Update: 12/13/2025
Below are renders of Admiral Duperre in her 1887 configuration
Had a long ChatGPT yesterday about my Duperre Blender model. Seems there were some historical abnormalities. I figured there were a few… it’s why I contacted the all knowing Oracle for a sanity check. Turns out that when Duperre had the Charles Martel type fighting tops she also had the fugly anti-torpedo netting. Except for the late 1890’s by which time she had lost her bow sprit, and status as a front-line battleship. I’m typically not a crazy stickler for historic accuracy, but I really like this model and want her to be reasonably accurate.
When in doubt
Kind of left me with two acceptable options. Make all the changes to get her into her 1892 refit configuration (except for the nets, which I cannot abide). Or do her up as close to her 1887 refit as possible, making her more or less a copy of the Paris Naval Museum’s Duperre. So naturally I went with both, at least in Blender. Not sure yet which I’ll ultimately print/build (leaning towards 1887) but for now I’m tweaking her for both states.
Except for the lack of anti-torpedo hardware, the pictures below are pretty close to Duperre’s post 1892 refit look.
Original Post: Dec. 7, 2025
French battleship Admiral Duperre 1891, Blender renders
One thing that absolutely needs to be addressed up front and for the record (and for Google’s search engine…) I am totally aware that this ship’s official French name is: Amiral Duperré, But Admiral Duperre is a tad easier on my English speaking target audience and how the heck do you even type: é?
OK, back to business.
The Blender design work is complete (edit: yeah right...) on my French ironclad Admiral Duperre. She still needs to be parted up for printing but that must wait until I decide on the make of my new resin printer. I’ll be scaling her to 1/200 for printing and when built, she should pair nicely with my 1/200 Charles Martel.
She took about 3 months to complete which is a huge improvement on Martel’s Blender work of nearly a year. Wish I could say there was less guess work on Duperre’s design then with Martel’s but that would be a lie. If it weren’t for the handful of excellent pictures taken of the builder’s model on display in the Paris Musée de la Marine, I wouldn’t have chosen Duperre as my next major Blender project. Those photos filled in a lot of blanks. The biggest problem with them being she’s depicted after her 1887 refit, and I was looking to model Duperre circa 1891, before she lost her main mast, bow sprit and was fitted with anti torpedo netting but after she received her fighting tops and simplified bow sprit… (edit: should have passed these assumptions by ChatGPT first)
There are a handful of reasonably good photo’s of Duperre, but few during the desired period. It’s extremely difficult to know when changes occurred when looking at earlier or latter photos, though if you see enough pictures you start to see patterns and make assumptions, but it’s easy to get it wrong. Speaking of getting things wrong. I know the paint scheme used on the Paris model isn’t 100% correct and was used to highlight her armor layout, and it’s even less accurate for Duperre circa 1891, but it’s available in color, looks crazy cool and is probably the most widely know paint scheme for her.
Anyway, plenty of time for me to tweak things, it’s going to be a while before the temperatures in my printing shed allow me to resin print again. so I’ve got a few months before I can start this build. In the meantime I’ve already started on an even earlier French ironclad: Redoubtable. I really do love me a tumble home hull. I’m guessing I’ll be posting design updates on Redoubtable long before Duperre sees any more progress.