Thanks powder monkey, I have just sprayed the primer and am waiting to see how that “tacks” onto the hull.
If it looks ok, I could well be putting some colour down on it by the weekend.
I’ve had good luck paiinting the whole stern piece black first, then dry brushing yellow to bring out the balisters and window frames.
I understand that RN had no standard yellow color at the time of trafalgar. It’s dockyards would have used cheap yellow paints of a variety of tints and dullness. Rich captains and Admirals improve the apperence of their ships with privately purchased high quality bright yellow paint. But neither Captain Hardy, Victory’s skipper at the time of trafalgar, nor Nelson, was rich. So victory probably would have been painted with a mixture of dull, cheap yellow paints.
I thought a 3:1 mixture of flat yellow and yellow-green produced a result that looks like a surface freshly painted with cheap yellow paint.
BTW, Heller kit has two significant errors in the hull:
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It omitted the very conspicuous middle deck entry ports. It’s hard to understand why Heller made this mistake.
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On the real Victory, the entire upper deck is armed with long 12 pdrs, only the quarter deck is armed with short 12 pdrs. There is also a pair of intermediate length 12 pdrs on the forc’stle. Heller had the rear thrid of the upper deck armed with short 12 pdrs, and omitted the forc’stle 12 pdrs altogether.
Some minor errors in the rigging:
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Dolphin striker (The thing projecting down below the bowsprit cap) on the real Victory is made from a wooden pole with round cross section. The model seem to imply it was made from a flat piece of iron.
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fore and main top gallant masts on the real victory has a second roll of slots for royal yards. Heller’s model omits there. So in the configuration depicted by Heller, Victory would not be able to cross royal yards and spread Royal sails.
We’ve taken up the question of the *Victory’*s entry ports a couple of times before. The bottom line is that, though the evidence so far is inconclusive, Heller may well have been right to leave them off.
Quite a few paintings of the Victory date from the Trafalgar period. (We have to be careful when consulting paintings of her; she had a long career and got modified many times.) The recent book by Allan McGowen and John McKay, H.M.S. Victory: Construction, Restoration and Repair (I may have garbled the title a little) contains several excellent reproductions of such pictures. Not one of them shows the entry ports.
The most persuasive piece of evidence may be the enormous oil painting, “The Battle of Trafalgar,” by J.M.W. Turner. It was commissioned not long after the battle by the Prince Regent (the future George IV), and now hangs in the National Maritime Museum at Greenwich. The Victory is the centerpiece of the picture; if I remember right, she stands at least six feet tall in it. Turner is known to have gone on board the ship shortly after the battle to make sketches for the painting. (One of those sketches is in the McGowen-McKay book.) He shows the steps on the side of the hull exactly the way Heller does.
The Turner painting is pretty convincing, but not absolutely decisive. Turner was a great artist, but his knowledge of ship construction was sometimes a little hazy. He apparently worked on that painting for a long time; if I remember correctly he didn’t finish it till sometime in the 1820s. It’s entirely possible that he unwittingly included some features of her that weren’t there at the time of the battle.
The National Maritime Museum has two contemporary models of the Victory. One of them represents her “as built,” 1765 configuration. It does have entry ports - but in many other ways doesn’t look anything like the ship looks now. The other model seems to have been intended to show what she looked like after her 1802 refit (i.e., just about how she looked at Trafalgar). That model doesn’t have entry ports - and is enough to make a ship modeler throw up his hands and give up. All sorts of features of that model differ from the real ship (and every published set of plans, and every commercial kit - including the Heller one). The structure of the bow is different, the decorations on the transom are different, much of the deck furniture is different (there’s no belfry, if I remember right), and the stripes on the sides are white instead of yellow. The number of gunports in the quarterdeck bulwarks is also different - and, just to provide food for thought, agrees beautifully with the Turner sketch. (That sketch is itself rather disquieting. It shows a different form of railing at the break of the poop deck - and the railing has a couple of swivel guns mounted on it.)
One other conspicuous feature of that newer model: the bulwarks around the forecastle deck are shoulder-high (rather than knee-high, as the real ship’s - and the Heller kit’s - are today). There’s room for argument about that one too, but I’m inclined to think the NMM model is right. Back in the 1920s, when the ship was undergoing one of her first historical restorations, a fine scholar named R.W. Bugler did a thorough search of the records and concluded that the forecastle bulwarks had been raised during the 1802 refit. Unfortunately, by the time his book came out the carpenters had torn the bulwarks down and rebuilt them in their present configuration. Dr. R.C. Anderson, who was in charge of the work, acknowledged the mistake; he was (understandably) reluctant to tear apart the skilled work that the carpenters had just completed.
