Queen Gertrude II

So this is for club's monthly draw off. This month's theme was steam punk, and I just love steam punk so i had to draw something. I had small thumb nail designs of a steam airship I wanted to draw for a time now but never had the time to make a proper drawing. Here is my airship with complete history and all. It's late and i;m tired so I didn't have time and power to write down all the history I wanted and there might be some grammatical mistakes so excuse me for that. Anyways if anyone reads the whole description please tell me what you think and not only of the drawing.

And as always crits and comments are welcome.




Queen Gertrude II

The year is 1896. A long steam cloud approaches Big Ben from the direction of Cologne. Everyone watches in awe as the huge iron airship arrives in the capital of the Royal Prussian Kingdom.
After the short lived but successful Queen Gertrude the Royal Prussian Empire immediately had the Queen Gertrude II developed. Queen Victoria poured all of the Royal Empires funds into the war machine after the “French wars” to keep the citizen on Britain and Prussia safe. After Great Britain and Prussia united its forces many other European countries tried to attack the Empire to force a split, reducing it’s power. The “French wars” were quick over thanks to the infamous Queen Gertrude bombing balloon. But the Queen wanted something bigger, stronger and faster.
This time Rüdiger Hoffman took over the project from Ferdinand Graf von Zeppelin his old friend. Rüdiger Hoffman traveled the world and learned under Edison and Tesla as well before he returned to Prussia late 1880’s. He took several of Tesla’s and Edison’s ideas and built this beautiful piece of engineering. Using the revolutionary steam engines of Gustav von Stadtberger, Hoffman combined a Zeppelin design with some highly unorthodox electric power theories of Tesla, and built a two horse race track long floating gunship. The Zeppelin balloon is not enough to lift the huge contraption only to keep it steady. All the movement is done by the Stadtberger steam engines. Steering is handled by the massive rudder at the stern of the airship. The ship is equipped with 13 royal Anderson B3 guns located all over the bow, starboard and port side of the airship. Captains quarters and bombing bay is all located on the bottom on the ship for a better battlefield oversight. The bottom is steel plated to ensure a better defense of the air balloon the is located on the lower half of the hull.
During his travels in the Americas Hoffman encountered a young man and his brother with the name of Wright, they had some very interesting flying machine prototypes that didn’t quite work yet. Taking the yanks lately fast paced evolution into calculations Hoffman installed two state of the art steam powered Krieghoff Mark V gatling guns.
The biggest gun and the most revolutionary gadget on the ship is the Tesla inspired lightning gun. During storms the ship gathers raw lightnings with the ten stories high lightning rod installed on the bow of the ship. Then the lightning is transferred and stored in one of the six electric capacitor modules. At the time of need the huge lightning wave velocity enhancer gun fires one of these charges of capable of leveling a whole castle.
Many steam researchers believe these methods to be highly unorthodox, flagging the use of electric power as the tool of the devil, and are warning the the use of such science bring the end of the world, but the young scientists agree the a new age might dawn, and steam will soon have a contender in the power business.