"GOLDEN HIND" WHICH ONE IS CLOSER TO THE REAL ONE HELLER'S OF 1/72 AIRFIX?

The question of the Revell Golden Hind's ancestry is very interesting.  I don't know the answer; I suspect it's rather complicated.

I wish ship model companies would follow the basic rules of scholarship, and tell us the sources on which they base their kits.  A few of the best companies (Model Shipways, Bluejacket, and Calder/Jotika) do that.  The others just don't operate that way - and I suspect they never will.

I think the Mamoli kit (which is shown in the second photo to which Mr. Putin linked us; I can't identify the first one) is indeed a copy of the Revell kit.  There are just too many similarities to be coincidental.  And Mamoli has done things like that on several other occasions.  (The Mamoli "H.M.S. Beagle" kit quite obviously is pirated from Revell's; no two designers could possibly devise, independently, the preposterous notion that the Beagle and the Bounty had identical hulls.  And I think the Mamoli Soleil Royal is pirated from the Heller kit - though Mamoli fixed some of the mistakes Heller made.)  Mamoli is one of the notorious HECEPOB (Hideously Expensive Continental European Plank On Bulkhead) manufacturers, whom I frankly detest.  With a few exceptions, they don't understand what scale ship modeling is about.  Nothing could make be buy any of their products.

The big question that I can't answer is where the Revell designers started.  Several sets of plans for the Golden Hind have been published over the years.  Some of them are utter nonsense. Others are extremely well done - clearly the work of people who had studied the Matthew Baker Manuscripts.  I know of two British authors and modelers, Stanley Rogers and Clive Millward, who published believable Golden Hind plans at least as long ago as the late forties or early fifties.  (Ship Building in Miniature, the first book by the great British modeler Donald McNarry, published in the fifties, features a Golden Hind that, if I remember correctly was based on Mr. Rogers' plans.)  The now-defunct American ship model company Scientific sold a wood Golden Hind kit for a long time; like most Scientific kits it was pretty basic, but its plans were drawn by none other than George Campbell - one of the best in the business.  I haven't seen that Scientific kit in years, but my recollection is that it looked a great deal like the Revell one.  (I don't know when it was originally released; it may have been shortly before or after 1965.  It's hard for me to believe that Mr. Campbell copied the Revell kit, but Revell might have copied him.)  Taubman Plans Service (www.taubmansonline.com) currently sells a couple of sets of plans of the Golden Hind.  I believe one of them is by the Italian ship modeler Franco Gay - and it looks a lot like the Revell kit.  Mr. Gay, I believe, was working in the mid-1960s - but he had been drawing plans for quite a few years before that.  I have no idea when he drew that particular set. 

Ordering those plans from Taubman, just to compare them with the Revell kit and check the copyright dates, would be a bit expensive for my budget at the moment, so I'm not in a position to figure out just how similar all those drawings are - or in what order thay were published.  It looks to me like some of these people at least looked carefully at each other's work.  Whether they actually copied from each other - and, if so, just who copied from whom - I don't know.  I think Mamoli probably copied from Revell - but maybe both Mamoli and Revell actually worked from the same source.

I wouldn't go so far as to pronounce the Revell kit "wrong."  In fact I have quite a high opinion of it.  Recent research - including quite a bit of research that's been done since 1965 - seems to imply that the kit doesn't have enough guns, but the documents are far from conclusive.  Professor Kelsey cites two brief, rather vague, and contradictory sentences, both written by Spaniards who had last seen the ship long before they wrote those documents.  One of them says that, as paraphrased by Professor Kelsey (Sir Francis Drake:  The Queen's Pirate, p. 84), "There were seven gun ports in each side, plus another four guns in the bow,"  and goes on to explain that thirteen of the eighteen guns were bronze and the others iron.  The other Spanish source says only two of the guns were bronze.  In my judgment, none of that evidence is persuasive enough to justify condemning Revell's interpretation.

The Revell kit only has six gunports on each side - if we count the ones on the quarterdeck and forecastle.  The total number of guns in the kit obviously is six short of the eighteen that the two contemporary sources seem to imply.  On my model I've added one more port on each side of the maindeck, under the quarterdeck; to my eye that looks perfectly reasonable.  I'm working on the guns at the moment, as a matter of fact.  My intention (subject to change) is to add two more small guns to the quarterdeck and two to the forecastle, pointing forward, bringing the total to eighteen.  (Maybe the holes cut in the quarterdeck bulwark can count as "gunports," to bring the total of gunports to seven each side.)   For such a small vessel, that's a mighty heavy armament. 

As I mentioned earlier, my biggest other criticism of the Revell kit concerns the too-thin bulwarks.  (I spent quite a few hours adding stanchions inside them, from Evergreen styrene strip.)   I can easily forgive that one; such things are inherent to the limitations of the injection-molding process. 

