Napoleon's model ship on display at Maritime Museum
A €5 million antique model ship once belonging to Napoleon Bonaparte has arrived safely at the Estonian Maritime Museum (Meremuuseum) and will be the centerpiece of a new exhibition.
The model originally belonged to Napoleon Bonaparte no less, and forms the centerpiece of an exhibition titled ""Kuulsad mereretked. Eurooplaste maailmapildi avardumine" ("Famous sea voyages: The expansion of Europeans' worldview").
The over 200-year-old model was crafted for Napoleon, to be displayed at the Palace of Versailles.
It is valued at about €5 million, "Ringvaade" reported.
Exhibition curator Feliks Gornischeff told "Ringvaade" it had taken two days for the model to arrive in Estonia, from France.
It was transported by both sea, fittingly enough, and over land and "is packed in such a way there is a box is inside a box: When there is any sort of vibration, the boxes' construction absorbs it, and it is highly secured."
Conservator Marianne Tricoire of France's National Marine Museum (Musée national de la Marine) in Paris had also made the journey and was there at the maritime museum, situated in the seaplane harbor, for its unwrapping.
"It was made at the beginning of the 19th century by the workshop of the national maritime museum, so it is a very old workshop, and it's very famous and precious also because it was wanted by Napoleon I to be installed in the galleries of the Grand Trianon in Versailles," Tricoire told "Ringvaade."
"So the ship models were like a tool for the diplomatic politics of Napoleon, and it's also very special because it is made with some very precious materials like ebony and mahogany, and ivory also, which was not really used in ship models at this time, and soon we can see; you can see with the cameras, that if you look closely, there is like really fine hand-carved details that are really very precious," she went on.
Once the ship was taken out of its packaging, it was inspected. "Everything sounds great; what we need to do right now is to do a condition report, it's like to check that everything is ok, that there is not breakage or damage on the boat," Tricoire added.
Next, it had to be cautiously lifted on to an inspection table, by two strong but careful pairs of hands.
"It is one of the most difficult aspects because as you can see it is very hard to take, and all the little ropes you can see here are very thin and very fragile, and they can break just like that, so if there are changes of hydrometry –the rate of water in the air – the wood can move, and this is what can break the object. For example, in the deck you can see that some little part of the wood is not really glued together," Tricoire said.
Gornischeff noted that ship models of the time were made to scale and using original ship plans, though the fate of the real vessel on which the model – a three-masted frigate-type affair – was based is unknown.
"At that time, ships' models were made according to the vessel's original plans, meaning the ship's drawings were taken and the dimensions were scaled down," he said.
The exhibition is dedicated to the life and times of Baltic-German navigator and cartographer Adam Johann von Krusenstern.
He created an atlas of the Pacific Ocean – in fact the exhibition marks the bicentennial of that feat.
Gornischeff said von Krusenstern "collated the results of explorations by the French, British, and other Europeans."
"This particular ship illustrates the voyages of French explorers, who Krusenstern himself was in direct correspondence with," he went on.
The exhibition opened Saturday, at the Seaplane Harbor Museum (Lennusadam), which forms part of the national maritime museum and is located at Vesilennuki 6.
The original "Ringvaade" segment is below.
Admiral Adam Johann von Krusenstern (1770-1846) led the first circumnavigation of the Earth to be undertaken by an Imperial Russian expedition, in 1803-1806. He was born in Hagudi, Rapla County, and died in Kiltsi (then known as Gilsenhof), Lääne-Viru County.
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Editor: Andrew Whyte, Rasmus Kuningas
Source: 'Ringvaade,' presenter Kaidor Kahar.