I think Chuck Fan is right about the armament - but that’s a matter of some question too. Some sources give her 104 guns at the time of Trafalgar; some give her 102. Some put a couple of long guns on the forecastle deck beside the carronades, firing through ports in the tall bulwarks. And, of course, if the entry ports are omitted there are two additional gunports on the middle gundeck.
The omission of the royal yards isn’t exactly an error. In 1805 the royal was in the process of being established as a permanent element of the sail plan. Rigging practices varied from ship to ship, but at that time the sail was often referred to as a “topgallant royal” and was “set flying.” The sail and its yard were lowered and stowed (often by being lashed inside the topmast shrouds) whenever they weren’t set. Setting the topgallant royal entailed rigging the halyard, braces, and sheets and hauling the yard up to the topgallant masthead. In a ship the size of the Victory that would be quite a job - which probably is why, within a few years, warships in general adopted the practice of mounting their royal yards permanently.
To my mind the most bewildering thing about the Heller Victory kit has always been the absence of any means of fastening the other yards to the masts. There are no parrels for the topsail or topgallant yards, and the rigging diagrams show no trusses for the lower yards. Apparently the yards are just supposed to hang there. That’s utterly ridiculous. It would have been perfectly practicable to make a set of parrels out of plastic - and that would have been a much better use of plastic and ingenuity than those idiotic “looms” for making ratlines and hammock nettings. Sorry; getting up on the soapbox again.
As I understand it, the people in charge of the real Victory are in the midst of an extremely high-powered research project, the objective of which is to determine once and for all what she looked like on October 21, 1805. My hunch is that their ultimate answer to that question will be, “well…we really aren’t sure.” They’ve come to some interesting conclusions already, though. They’ve established fairly firmly, for instance, that Nelson didn’t die on the spot where the “here Nelson died” marker is - and they seem to be leaning toward the conclusion that the forecastle bulwarks were indeed shoulder-high. But to my knowledge they haven’t said anything about the entry ports. I’ll be watching the press with great interest to see what the final conclusions of that research project are.
Mr. Tilley said:
Yay! I’ve been wondering why most depictions of the Victory show only three sails per mast, yet stories (both real and fictional) have captains setting “royals and courses” all the time.
Thanks for solving that little mystery.
Regards,
Mr. Tilley:
Is there any consensus regarding whether the Victory had bulwurks around her poop deck? I read that she shipped 32 pdr carranades on her poop after the 1802 refit, and those were removed in the middle of 1805. Surely if she had carranades there, there would have been some kind of bulwark to protect the crew?
Regards
Chuck Fan - None of the drawings I’ve seen shows a bulwark around the poop deck. That does not, however, necessarily mean there was none.
My recollection (which is pretty unreliable) is that the 1802 model in the NMM showed a simple, rather heavy rail on each side of the poop. I don’t think that model has guns. None of the drawings or paintings I’ve seen shows guns on the poop - except those swivels in Turner’s watercolor sketch. Again, none of this is decisive evidence. It may be, though, that the poop simply wasn’t big enough, or its beams sturdyy enough, to support carriage guns or carronades. People who visit the Victory (including me) are often surprised at how small she seems. Four carronades, with all the associated gear, would leave little room on that poop deck for anything else.
If (heaven forbid) I were building a model of the Victory in her 1805 configuration - and for some reason had to finish it in a hurry - I probably would start with the Heller kit, raise the forecastle bulwarks, and add the swivels on the poop rail. I’d leave the steps on the sides as they are. But I’d be far more comfortable if I could wait until Peter Goodwin and his associates publish all the results of their research project. I suspect it will reveal some surprising and interesting details.
Incidentally, the most accurate depiction of the Victory in her 1805 configuration may well be a kit that doesn’t get much attention: the 1/700 cast white metal one from Skytrex. It is, to my knowledge, the only one that has the raised forecastle bulwarks. It’s in my “to be built” stack. The hull is a really remarkable casting, but painting it will be quite a challenge - to say nothing of the rigging.
Just watched the History Channel show about the Victory. In general I thought it was reasonably good, but I was disappointed that it only included a couple of minutes’ worth of footage of the actual ship. Most of the program consisted of computer graphics (decent, with a few glitches) and stock footage of those awful models from the “Horatio Hornblower” series. I probably shouldn’t complain though. TV documentaries on historical subjects are a great deal better these days than they used to be.
As an aside. Turners " The fighting Temeraire" has just been voted the greatest painting in Britains galleries in a survey.
Interesting. I’m an utter ignoramus when it comes to art, but I’ve always had reservations about that painting. Deliberately or otherwise, Turner made the old ship-of-the-line’s masts and yards way too short - far out of proportion to the hull. It seems to me that the distortion has the effect of downplaying what I took to be the basic message of the picture. But I’m no art critic.
