Hmmm....I don't like to pick apart the details of a fine model, and it's not for me to dictate what any modeler's standard of detail ought to be. But there's a problem with using that square grid etched mesh for transom windows on an eighteenth- or nineteenth-century ship. I wouldn't mention this if it hadn't become so obvious that Force 9 is really concerned about detail and accuracy...but....
The real windows aren't rectangles. (Neither are the individual glass "lights" that make them up.) The shape of a standard eighteenth-century warship's transom is a rather intricate exercise in plane geometry. Most of the details are pretty subtle; at a casual glance you don't notice them. But if they aren't there, your eye starts telling you something isn't quite right.
The only vertical line in the layout of the windows is the one running up the middle of the center window. All the others are tilted. They radiate out from an imaginary point several feet (how many depends on the taste of the designer) above the center of the transom. The outboard edges of the windows on the port and starboard ends tilt quite noticeably toward the center line. Between the outboard edges of the end windows and the center one, the "verticals" slope less and less. Plotted out on paper, they look like a fan. No window has parallel sides; they're all narrower at the top than at the bottom.
The rails forming the tops and bottoms of the windows aren't parallel - or horizontal, or straight - either. The one that's even with the maindeck is arched up in the middle to correspond with the deck camber. Each other horizontal line is arched a little more steeply - with the molding forming the top of the transom having the most arch at all.
If the shipwright contemplating how to build this structure wasn't tearing his hair out already, he had to take another fact into consideration: the transom wasn't flat. It bulged outward in the middle.
The Corne' painting reproduced above got all this right. (He was a thoroughly competent marine artist, and understood exactly what he was painting.) Look at it closely and you'll see that all the windows are thinner at their tops than at their bottoms. And all the "horizontal" lines in the transom are gently arched.
Another little detail that a lot of folks may not be aware of. The stern post and rudder post tilt slightly back and aft. That's not just for looks. The tiller mounted on top of the rudder has to swing in a vertical arc that matches the deck camber. So the tiller has to be tilted up and forwards slightly. The angle of the rudder post makes sure that happens.
I haven't had that Revell kit in my hands for many years, but my recollection (reinforces by the photos above) is that the designers did a beautiful job on the transom. (That's undoubtedly a reflection of the George Campbell plans, on which the kit was based. He knew what he was doing too.) The person responsible for the transom on the old "Hull model" obviously knew about this sort of thing, though the crude tools and materials with which he was working made him overstate the curves a little bit. Marquardt, in the transom views in the "Anatomy of the Ship" book, seems to have gotten them about right.
I vividly remember what I went through when I built the transom for my little scratchbuilt Continental frigate Hancock. There was a good, detailed drawing of it as part of the Admiralty draft, but that drawing was no good for taking off dimensions. (It was, as was normal in such drawings, drawn from a vantage point directly aft of the ship, with no perspective. So the drawing was narrower and shallower than the transom would be if it was flattened out.) So the first thing I had to do was make a working drawing of the actual shape of the transom. I made the transom itself out of styrene sheet, so I could make it flat and bend it to shape. Once (after several tries) I had a sheet of plastic cut to the right shape (complete with the asymmetrical window openings), I made the window frames out of styrene strip. (I lost track of how many different lengths.) A made the rails and decorative moldings out of styrene strip, with the decorative edges added with a simple, old-fashioned "scratch stick" made from an old Xacto blade. I cheated a bit on the window muntins, making them from thin white decal strips applied to the clear plastic "glass." (This model is on 3/32"=1' scale. I don't know that I could get away with that trick on 1/96 scale.)
All this is nowhere near as noticeable in a frigate as it is in a bigger ship. If the windows in the three rows in H.M.S. Victory's transom were rectangles, your eye would tell you immediately that something was wrong. In fact, the top row of windows is considerably narrower than the bottom one.
Those old designers worked to much the same philosophy and aesthetics that the ancient Greeks did. (There are scarcely any straight or parallel lines in the Parthenon - and scarcely any in the U.S.S. Constitution. Notable exceptions: gunports) Just why they felt obligated to work that way is something of a mystery. I wonder how many onlookers ever really appreciated what a subtle shape a sailing warship really was.
I'm not suggesting that Force Nine tear apart his hard work and completely redo the transom. What I'm suggesting is that he take a good, long look at the transom and decide if it's satisfactory to his eye - which is the one that matters most.