warshipguy
I think I remember some very adverse comments about the Corel kit of a British frigate named HMS Unicorn. Can anyone enlighten me? I have access to the real ship's log but have no real knowledge of the accuracy of the kit, other than the typical HECEPOB comments.
Thanks!
Bill Morrison
Well, the earlier very adverse comments may well have been the ones I wrote, way back in 2004. I have no reason to change them; here they are:
"Regarding the Corel Unicorn - I'm afraid this isn't going to be pleasant....
"I'm going to try to keep my personal opinions out of this and stick to facts - and to what I believe are widespread opinions among experienced ship modelers. I feel obliged to emphasize that I've never built, or even closely examined, a Corel kit. I'm sure some of the company's products are better than others, and I have no idea where the Unicorn stacks up in comparison. I'm basing my comments on the ad for the kit at the Model Expo website (which includes a color photo and a written description) and two books that I happen to have at hand: F.H. Chapman's Architectura Navalis Mercatoria (which contains plans of the Unicorn) and The Line of Battle: The Sailing Warship, 1650-1840, a volume in the series Conway's History of the Ship. I think these sources are enough to make the basic points.
"It's hard to tell, of course, how much of what appears in the ModelExpo ad can be attributed to the manufacturer, the builder of the model, and/or the dealer. But the following things jump out.
"1. The ad's assertion that the Unicorn was "designed in 1700 by F.H. Chapman, Britain's foremost naval architect," is ridiculous. Chapman was born in 1721, and the Unicorn was launched in 1747. Chapman did spend some of his younger years in England as a ship's carpenter, but he was a Swede, and there's no evidence that he ever designed a ship for the British Navy. In 1747 he was running a merchant shipyard in Stockholm. His book contains beautiful drawings of lots of vessels, some of them his own designs but many of them not. There's a good, though not detailed, drawing of the Unicorn among them. Chapman describes her as "an English naval frigate...a fast vessel." He had nothing to do with the design or construction of her.
"2. On the basis of the photo in the ModelExpo ad, the overall shape of the hull seems to be about right but the model differs from the Chapman drawing (which I think we can trust) in several significant ways. There seems to be no camber (side-to-side vertical curvature) in the decks or the beakhead bulkhead. (A ship's deck is scarcely ever flat. The manufacturers often make decks flat because they insist on making them out of plywood, which is difficult to force into the accurate compound curve.) The figurehead seems to be out of scale with the rest of the model, and the headrails just aft of it are wildly distorted. The quarter galleries don't look right, and the gunports on the quarterdeck don't seem to be of the configuration shown in the drawing. (In the drawing, with the exeption of the aftermost one on each side, they're shaped like broken circles with the tops chopped off. The slope of the quarterdeck railing doesn't match the sheer of the quarterdeck, so the foremost guns project above the railing.)
"It's tough to see the details of the deck in the picture, and there's no deck plan in the Chapman book, but it looks to my eye like the quarterdeck and forecastle deck on the model are connected by wide, permanent gangways. That's highly unlikely for a ship launched in 1747 (and just about inconceivable for one designed in 1700). Early frigates had narrow, temporary gangways - if any.
"I don't have access to the model's plans, so I can't say for sure whether the individual who built the one in the ad followed them, but somebody involved in the process doesn't understand rigging. The topsail and topgallant yards are in the raised positions, where they would not be unless the sails were set. And, to top everything off (literally), the flags are inaccurate. Prior to 1801 the British ensign didn't have the diagonal red stripes in the field.
"It looks to me like it might be possible to build an accurate model from this kit, but I question whether doing so would be any easier than scratchbuilding.
"I want to emphasize that my low opinions of Continental European sailing ship kits are not unusual; they're shared by most people who've been at the game for a while. The inaccuracy of these kits, along with mediocre materials and astronomical prices, has been responsible, I suspect, for driving far more people out of the hobby than they've brought into it...The focus of this site is scale modeling and these kits, unless they're modified almost beyond recognition, don't produce scale models. Surely a purchaser shouldn't have to own a library of books and plans in order to correct the basic inadequacies of a kit that costs several hundred dollars. An analogy: most of those Continental European kits bear considerably less resemblance to their prototypes than the 1950s Aurora plastic kits bear to real airplanes. Sure an Aurora P-38 kit can be made into an accurate scale model - by replacing or heavily modifying virtually every piece of it. But is that a reasonable way to spend one's time?
"For a lengthy and highly knowedgable discussion of this subject in general, I recommend the website of the Nautical Research Guild, <www.Naut-Res-Guild.org>. Among the stuff available on that site (under 'Reference Material,' then 'Models That Should or Should Not Be Built"\') is an article called 'Piracy On the High "C's": Those (Much Too) Expensive Imported Ship Model Kits,' by Charles MacDonald. If my comments seem nasty, wait till you read his.
"I'm sorry to be so negative in a forum that's been complimented for its helpfulness and cordiality, but this is a sore subject among ship modelers. I continue to recommend the products of two American firms, Model Shipways and Bluejacket, which, though they vary somewhat in quality, are based on good research and contain sound materials."
The only point I'd add now, on the basis of what I've learned since 2004, is that Corel seems to have one of the worst reputations of all the HECEPOB (that's Hideously Expensive Continental European Plank On Bulkhead) companies when it comes to accuracy. I'd also, however, emphasize again that, as is the case with any kit manufacturer, the quality of Corel kits undoubtedly varies. It also needs to be remembered that, to an even greater extent than in the plastic kit world, the quality of the finished model depends heavily on the modeler. A couple of members of our model club here in N.C. have built some mighty impressive models based on Corel kits. Personally, though, I wouldn't even consider spending my hard-earned money on anything that company sells.