Der Adler von Lübeck (The Eagle of Lübeck)

The Ship…

The Adler von Lübeck, German for Eagle of Lübeck, also called Der Große Adler or Lübscher Adler, was a 16th century warship of the Hanseatic city of Lübeck, Germany. The Adler was at its time the largest ship in the world, being 78.30 m long overall and displacing 2-3,000 tons.

The war galleon was built by Lübeck during the Northern Seven Years' War to escort her convoy of merchant ships in the Baltic and North Sea. However, the Adler was never put into action, since Lübeck had already entered peace negotiations with Sweden at the time of the ship's completion. After the Treaty of Stettin (1570), the Große Adler was converted into a freighter for trade with the Iberian Peninsula. The ship was dismantled in 1588 after twenty years of service.

Specifications

Displacement: 2-3,000 tons
Length: 78.30m
Beam: 14.50m
Draft: 5.30m
Sails: 1,793.53 m²
Armament:
138 Bronze guns
8 × 48 pounders
6 × 24 pounders
26 × 10 pounders
4 × 5 pounders
8 × 3 pounders
Iron guns:
10 × 6 pounders
40 × 1½ pounders
36 × varying caliber

The Build…

The model was built by me in the 1980's from the well known Graupner kit and planked with veneer.

I built one like that, though a pre-German ship, the Adler von Lübeck (Eagle of Lübeck), a GRAUPNER multi-media kit (still) for sale in the late 1970's, now no longer produced- you see it on E-Bay once in a while though...

The model constructed out of the kit was slightly altered during the building process. Her hull was shaped somewhat fuller to make it a better gun platform and truer to the original ship. In doing this she would have been a slower sailor and less maneuverable. Secondly I planked her hull with small strips of veneer, cut to size. Her artillery was slightly differently arranged to suit her rigging, fuller hull, and better reflect her original layout.

All in all, keeping the above in mind, I think she is a presentable replica of the original ship, based on the kit supplied by Graupner and its partly-used fitting set. I tried to depict the ship at anchor in Northern European waters with a strong wind blowing through her rigging and an Admiral's pendant fluttering from her main mast.