Looking for HMS Warrior (1860) plans/references

A good deal has been published about the Warrior.   I confess I haven't kept track of it religiously; she lies outside the period I'm most interested in.  I do have one book on her:  H.M.S. Warrior, by Andrew Lambert.  Dr. Lambert is a fine historian; I figured if I was going to buy one book on the subject that ought to be it.  I don't recall whether the book has any drawings in it; I'll try to remember to get it off the shelf today and take a look.

My wife and I took a trip to Portsmouth a few years ago (actually it's been fifteen years now).  My biggest piece of practical advice to any ship enthusiast planning a similar pilgrimage is:  don't try to do it in one day.  We got there on the train from London fairly early in the morning, paid a good, thorough visit to the Mary Rose museum, took a look at the Mary Rose herself (at that time she was getting sprayed round the clock with fresh water), took a tour of the Victory, made a quick pass through the Naval Museum (including the gift shop, where my wife bought a genuine ship's biscuit that she still uses in her high school history classes), and got thrown out, because it was closing time.  We got to see the Warrior for a few minutes from the pier.  Next time - two days in Portsmouth.

Wouldn't that ship make a great plastic kit?  Well, we can dream.

Thanks for the advice.
I've purchased the book "HMS Warrior: Britain's First and Last Iron-hulled Warship" from Amazon.com - it cost £2.75 (about $5) including postage, and appears to have some plans of the ship from what I can see from the preview photos.

Hopefully I'll be able to find some more reference material at Portsmouth. The Warrior is definitely a future project, as I'm working on three other large ships at the moment, the Kearsarge, Lindberg Fletcher, and a scratchbuilt 1/200 HMS Belfast (the latter temporarily on hold until the first two are nearer to completion).
When I visit the Portsmouth dockyard museum I'll mainly concentrate on seeing the Warrior and the WW1 monitor under restoration (can't remember its name) - but I'll try and find time to look at the Victory and the Mary Rose if possible.

A kit of the Warrior would be great, there isn't even a wood kit available though (I've seen ready-built "museum quality" wood models, of the sort found in large quantities on eBay US, but their accuracy is definitely questionable!). The only company likely to produce a plastic Warrior would have been Airfix, or maybe Heller, but both of those companies stopped producing new ship models some time before the Warrior was restored. As I think I mentioned before on this forum, I think it's very likely that Airfix would have added the Warrior (and perhaps the Mary Rose) to their "Classic Ships" range if they hadn't gone into the "doldrums" around the early 1980s, a period of decline which they've only just (the last 5 years or so) started to recover from.

At least there's a fair number of kits available of US 19th-century steam warships, even if most of them are long out of production!

Here's a pic of the Monitor you refer to taken from Victorys Quarterdeck earlier this month.

Enjoy!

Can I also offer " Warrior-restoring the World's First Ironclad" by Andrew Lambert,
published by Conway Maritime Press, ISBN No.
0 85177 411 3. Lots of photos and some good drawings.

Gee, was this vessel a Churchill/Fisher special. Where was it intended to be used?

Steve

In the English Channel against the French who had the sauce to start an arms race by cutting down the hull of the Frigate " Gloire " and armour plating it .

Mr. Bagley and I referred to the same book Professor Lambert.  I took a look at my copy; it does indeed contain lots of good pictures and drawings.  I can't claim to have looked at every book on the subject, but it appears to me like that one might be the best starting point.

Airfix seems to have made a modest but impressive re-entry into the ship model world with its 1/600 Queen Mary 2.  (I haven't seen the kit, but the reports I've seen have been favorable.)  As I understand it, both Airfix and Revell are relying on the gift shops on board the ship to provide a steady market for their QM2 kits.  If they're successful, maybe - just maybe - the decision makers at Airfix will take a look at the number of folks who visit the Warrior annually and conclude that she would be a profit-maker too.  And maybe the Mary Rose as well, for that matter.  Imagine a "Portsmouth Gift Set," containing Mary Rose, Victory, and Warrior kits.  Like I said, we can dream.

Realistically, though, I think our best hope for a Warrior kit rests with the small resin manufacturers.  Several of them - notably YS Masterpieces and the remarkably progressive Russian firm Combrig, have been doing late-nineteenth-century subjects recently.  (The Combrig 1/700 H.M.S. Dreadnought apparently is a beauty - and, like all that firm's other kits, very reasonably priced.)  I'm not sure I'd want to tackle the Warrior's rigging on 1/700, but a 1/350 resin version of her would be pretty impressive. 

Come to think of it, maybe some resin company has already done it.  A search of the Steel Navy website (www.steelnavy.com) would be worth the trouble.

That little monitor looks fascinating.  This is the first I'd heard about that project.  Let's see...will she have the distinction of being the only preserved British warship that took part in World War I?

Re your last thought. HMS Caroline ,the RNR
Drill Ship in Belfast is a C Class cruiser from the First world War . There is a large wooden shed built on the upper deck hiding its original good looks , but its genuinely old below decks.
HMS President the Thames RNR HQ was formerley the 1st World war Flower class sloop "Saxifrage" . She was shown as for preservation in 1986 , no further info. Surprising number of relics still about.