JT, my copy of “C. Nepean Longridge, The Anatomy of Nelson’s Ships”
Oh my! this is more of a barrel than a can of worms! I need to draw a line in the sand, the more info I get, the further away from completion I get. What a stunning book for details, especially the rigging! thanks for a first rate recommendation
Well I’ve got the hull copper and yellow laid down again!
The flash makes the yellow look a bit brighter than it actually is.
Much happier with the result, though I still have to lay the flat black down which is where it went wrong last time, I have a better plan so hopefully I won’t be stripping it down again[BH]
Before you start working on the black paint, take a careful look at some photos of the ship - and a really careful look at the hull moldings.
The stripes on the *Victory’*s hull sides are subtle things. The tops and bottoms of them follow their own graceful, independent curves. The stripes taper in width slightly but noticeably toward the bow and stern. They don’t run parallel to the gunports, or to the decks. All this is discussed on the ship’s website ( www.hms-victory.com/index.php?option=content&task=view&id=41&Itemid=44 ).
I don’t know just how the people responsible for the real ship determined where to paint those stripes - but I think I know why. It was to compensate for an optical illusion that would take place if the stripes were of constant width.
Fortunately, the Heller designers understood this. (In some ways those folks didn’t quite understand prototype shipbuilding, but they sure understood aesthetics.) One of the things I noticed on the review sample of the Heller Victory that I was sent years ago was that the boundaries of the stripes were indicated - quite accurately, I think - by extremely fine raised lines on the hull halves. Follow those raised lines and everything should work out great.
Unfortunately those wretched English-language “instructions” don’t clarify this point. Just about every finished Heller Victory I’ve ever encountered has the stripes in the wrong places. Most modelers seem to assume the stripes run parallel to the tops and bottoms of the gunports. The discrepancy is small - probably no more than 3/16" or so - but once you get sensitized to it, it’s pretty obvious.
Hope this helps.
Thanks JT, I actually had figured that one out the first time round, that’s what caused the paint cock up in the first place, because of the line that it takes, it crosses some of the most horrible areas to try and mask! my intention this time is to use the tape but then use liquid mask at the worst places, like the ornamental areas above the gun ports(I guess they were rain gaurds?)
The other issue is that this kit has wood grain nicely molded into it, masks getting a nice line harder, again, my tactic this time is to a use a slightly thicker paint mix and spray at no less then about 100o to the tape, so I don’t spray paint under the edge.
We’ll know by next weekend if it works, or if this kit will have a sacrificial burning!
Well, the starboard side is sprayed[V]
At this point in time, I’m not sure what my next move is, the liquid mask is crap! anything with a texture and it sticks better than CA! It’s left me with quite alot of clean up to do, and some touch up of the flat yellow, which will look sh!t brushed over the sprayed finish![:(!]
Overall finish is alot better than before I think, but there is still not that razor sharp line I was looking for, there is so much surface detail on this son of
B!#$@ that the paint still creeps a little in places. It’s worst up around the bow area, and will need much “fettling”
I’ll leave it a few days to calm down, but if I don’t feel any different, I may just sling it.
[xx(]
Just a couple of points about the copper sheath.
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The very stem of the ship, the cutwater, is actually plated with much larger lead sheets in a vertical roll. Heller did not represent this. I cut a strip of aluminum foil to represent this.
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The very top of the copper sheath is battened down with a roll of wood strips about 5-6 inches high and 2 inch thick. This roll runs the length of the ship from rudder post to the stem. Heller also missed this. I used 1mm X 0.5mm evergreen styrene strip to reproduce this.
mere details,lol
Given the effort that is going into just getting the damm thing to not look like it fell into the paint, I may just not bother with “scale” extras, at this point in time I may just not bother at all!
Man-you guys post at some length! David-liquid mask is crap-plus it ruins brushes. A high quality brush is better for touch-up. Plus masking tape is best trimmed to produce a sharp edge-the factory edge gets bashed about and wasn’t too sharp to begin with. I use a straight-edge and X-acto to get a nice clean edge. It’s laborious but worth it.
David,
Take it easy on yourself, man! I think it looks pretty good. Sure there’s a little bit of touch-up needed, but nothing really bad.
Moreover, I like the colors.
Please keep us posted.
Regards,
Thanks Lufbury, new day fresh eyes, I’m still upset at the finish (i’ll get some better pics today) but yes, it is workable. I’ll just have this side facing the wall[;)]
The biggest problem is with the liquid mask, it really is crap on this kinda surface, it lifted the yellow off in places and just stuck like glue in others.
I have some other “stuff” that I’ll give a try too, it worked ok on scrap, though it was never intended for this use.
I’ll have the other side done this week sometime. I have to get a move on, the idea is to have the main part of the hull/superstructure done before the little one arrives in Dec[^]
David-Realize that a little brush touch-up and a little inadvertant glue all disappear in the final clear coat.