#tallships

[runawaysailor]

Here, have some pictures of life recently. Running an active tallship blog is hard when you're a tallship sailor cuz I'm either too busy to think about posting or it's the off season and I'm not doing anything worth posting

[studiorat]

A Change In the Wind

Zelgan Week day 4 : Seabound

Captain Ganondorf Rajenaya Chalut Dragmire and Zelda Anne DeLeon return for ZelGan Week 2026! This desktop wallpaper took about 10 hours from thumbnail to reality. Process video will be posted under the cut. Enjoy.

A note on some of the references used:

Yes, his uniform is modeled after the regency era British uniform, taking especial inspiration from a portrait of Captain Gilbert Heathcote.

The design for his ship-of-the-line references three real ships, including the HMS Victory for her distinctive curved prow, because it was good at ramming things and I thought it might work well with some Gan-ish motifs.

The pose reference is from the 1995 BBC adaptation of Persuasion, which source text is the whole reason this AU exists. I highly reccomend both the novel and the movie if you’re not familiar.

Oh and the portraits from last year’s event are here

Check out the event blog @zelgan-week for a treasure trove of more ZelGan goodies

[econocaos]

[rowscara]

Sticker club this month was an absolute blast to work on! These are in the mail now but I always print off a few extra sets each month - if you want them its not too late! You can hop onto the tier with either patreon or kofi and I'll get them in the mail the same day.

The octopus and the mermaid will likely make their way onto the etsy shop as well in a few days here!

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⛔Please, if it's not your commission, do not repost anything I tag or say is a commission! Reposts of my commissioned/serious works are not ok⛔

[screw-real-life-i-pick-fandoms]

IT'S TIME GANG!

The ships are arriving in Boston for one of the biggest tallship gatherings in the USA of the decade!

Tomorrow is the parade of sail, you just know ya girl is going to be flipping her shit out on the water. 🫡

The festival isn't even in full swing yet and I have already gotten to reunite with so many of my old shipmates!

[raphexim]

For whatever reason (probably the autism) I have always been keenly interested in the ratings system of Royal Navy warships during the Napoleonic Wars. But since I've been deep diving the smaller/unrated ships (much more interesting vessels, imho) I can't help but wonder how later ships might have fared against earlier ships of a higher rating.

For instance: a first-rate ship of the line would have 100+ guns. These could be any configuration of actual firepower and weight of metal for benefit of structural integrity and weight distribution (fifty 18-pounders, thirty 12-pdrs, eighteen 6-prds, and two long nines for instance), and later ships of course were built strong enough to employ greater guns, or else were making use of the much lighter, much closer-range and smaller-crewed carronades.

All of this is context for the question I'm now asking:

could a sloop-of-war or corvette (more or less the bottom of the rating system, though not the VERY bottom) of the end of that period have held its own against a first rate of the beginning?

Sure, the USS Constellation of the 1850's might not have as much armor just by dint of less decking, but in turn being made at such a time that larger guns were being used, would she not have had stronger planking that might guard against the smaller/less powerful guns of the Napoleonic era? Let's take HMS Victory, which was built around 90 years prior but updated at the turn of the century and utilized throughout the Napoleonic Wars.

Add in the greater speed and maneuverability of the Constellation and the fact that it would be difficult to fire effectively down from the higher gun decks of the Victory --- not to mention SIZE! The 22(ish) gun Constellation was about the same length on deck as the Victory, about twice the length (and proportionately around 3x the size/displacement) of a similarly rated ship from Victory's era. (The USS Wasp of 1814 is a good comparisson.)

So, our too-tiny-to-be-rated Constellation is extraordinarily large compared to its similarly-rated Wasp, and well-armed with its parrott rifles and howitzers, pitted against the Victory with four times as many guns and decks but of inferior firepower and build just by dint of progress over time...

I'm not at a point of calculating rate of fire, explosive power, or actual weight of metal, nor even sailing advantages, but...

I think Constellation could take her.

(This isn't anything more than a thought experiment, and the observation that what we might call the lowliest today would be comparable to the loftiest prior standards. It's just wild.)

[rehsgalleries]

Henry Scott

(1911 - 2005)

Rough Seas

Oil on canvas

40 x 50 inches

Signed

[paintedjournals]

I think this is the American Eagle, at the North End Shipyard in Rockland, Maine. I forgot to add the rigging while I was on location! 8 x 12“ or 20 x 30 cm, oil.