Galleons and ships of the line are main sailing vessels of this period.
Basically all of big vessels of the time are galleons, with "ships of the line" used only for those that serve in the navy and carry a lot of cannons...
They are the main means of war at sea, used by almost EVERY country interested in having a fleet.
To simple things out for You as an artist and for everyone else, like readers, I don't really want to make a big difference between them.
For average people all galleons/ships of the line looked the same, tho there were of course some differences in construction, like the shape of stern, as You will observe in other posts dedidated to different navies.
For example, sterns of the english warships had visibly different sterns from the dutch.
Also, one of the biggest noticeable difference were decorations - obiously the more the country is rich, the more money it's ruler can put into decorating that stern etc.
Therefore, vessels of rich countries, like Holland and England, will be more decorated.
Vessels of poor countries, like Poland or Prussia, will look cheaper.
But the main way to tell a difference between warships belonging to different factions will be NATIONAL COLORS.
Flags on masts are one obvious thing, Coats of Arms as decorative elements are another...
But other possibilities for a use of different colors are:
- GUN PORTS - for example, blue for Sweden, and red for the Poles...
- RAILS - the same, blue and yellow for Sweden, Red for the Poles...
- STERNS - national colors seen among decorations
- SAILS - I'd like them to have a different shade for each faction, with a bit of yellowish for the swedish and more white for the Poles etc.
Also, note that there were different types of classes among those ships, they would vary between 40-100 cannons, and so the more cannons the more gun decks they would require.
But, to simplify things, I would just go with 4 different classes of these sailing vessels.
1- small vessels - ONE-DECK or TWO-DECKS - "background" vessels, those that we don't really work hard on and those that are forgettable, we use them only because these existed and sailed the sea, so they should be noticeable around ports and in ports, also as they are used by merchants to transport goods these will fall into hero's hand during his corsair raids , they are also used to carry troops by the sea, and are primary vessels of the carribean pirates, since they can't affort larger galleons
2 - standard one - TWO-DECKERS - around 54 cannons, like MARS, sailing "hero" of our series, impressive looking but not the biggest among them all.
3 - bigger one - THREE-DECKERS - around 70-80 cannons, like DE ZEVEN PROVINZIEN, some powerfull warships of the main sea factions
3 - behemoths of the sea - THREE and MORE DECKS - around 90-100 and more cannons - like HMS ROYAL CHARLES or KRONAN - these are the beasts of the sea, used very rarely cause these are expensive and they are flagships for main sea villains in some of the installments...
Main factions to own all of these classes are:
* Sweden
* Holland
* Denmark
* England / Britain
but they are also used by minor sea powers, like:
* Prussia
* Courland
* Austria
etc.
Poles use mostly smaller types to trade, all of the bigger vessels, warships, are captured from the enemy...
It's also important not to forget that both the bow of the ship and a stern of the ship had something to do with the ship's name, so if for example, the ship's name is Neptune, there would a Neptune's statue on the bow and some sculptures of Neptune and sea life on the stern.
Stern usually had also a sign with the ship's name carved in there somewhere, as well as country's Coat of Arms featured in it's central part...
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Now, below is a whole bunch of pictures showing different warships from this period, belonging to different navies, and also shown from many different perspectives, as well as during different actions - battles, bordage, storm etc...
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IMAGES:
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