I'm pretty far removed from being a professional photographer - I sometimes need to be told which button to push, but I hope images like this prove useful. When you consider this model, with all of its breathtaking features is in excess of 300 years old, it staggers the mind to consider how this level of detail and craftsmanship had been achieved.
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While the image appears a bit 'milky' due to difficulty in photographing images behind glass, you can still clearly see the exquisite detail of the twisted brass supports of the stern lanterns, as well as the complexity of construction of the lanterns themselves. Of particular interest is the red, or reddish appearance of the interior base of the lantern - a detail I haven't seen elsewhere. There are other unique and fascinating details of this model - stay tuned!
One of the benefits to being a ship model and nautical history enthusiast while at the same time a professional cartoonist, is that some of the software, in this case Photoshop, can provide some exciting possibilities. One that I've found is the ability to take high resolution images, capture just the area I'm interested in and zoom in without losing much in the way of clarity. Here's a close-up of the 100 gun Royal William of 1719, port side stern. Note the checkerboard deck of the stern galleries, the craftsmanship of the gold-gilt stern carvings, and the over-all precision with which this incredible work of art was built. More, much more to follow.
I don't know why I hadn't thought of this earlier - likely too many blows to the head in my 20+ years of military service, but Mead calendars has produced a wall calendar of my cartoons featuring a ship modeling cartoon on the cover - one that they actually picked out over all the others. If you'd like a cartoon calendar (the other cartoons in the interior are not ship modeling-related, but hopefully provide a laugh or two nonetheless, they can be purchased through Amazon via THIS LINK. One of the reasons why John and I make such a great ship modeling team is that he's a trained engineer and can figure out complex building challenges which makes the process and outcomes far better. I'm a passionate researcher and love to immerse myself in Captain's and Master's logs dating back 300 or more years, trying to decipher the lingo, hand-writing and sometimes shorthand used at the time. From it, I can pull out details of the ship's appearance, descriptions of all sorts to help define what she might have looked like. Between overseas deployments in the military, I'd purchased the Captain's, and later the Master's logs for the 70 gun Elizabeth of 1706, and ended up with a 200 page PDF once I finished transcribing it. I'm well into the Master's logs, and to a nautical history fanatic such as myself, it's a page turner. One of my favorite resources to turn to for everything from finding out what a captain's cabin might have looked like in the early eighteenth century, to deck details, to paintings of figures that played prominently in the life of the ship, such as Sir Cloudesley Shovell in the life of the Elizabeth. Even the plans of the Elizabeth and ships similar to her are available in the plans section as well as collections in fine art and models. There's so much available at your fingertips, and much of it entirely free, that one could easily spend hours, days, and weeks discovering implements of the ship and era they're interested in. Everything from spyglasses, navigational instruments, how an officer may have dressed, to figureheads, yard vessels, and even the shipyards themselves. I highly recommend clicking on the links (in green lettering) and explore. For those of us with an unbridled passion for nautical history, I assure you, you won't be disappointed! My good friend and mentor John Hatch and I are well along on our current project, the hoy, "Lyon" of 1709. John and I had been perusing the plans and drawings of yard and service craft in a series of articles found on the Nautical Research Journal CD set when we came across the "Lyon" and thought that would make a fun project. It's also been a challenging one as we had decided to build it using the traditional Admiralty model style of framing rather than the doubled or sistered frames we'd worked with previously. The Admiralty style we settled on for the framing was one we'd spent a good deal of time researching. Each frame would be composed of a floor, four futtocks, and two top timbers. It was my first adventure in drafting and lofting frames, researching such things as the overlap of floor and futtock, then of futtock and top timber, where the floors were to end, would we use frames square to the keel in the bow or would we cant the frames - all these decisions had to be supported with research and decided upon. There's lots more about this project (John has done nearly all the construction work on this one, my role has been construction of the keel, cutwater and sternpost, then research and drafting) and she is really not far from completion. We'll keep you posted! Here's the "Lyon" as she looked about a month ago. This has been a fun project and we've learned a lot. She's not perfect, but it's served as an effective learning tool and in the end, she's going to make a handsome model. Stay tuned for more! A brief video on the little known but endlessly fascinating ship model program of the United States Navy.
Don Preul, an expert on the HHR collection of ship models, prisoner of war models, and one of the most talented model builders I'm aware of, discussing these fascinating pieces of history.
Here's Mr. Grant Walker discussing the model.
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AuthorBill Abbott is a professional cartoonist, retired Navy SWCC, and is a passionate reader of Naval and maritime history. Archives
May 2014
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