First Rate!

My concept of small ship actions being the limit of ambition for 17th Century naval games didn't last long. The idle thought of; "I wonder what is available in plastic kits that might be useful?"  led to several hours of Internet research and a few likely looking candidates for big warships. The kits are from Heller and the one that is closest to my interests is the Phenix. This is a 1/600 kit of a large French, ship of the line based on designs from the late 1600s. There is not a specific ship that this kit represents and apparently the kit is quite elderly so has a few issues. This does nothing to put me off however. If it looks more or less right I will have no problem using as the basis for my own kitbashing attempts.

As ever there was a hitch to my brilliant plans.  This kit appears to be out of production; not visible in the Heller catalogue and absent from my local model shop and online destinations. Waiting for one to pop up on Ebay looked like my only chance and then I stumbled upon some stock in a Greek hobby shop. I snaffled two kits (same delivery charge as one) £8-£9 each seemed like a fair price including postage to me in the UK. They turned up in less than a week. (How we are going to miss that frictionless cross border trade once we are totally out of the EU...)

The kit itself has pretty good detail and not too many parts. I particularly like the carving on the stern, which is so typical of warships of this period. The only other contents in the box are a good instruction sheet and some very lightweight vac-formed plastic sails. These might be tricky to paint (they are white so I don't strictly need to) so I think I'll try before I cut them out. A surprising omission is a sheet of paper flags.

The size of the hull at 4 3/4" to the figurehead makes this ship 178 feet long at my nominal scale of 1/450. This makes this in the area of a 1st Rate or maybe 2nd, depending on the number of guns carried. It will certainly look imposing next to my horde of small ships and vessels. The only thing that are noticeable by their absence are any gunports. Maybe they were always intended to be painted onto the completed model? This suits my purposes as I can add them in the scale to suit my project and in whatever number I decide suits the type  of ship I want to portray. Peter Pig even have gunports with protruding ordnance intended for just this sort of conversion.

Stern windows and decoration piece.

So, overall very happy with these kits. My intention is to build one "as is" to be a French or English First Rate and the other I may chop a section out of the hull to create a smaller, handier Dutch warship. I will of course have to waterline them but a good razor saw will usually do the job with few dramas.  I also have some of the Minairons sets of  flags (link) that should work well with these kits.