In other threads of this Forum I've made some pretty nasty comments about certain plastic sailing ships (most notably the Heller Soleil Royal,  which I personally regard as a piece of junk).  I can't imagine that the world is hanging on my opinions about such things, but I do want to make it clear that, contrary to any impression I've given elsewhere, I don't instinctively hate styrene sailing ship kits.  The Revell Golden Hind is one that I really like.

I forgot to post some adresses with photos of wooden "Golden Hind" and I think that all of them are derived from the original Revell 1965 model witch as profecor said is wrong.

http://www.shipmodels.ru/picture/eng/golden_hind/golden_hind2.jpg

http://maketar.bravehost.com/goldenhind.html

and finally I want to ask who you can post an image because I tried to past without any result. So I decided to write the addresses.

I noticed that the Revell/heller version of Golden hind has also and other companies who followed. I saw photos of "Golden Hind" from wooden models, from other companies  and arragement was the same as with REVELL/HELLER. I believe that the Heller/revell model has very few guns and all at the main deck. I don't know why they didn't put some of them at the deck below. Further more as I said before even for a 100t vessel 8 + 4 smaller guns are very few. 

 Is possible all the other "Revell like" models to be copied from the previous 1965 revell model?

I don't have a definitive answer to Kapudan's question, but it does suggest some inferences.

In the Golden Hind's day, of course, there was no such thing as a line of battle.  Ships fired projectiles at each other, of course, but the veritable hail of shot and shell that we associate with later naval battles didn't exist.  The crew of the Golden Hind probably didn't worry much about getting hit by enemy fire when they were leaning out the gunports (or over the bulwarks) to load the guns. 

The seventeenth-century wars between England and Holland changed the nature of naval warfare in many respects.  That's when the line of battle tactics came into their own - and the casualty lists in naval battles started going up.  I've never read any scholarly statement to this effect, but I wonder if the practice of letting the guns recoil inboard was, at least to some extent, a response to that problem.  In addition to absorbing some of the shock of the recoil, those longer breeching ropes had the effect of making the gun easier - and safer - to load.

jtilley wrote:

The lack of space between the bulwarks and the main hatch coaming of the Revell Golden Hind was one of the first things I noticed when I took the kit out of the box.  There is, indeed, insufficient room there for the guns to recoil - certainly not enough room for them to be run in to the point where their muzzels are inboard of the bulwarks. My initial thought was, "well, that's stupid."  A few years ago, however, I was doing some digging into the history of naval guns for an encyclopedia article (Collier's) that I'd been hired to write.  I learned that some eminent authorities (Peter Padfield's Guns at Sea, for example) argue that the practice of running in the guns, and letting them recoil till their muzzles were inboard,, may not have been the norm prior to the late seventeenth century.  As evidence, these scholars cite contemporary paintings and drawings by artists who demonstrably knew what they were doing (the Van de Veldes, for instance).  Such pictures often show gunners loading and ramming their pieces while the barrels are projecting fully through the gunports. Even a very small artillery piece will recoil several yards if it isn't restrained.  Those scholars contend, though, that the breeching lines on pre-eighteenth-century naval guns frequently were set up so taut that the guns couldn't recoil (and, in the case of a ship built like the Revell Golden Hind, then go tumbling down the main hatch, probably to puncture the bottom and sink the ship).  The researchers who are studying the remains of the Mary Rose (sunk in 1545) seem to think that some, at least, of her guns weren't intended to recoil.  (Some of the carriages have four trucks; others have two, and certainly don't look like they were intended to be run in and out on a regular basis.)  Professor Kelsey thinks the Golden Hind was probably built in 1574 - less than thirty years after the Mary Rose sank.  Naval gunnery certainly had evolved during that time, but I think it's more than feasible that she had "non-recoiling" guns.    Remember that, to the eyes of anybody accustomed to thinking of naval guns as looking like the ones on board the Victory or the Constitution, the guns on board the Golden Hind were tiny.  Take a look at the ones on board some of the reconstructed ships - the ones at Jamestown Settlement, for instance.  The whole gun sticks up slightly higher than an average man's knee.  (My students and I are taking a trip up there in a few weeks; I'll see what the fellow in charge of the Susan Constant thinks about this interesting subject.)  A heavy breeching rope could keep a gun like that from recoiling.  Rigging one of the still-smaller guns on the forecastle or quarterdeck like that would be even more practical.  Frankly, I'd be more comfortable if Revell had made that big hatch a little narrower.  But I'm not prepared to say it's wrong.  (If it were made narrow enough for the guns to recoil as we'd take for granted in later centuries, that hatch would look pretty silly - and not be useful for much.  It couldn't be more than two or three feet wide.) What I do have trouble understanding is why the Revell designers (or Mr. Gay, or whoever actually did the original plans for the model) put lids on the gunports in the waist.   If the guns can't be run in, the port lids can't be shut.  And when I was studying contemporary plans and models of eighteenth-century British frigates I came to the conclusion that many of them didn't have lids on the ports in their waists.  It's easy to figure out why; a sea that was high enough to come through the gunport in that position probably would be high enough to come all the way over the bulwark.  In the case of the Revell Golden Hind, I think I'll probably leave the hatch as-is, rig the breeching lines on the waist guns almost taut, omit the lids from the ports in the waist, and fit the ones on the ports under the quarterdeck - where the lids would have the effect of keeping some gear at least a little drier than if the ports were left open. Oh - I can testify with virtual certainty that the pieces making up the guns in that kit are not recycled from any other one.  As of 1965, when the Revell Golden Hind was released, the company had only made four other sailing ship kits with guns:  the Constitution, Santa Maria, Bounty, and Victory.  The guns in those kits look nothing like those of the Golden Hind.  (My source there is, as usual, Dr. Graham's history of Revell.)  Revell was notorious for pulling disreputable marketing stunts, but this kit most definitely was not one of them.  Interesting stuff - if trivial in the grand scheme of things.  The solemn, unfortunate truth is that, when it comes to sixteenth-century ships, we just don't know much.  Donald McNarry calls models of ships from that period and before "too early models"; he'd rather concentrate on later subjects, for which the contemporary documentation is so much better.  He has a point.  On the other hand, trying to figure out what the Golden Hind might have looked like is a fascinating, fun exercise.  We need to acknowledge, though, that any model of her - or of any other sixteenth-century ship - is, at best, a piece of educated guesswork.

