"The Blue Max" skrev i melding
s.com...

"Ståle Sannerud" wrote

The overall expense was roughly: Hull 50%,
artillery (guns and carriages) 25%, sails and rigging 25%.

Something often commented on in the shot-and-sail genre of fiction
(O'Brian,
Forester, etc) is the cost of giving a man of war a pretty colour scheme,
usually out of the officers' pocket. Apparently this was a smart career
move, as scruffy ships didn't impress admirals. Does your source give any
details on at what cost and intervals ships were painted with gold leaf,
etc?

snipped great post



Not in the Danish source, no. However, I bought a book on shipmodeling from
Editions Ancre around Christmas, this is Jean Boudriot's publishing house
and a small booklet written by him discussing painting of French ships in
the late 1700s was enclosed as a surprise bonus. The following data is from
that source (more or less translated from the French text by yours truly, a
language that I am not even remotely fluent in), copied from a posting I
made to a Yahoo discussion group some time back, discussing the appropriate
painting of ship models:

"
Prices as of 1780, "£" = 1 Louis d'or á 20 sols,
1 quintal = 100 livres á 489 gram.

Crushed red ochre oil paint - £40/quintal
Crushed yellow ochre oil paint - £40/quintal
Gray oil paint - £40/quintal
Crushed red and yellow ochre - £5/quintal
Flanders-glue (spacle, I think) - 16s/livre
Sinober red - £6/livre
Lead white - £35/quintal
Lead white oil paint - £43/quintal
Preussian blue - £18/livre
Regular enamel (for azure blue) - 20s/livre
Green oil paint - 32s/livre
Neaples yellow - 32s/livre
Lamp blacking oil paint - 16s/livre
Grey green and mountain green - 16s/livre
Vermillion-red - £6 10s/livre
Nut-oil - £40/quintal
Linseed oil - £30/quintal
Gold leaf in 3.5" square leaves - £2 5s per leaf

For instance, preussian blue was 45 times more expensive than plain
old yellow ochre - they'd use the one for the French royal coat of
arms on the stern, the other for the ship's sides So while I
would not doubt that even something as large as a figurehead could
be very brilliantly painted indeed I'd tend to take exception to
brilliant colours being used on the hull itself to any degree! (And
looking at the price of gold leaf I can certainly see how they
managed to blow 6000 pounds on decorating the Sovereign of the
Seas...)
"

(I hope Outlook Express does not post this in rich-text format, my apologies
in advance if it does...)

It should be obvious that rich colours were for detail-work only, not
something to paint a 180-foot long hull with. In the French navy at least,
the powers that be simply dumped X tons of the cheapest colours on the
captain, and more or less left him to do his worst with it. He was also
given the minimum amount of preussian blue and gold leaf for the
coat-of-arms only, as I recall from Boudriot's "the 74-gun ship". Anything
more, he'd have to fork out the money for it himself I guess.

I'd expect painting of ships to be a more or less continuous process (then
as now, I guess...), given the quality of paints available at the time. Even
the Atlantic liners, in the early 1900s, sometimes arrived in port after the
Atlantic crossing sans large areas of paint at the bows, it having been
stripped right off the hull during a single trip.

Staale Sannerud

"Ståle Sannerud" wrote

For instance, preussian blue was 45 times more expensive than plain
old yellow ochre - they'd use the one for the French royal coat of
arms on the stern, the other for the ship's sides So while I
would not doubt that even something as large as a figurehead could
be very brilliantly painted indeed I'd tend to take exception to
brilliant colours being used on the hull itself to any degree!

Clearly. These figures go a long way towards explaining why the black and
yellow stripe scheme of Nelson's day was so commonplace: it was cheap, as
were the alternatives of red and black or red all over.

In one of the O'Brian's there is a description of the frigate Java as
sporting an extravagant colour scheme of a blue stripe along the hull
between black stripes edged with white. It does indeed sound pricey, and at
40 times the price of yellow one can see why the wealthy captains of pretty
warships were so loth to practice the messy business of gunnery.

I'd expect painting of ships to be a more or less continuous process (then
as now, I guess...), given the quality of paints available at the time.
Even
the Atlantic liners, in the early 1900s, sometimes arrived in port after
the
Atlantic crossing sans large areas of paint at the bows, it having been
stripped right off the hull during a single trip.

I believe this is also the reason why oil tankers are painted red...hides
the rust. I've also heard the other favoured scheme of black hull / white
superstructure is designed to defeat photogrpahy - if you can read the
ship's name the photo is too over- or under-exposed to publish. I think it's
an urban myth though.