Building a 3d Pirate Ship

[CaptainBelle]

I'm a 3d artist and for my next project I'd love to model a pirate ship. However, I'm having a real hard time finding good reference material. What I need are drawings and pictures of all angles of a ship and ideally blueprints. If anyone happens across such a thing in their web explorations, I'd love to know about it. Thanks!

[William Brand]

Lookup model boat sites and do searches for "Free ship plans" or "free deck plans".

Here are some free downloads...

http://www.all-model.com/free_download.html

http://www.all-model.com/list1/mayflower/m.../mayflower.html

http://www.all-model.com/list1/hamburg/hamburg.html

http://www.all-model.com/list1/Frigate%20R...te_Roter_L.html

http://www.all-model.com/list1/Mirny/Sloop_Mirny.html

[CaptainBelle]

Wow, don't know how I missed those. I'll check them out! Thanks!

[Jonathan Hawks]

Sounds like a grand undertakin mate. Op's ya post pics of it when yer done.

[JoshuaRed]

The National Maritime Museum in the UK has a HUUUUGE collection of ship plans going back to 1680. You can order poster sized copies too, via their website!

The only snag is that there are VERY few merchant ship plans prior to the mid-18th C. as they were built by "rule of thumb". There are Naval ship plans, but I don't know of any pirate ship that was previously a naval ship. By and large they were captured merchant vessels. Still though, with some research you could modify the plans of a naval sloop of war to a merchant sloop, and hence a pirate craft. :)

Follow this link for more info: NMM Ship Plans