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Étoile du Roy

1997 replica fifth-rate frigate

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionFeb 25, 2026
Entity authorityQ290621 ↗
Source-derived summary

Étoile du Roy (English: "King's Star"), formerly Grand Turk, is a tall ship launched in 1997. Designed to represent a generic European warship during the Age of Sail, her design was modelled after HMS Blandford, a sixth-rate frigate of the Royal Navy. The ship was built in Marmaris, Turkey between 1996 and 1997 to provide a replica of a British frigate for the production of the ITV Network series Hornblower. In 2010, the French company Étoile Marine Croisières, based in Saint-Malo, purchased the ship and renamed her Étoile du Roy. Having been featured in several films or television series, she is currently used mainly in sailing events, for corporate or private charter, and for receptions in her spacious saloon or on her deck.

Construction and design

The model for the replica was the HMS Blandford, a sixth-rate frigate of the Royal Navy designed by Michael Turk of Turks Shipyard Ltd. of Chatham, Kent, which was established in 1710. The modern replica was constructed of iroko planking over laminated mahogany frames. She has an overall length of 152 ft (46 m), and is 97 ft (30 m) at the waterline, with a beam of 34 ft (10 m) and a draught of 10 ft (3.0 m). The frigate is square-rigged on three masts with a sail area of 8,500 sq ft (790 m2), and has two 400 hp (298 kW) Kelvin TAS8 diesel engines, and a 60 hp (45 kW) bow thruster, as well as four AC generators for electrical power.

Editorial summary

Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Étoile du Roy” is 1997 replica fifth-rate frigate. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Étoile, replica and fifth-rate, not as a finished interpretation.

Editorial reviewA practical starting point whose main value is the path it opens into stronger specialist and primary sources. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1997, 1996, 2010, 1710—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. For this dossier, Étoile, replica and fifth-rate is the immediate research focus.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The phrase “1997 replica fifth-rate frigate” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.

Evidence profile

Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Feb 25, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q290621. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1997, 1996, 2010 and 1710.

Critical limits

The absence of detail may reflect summary conventions rather than a lack of surviving documentation. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.

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Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Étoile du Roy”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Étoile du Roy primary sources, Étoile du Roy archive and Étoile research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Étoile du Roy” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.