1/700 Jeanne d'Arc 1904 (Combrig)
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by Jim Baumann |
1/700 Jeanne d'Arc 1904 (Combrig)
Jeanne ‘Arc was a large armoured cruiser built for the French navy in
1899. She was nicknamed the ‘pack of cigarettes’ dueto her most distinctive
feature; the imposing set of six funnels. Her long narrow hull was 457ft
long( 145 metres) and displaced 11,300 tons.
Armament consisted of 2 x 7.6 in guns in single turrets fore and aft,
14 x 5.4 in guns in three casemates in the hull sides as well as casemates
aft;the remaining 5.4 guns being in open mounts on the weather deck. 26
x QF and small calibre guns were distributed on upper levels, bridge decks
and fighting top. 28,500 horsepower drove this ship though the water a
maximum speed of nearly 22 knots. She was crewed 636 officers and men.
In 1903 she carried France’s President Emile Loubet to Algeria on a ceremonial visit. She was based at Toulon as part of the Mediterranean fleet. From 1912 she was deployed as the school ship of the French Naval Academy. In WW1 she initially reinforced the Atlantic squadron, later joining he Mediterranean fleet. Jeanne’d Arc was instrumental in defending the Suez canal against Turkish forces in 1915., later patrolling the Dardanelles and the Mediterranean waters off Syria and Anatolia in support of the Gallipoli and Salonkia campaigns.
At the end of hostilities she reverted to her former role of school ship serving in this capacity until 1928, being finally scrapped in 1934
With the free availability of the French naval archive plans on-line Kombrig have produced a fine starting point for a model of this iconic French cruiser. The resin castings are crisp and sharp. French ships of the period often travelled even at speed with all the hatches and casemate doors open- to aid airflow and cooling throughout the ship. To reproduce this I cut open all the apertures, lined the with brass squares of PE from a variety of sources. Much additional detailing and refinement was carried out throughout the model, a detailed account of which can be read here.
I have depicted the vessel in her heyday of the early 1900’s, travelling at approximately 16 knots . The seascape was made using my trusty method of watercolour paper, an illustrated account of which can be read here,
The water was painted in the usual wet-on-wet methods as illustrated here.
One of the greater challenges in this build was the rigging of the tall and very thin masts and WT spar. This was painstakingly carried out entirely in stretched sprue , the method of which is illustrated and described here.
Overall I am very pleased with model interpretation of this slightly
gawky looking ship.
Kombrig are to be congratulated fro the fine effort in producing this
kit ;any minor issues with the kit were easily overcome.
