H.M.S. Victory by Noel Hackney

Lolok got the title right; I apologize for garbling it.

The history of Mr. McKay's drawings of the Victory is a little complicated - and weird. They first appeared in Anatomy of the Ship: The 100-Gun Ship Victory. Reviewers gave that book a mixed reception. There was no argument about the quality of Mr. McKay's draftsmanship: he's an absolute master of a dying art. But the drawings contained some fairly significant errors, most due to the fact that he'd based them on the ship's current configuration. (For example, he showed the wales as thin layers of planking nailed to the exterior of the hull - which is what they are now. Originally the wales were enormous, solid timbers fastened directly to the frames, with the regular hull planking running between them.) Mr. McKay and his publishers, to their great credit, acknowledged the errors and published a revised version of the book with the necessary corrections. (If you're in the market for a copy of it, try to get the revised edition.)

The McGowen/McKay book reproduces most of the drawings from the revised version of the "Anatomy" book, but includes some additional ones - including quite a few dealing with the rigging. Again, they're absolutely outstanding examples of draftsmanship. Both books are certainly worth having.

I do wonder, though, whether the diagramatic approach to the rigging that Mr. McKay used is the best way to explain a ship's rigging. His drawings are beautiful, but they can be sort of intimidating. Longridge - and, for that matter, Hackney - describes the run of each line verbally, in addition to providing clear diagrams. It seems to me that, especially for a newcomer to ship modeling, that approach has its advantages.

The McGowan book is rather good and reasonably priced.The full title is HMS VICTORY
Her Construction,Career and Restoration....Published by Caxton Editions..
ISBN number...1-84067-532-2. Or just go to www.caxtonpublishing.com They do some really nice Naval history titles.

Thanks for the info...

<Gleason>

I've got a copy of it. For its age (early seventies, if I remember right) it's not a bad little book - but there are plenty of better references on the Victory.

The book was part of a series Airfix issued at that time, the first ones dealing with the firm's 1/24 airplane kits (Spitfire, ME-109, Hurricane, etc.). The aircraft books were excellent. The ship books (of which I can only remember a couple) weren't as good.

Part of the problem was, I think, that the author was limited a little by the fact that the manufacturer was publishing the book. Mr. Hackney's model, as described and illustrated in the book, has those hideous plastic-coated-thread "shrouds and ratlines" that were so characteristic of sailing ship kits of that era. They look like , and I'm sure Mr. Hackney knew it - but I suspect he didn't have the option of saying so in a book published by Airfix. (He also failed to mention any of the kit's pretty obvious flaws - most notably the fact that its bow is severely distorted.)

The information about the real ship's rigging in the book is basically sound, but there are better and more convenient places to get it. Good rigging plans for the Victory are available all over the place.

he easiest to read and understand, perhaps, are those in C. Nepean Longridge's The Anatomy of Nelson's Ships. Longridge describes verbally how all the essential pieces of rigging work, and the book contains superb drawings by the late, great George Campbell. Another excellent source is The 100-Gun Ship Victory, by John McKay (a volume in the Conway Maritime Press/Naval Institute Press "Anatomy of the Ship" series). Mr. McKay's drawings are absolutely exquisite, though the rigging diagrams are a little harder to follow than the ones in the Longridge book. Yet another outstanding book for the purpose is H.M.S. Victory: Construction, Restoration and Repair, by Alan McGowen and John McKay. (I may have garbled the title a little.) For this book Mr. McKay revised his earlier drawings and added some new ones - including many illustrating the rigging.

I think I'd recommend the Longridge book as the easiest to follow - but any of those three would contain more than enough information to do a beautiful job on a model of the Victory. And all of them are superbly illustrated.

Hope this helps a little. Good luck.