely rendered it in MLCAD. I knew how I wanted to build it from building Constitution free hand. So I did a complete virtual build of the whole model, primarily to generate a shopping list, and work out proportions. Then I bought exact amounts of parts on BrickLink. Doing it this way made it very cost effective to build. As I said the Cannon were expensive...however the overall total parts cost was about $250 USD. There are around 2,500 parts in the model. At $0.10 a part that is spot on what the cost ratio is for a purchased lego set. The cannon averaged $2.00 each...but black and especially yellow brick is dirt cheap comparitively. I do indeed have plans in the future for a 1st rate, and it will of course be Nelson's Victory >8-) Here is Bellerophon and Constitution at a purpose built dockyard on the IndyLUG section of the ILTCO layout at the 2006 NMRA National Train Show this past year in Philadelphia... How do you put a naval scene in a train show? The idea is a naval parade celebrating Independance Day in the USA (The show was held the weekend after Independance Day, which is July 4th)