William Rex

Type

Ship of the Line

Period

17th Century

Nation

Netherlands

Overview: William Rex is the traditional name given to an extraordinarily large and detailed contemporary ship model built in 1698 at the Vlissingen (Flushing) naval dockyard, now the centerpiece of the Rijksmuseum's Navy Model Room in Amsterdam. It is not the name of an actual sailing warship; the model, credited to Adriaen de Vriend and Cornelis Moesman, depicts a generic Dutch 74-gun ship of the line of the late 17th century and has been known by this name only since the 19th century. Specifications: The model represents a three-decked, 74-gun ship of the line at an estimated scale of 1:12 or 1:13, so the full-size vessel it depicts would have been roughly twelve times larger. The estimated scale is 1:12 or 1:13. It is built from wood, brass, iron, glass, rope and textile, fully rigged with a complete set of masts, sails, anchors and pulleys, and features a low beakhead with a lion wearing an English crown as figurehead, a flat transom, hollow counter, and a richly carved two-tiered stern bearing the arms of Zeeland and the monograms RWR. Provenance/History: The model was displayed in the council chamber of the Admiralty of Zeeland in Middelburg. Jochem Pietersz Asmus (1755-1837) found the model in a poor condition in 1796 and was just in time to prevent its sale, having it restored and then shipped to Amsterdam in 1798. In 1825 the ship model was transferred to the Koninklijk Kabinet van Zeldzaamheden in The Hague, where it was exhibited as a show model adorned with a great number of flags, before being returned to the Navy Model Room due to lack of space in 1858. Notable Facts: From the nineteenth century onwards, the model is called William Rex, referring to the four monograms on the stern because as far as can be established it cannot be conclusively identified with an existing ship of the line; one possibility is that it loosely represents the 94-gun Koning William of the Admiralty of Zeeland. Although it shares many similarities, it does lack twenty guns to match Koning William's armament. The model has been the subject of a dedicated scholarly monograph, Ab Hoving's "William Rex: A Model of a 17th-Century Warship" (Zwolle/Amsterdam, 2005), a key modeler's reference for late-17th-century Dutch ship-of-the-line construction, rigging and decoration.