I remember seeing H.M.S. President at her Thames berth on my first visit to London, in 1978.  If I remember correctly, she, Captain Scott's Discovery, and one other old vessel (whose name now escapes me) were moored in a row along the Thames Embankment.  The next time I went to London, in 1987, I believe all three of them were gone.  The Discovery, I think, had been moved to St. Kathernine's Dock; I have no idea what happened to the others.

When my wife and I took my stepdaughter for her first trip to Europe, in 1997, I was shocked to discover that H.M.S. Belfast was absent from her normal berth (as I'd come to think of it) near the Tower.  I gather she had a lengthy stay in Portsmouth, but is now back in London.  I have the impression that there was some talk of keeping her at Portsmouth permanently.  I can see some logic in that, but it does seem like there ought to be some sort of historic ship - preferably a warship - for the public to visit in London.

When I was working at the Mariners' Museum we did a temporary exhibition of paintings and drawing by the great British marine artist W.L. Wylie.  One of the most interesting works in the exhibition was a large pencil (or maybe it was charcoal) sketch of a design for a bridge across the Thames.  It apparently was intended as a "Trafalgar Bridge," to be located near Waterloo Bridge.  Each of the three or four bridge piers was shaped like the hull of a Nelson-period ship-of-the-line.  The bridge obviously didn't get built; I have no idea what the occasion for Wylie's drawing was, or why, if it was an official proposal, it got rejected.  But what a thing that bridge would have been to see....

The Discovery has recently been moved to Dundee in Scotland (where it was originally built, I think).
The other old ex-warship on the Thames (Victoria Embankment) is HMS Wellington, a WW2 Grimsby-class sloop. Both it and HMS President have Wikipedia entries:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Wellington
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_President_%281918%29

The Belfast has remained in London since it came back from Portsmouth (I visited it earlier this year). I haven't heard anything about it being moved permanently to Portsmouth, but this would be a shame (although it would allow you to see RN warships from four different eras at the same museum).

Hopefully HMS Caroline at Belfast will eventually be preserved as a museum ship - it's one of the last of its kind, the only other surviving WW1 cruiser I know of is the Russian Aurora.

EPinniger wrote:

<<SNIP>> When I visit the Portsmouth dockyard museum I'll mainly concentrate on seeing the Warrior and the WW1 monitor under restoration (can't remember its name) - but I'll try and find time to look at the Victory and the Mary Rose if possible. <<SNIP>>

The monitor is HM Monitor 33.

M33 was launched in 1915 to provide shore bombardment cover to troops. Designed to mount large calibre guns on a small hull, her main armament was 2 6"/15cm guns. She first saw action off Galipoli and gained a reputation as a "lucky" ship. She later served off Palestine and Egypt. After the end of WWI she saw action in North Russia, supporting White Russians against the Bolsheviks. Subsequent to that she was converted to a minesweeper, then a floating workshop. In 1984 her value as one of only 2 Royal Navy ships surviving from WWI was realised and M33 was bought by Hampshire County Council and is currently in Portsmouth Historic Dockyard undergoing restoration.

David Hathaway's Papershipwright page offers a paper model of the M33.  He also offers HM Monitor 15 and several other European and other monitors from the turn of the century

http://www.papershipwright.freeserve.co.uk/

EdGrune wrote:

David Hathaway's Papershipwright page offers a paper model of the M33.  He also offers MS Monitor 15 and several other European and other monitors from the turn of the century http://www.papershipwright.freeserve.co.uk/

 

Just as a small footnote: The PSW kits are beautiful and can be used as templates for scratchbuilding the ships in question in plastic fairly easily. While 1/250, they hold enough detail to be blown up to 1/72, at least if you're not a rivet-counter. I once built a 1/72 version of the Nile gunboat Melik of Sudan fame for a friend to display his beautiful 1/72 British colonial forces on it.

 

Jorit

Now that EPinniger has jogged my memory I do remember the Wellington.  As I recall, in 1977 neither she nor the President was open for visitation; one could wander around the weather decks of the Discovery, but she wasn't getting any attention and badly needed some restoration work.  I hope she's getting some tender loving care now; she certainly deserves it.

Regarding the permanent home of the Belfast, I certainly can see the arguments on both sides.  But one way or another, there really ought to be a museum ship in the Thames at London - if for no other reason than to remind future generations of what a prominent role nautical matters once played in the life of the city.  To paraphrase Samuel Pepys, what a sad thing it would be to see no ships in the river.

In listing surviving WWI cruisers, we could include the U.S.S. Olympia.  I don't think she saw any real front-line service during the conflict, but I'm fairly certain she was in commission throughout it - and she brought the body of the American Unknown Soldier home to the U.S. afterward.

There were a couple of books published by MAP(model and allied publications back in the 70's and 80's (I think!) by a guy named William Mowll. His first was about how he modelled the Great Britain (I have this one and it is an excellent book) his second I believe was about building the Warrior. Both out of print now. EBay or Amazon second hand books may be worth a look.