[Sca-cooks] my summer project - Spanish Galleon

[Joyce]

Greetings all,
For Fall Investiture (crowning the Prince and Princess) we're doing an 
Elizabethan feast. I thought I'd take advantage of this (we don't do late 
period often) to do a subtlety (or Warner - I'm not clear on the 
distinction yet) of a shipwrecked Spanish Galleon.
I'm considering doing a molded construction, rather than building the ship 
- my son has a large lego-like boat  that I could use for creating said 
mold.  I was considering using bisket for the ship.  Is that a good idea, 
or is there a better choice?
I'm using rock sugar for the reefs. I'm looking for a cookie recipe to 
create sacks of spices, and I thought I'd use candied fruit for 
'jewels'.  I am going to use chocolate coins, but I'm trying to keep the 
rest of it as period as I can.  I'd thought of using spun (caramelized) 
sugar for the rigging, and wet sugar paste for the sails.  I'm also 
planning on making barnacles and shells out of butter and sugar creamed 
together.
I'm building the whole thing on a blue platter that has fish embossed 
around the edges, to act as the ocean.
It's kind of an ornate project, but I have all summer to get my act 
together. Does anyone have opinions? ideas about what I've got so far? What 
could I do better?

I'm trying not to use marzipan or nuts, because we may have people with nut 
allergies, although I could put the things with nuts in them in the front 
half of the ship, and leave the other half nut-free, if that's far enough 
away.
Thanks for any advice/help,
Gianetta