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The ''Unicorn'' ((フランス語:La Licorne)) is a fictional 17th-century three-masted armed Royal Navy vessel appearing in ''The Adventures of Tintin'', the comics series by Belgian cartoonist Hergé. The ship plays a leading role in both ''The Secret of the Unicorn'' and ''Red Rackham's Treasure'', published in 1943 and 1944, respectively. The ''Unicorn'' also appears in the 2011 film adaptation ''The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn''. In the ''Tintin'' adventures, the ''Unicorn'' is the setting of a battle between pirates and sailors followed by a duel between Sir Francis Haddock (an ancestor of Captain Haddock) and the pirate Red Rackham. The ''Unicorn'' is scuttled and sinks, only to be discovered years later by Tintin and his friends in an attempt to locate Red Rackham's treasure. ==Creation== The ''Unicorn'' was inspired by ''フランス語:Le Brillant'', built in 1690 at Le Havre, France by the shipwright Salicon and then decorated by the designer Jean Bérain the Elder. In 1942, Hergé had decided that his latest ''Tintin'' adventure, ''The Secret of the Unicorn'' (1943), should depict images of his fictional ''Unicorn'' as detailed precision drawings. He used the services of his friend and local model ship maker Gérard Liger-Belair, son of a former naval officer and who owned a shop in Brussels that specialised in model ships, to find an appropriate historical vessel that he could customize to meet his historical needs. Liger-Belair's research produced three possibilities: A British frigate, a Dutch merchant vessel, and a French battleship. As Hergé preferred the battleship, Liger-Belair continued to research and discovered a historic document titled ''フランス語:Architectura Navalis'', which contained detailed drawings of French battleships. One in particular was from 1690, in the navy of Louis XIV of France: a fourth rank battleship with 56 cannons: ''フランス語:Le Brillant''. Liger-Belair soon completed a plan on a 1:100 scale followed by an extremely precise model. Hergé consulted the archives at the National Museum of Natural History and the then recently published ''フランス語:L'Art et le Mer'' ("''Art and the Sea''") by Alexandre Berqueman. He also studied other vessels from the period, such as the ''フランス語:Le Soleil Royal'', ''フランス語:La Couronne'', ''フランス語:La Royale'' and ''フランス語:Le Reale de France'' to better understand 17th-century ship design. It was from the ''Le Reale de France'' that he gained a basis for his design of the ''Unicorn'' jolly boat. He adopted the fictional ship's unicorn figurehead from a British frigate which had been built in 1745. When Liger-Belair's model was complete, Hergé realised it into the panels of his comics, regularly showing his renditions to Liger-Belair to ensure he was depicting the vessel with no technical errors. In its finished appearance in the book, the ''Unicorn'' is a ship of the third rank, a vessel with three-masts and 50 guns, more than 40metres long and 11metres wide. After publication of ''The Secret of the Unicorn'', Hergé's Dutch publisher Carlsen Verlag gave him an antique model of a 17th-century Danish ship called the ' (''Unicorn''). Until that moment, Hergé had no idea that a ship with that name, complete with unicorn figurehead, had ever actually existed. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Unicorn (ship)」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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