Professor Tilley, thank you for the enlightening article. I've also read that question of loading cannons without using recoil and saw the Van de Velde sketches in the Galleons and Galleys. But there is an important question for me: How the gun crews weren't decimated by musketry in a line of battle ? Of course, during the Armada campaign ships were fighting in caracole but during the first two anglo-dutch wars, when the line of battle was in perfect use, working atop a gun fully exposed in pistol shot range means nothing but suicide to me.

The lack of space between the bulwarks and the main hatch coaming of the Revell Golden Hind was one of the first things I noticed when I took the kit out of the box.  There is, indeed, insufficient room there for the guns to recoil - certainly not enough room for them to be run in to the point where their muzzles are inboard of the bulwarks.

My initial thought was, "well, that's stupid."  A few years ago, however, I was doing some digging into the history of naval guns for an encyclopedia article (Collier's) that I'd been hired to write.  I learned that some eminent authorities (Peter Padfield's Guns at Sea, for example) argue that the practice of running in the guns, and letting them recoil till their muzzles were inboard, wasn't  the norm prior to the late seventeenth century.  As evidence, these scholars cite contemporary paintings and drawings by artists who demonstrably knew what they were doing (the Van de Veldes, for instance).  Such pictures often show gunners loading and ramming their pieces while the barrels are projecting fully through the gunports.

Even a very small artillery piece will recoil several yards if it isn't restrained.  Those scholars contend, though, that the breeching lines on pre-eighteenth-century naval guns frequently were set up so taut that the guns couldn't recoil (and, in the case of a ship built like the Revell Golden Hind, then go tumbling down the main hatch, probably to puncture the bottom and sink the ship).  The researchers who are studying the remains of the Mary Rose (sunk in 1545) seem to think that some, at least, of her guns weren't intended to recoil.  (Some of the carriages have four trucks; others have two, and certainly don't look like they were intended to be run in and out on a regular basis.)  Professor Kelsey thinks the Golden Hind was probably built in 1574 - less than thirty years after the Mary Rose sank.  Naval gunnery certainly had evolved during that time, but I think it's more than feasible that she had "non-recoiling" guns.   

Remember that, to the eyes of anybody accustomed to thinking of naval guns as looking like the ones on board the Victory or the Constitution, the guns on board the Golden Hind were tiny.  Take a look at the ones on board some of the reconstructed ships - the ones at Jamestown Settlement, for instance.  The whole gun sticks up slightly higher than an average man's knee.  (My students and I are taking a trip up there in a few weeks; I'll see what the fellow in charge of the Susan Constant thinks about this interesting subject.)  A heavy breeching rope could keep a gun like that from recoiling.  Rigging one of the still-smaller guns on the forecastle or quarterdeck like that would be even more practical. 

Frankly, I'd be more comfortable if Revell had made that big hatch a little narrower.  But I'm not prepared to say it's wrong.  (If it were made narrow enough for the guns to recoil as we'd take for granted in later centuries, that hatch would look pretty silly - and not be useful for much.  It couldn't be more than two or three feet wide.)

What I do have trouble understanding is why the Revell designers (or Mr. Gay, or whoever actually did the original plans for the model) put lids on the gunports in the waist.   If the guns can't be run in, the port lids can't be shut.  And when I was studying contemporary plans and models of eighteenth-century British frigates I came to the conclusion that many of them didn't have lids on the ports in their waists.  It's easy to figure out why; a sea that was high enough to come through the gunport in that position probably would be high enough to come all the way over the bulwark.  In the case of the Revell Golden Hind, I think I'll probably leave the hatch as-is, rig the breeching lines on the waist guns almost taut, omit the lids from the ports in the waist, and fit the ones on the ports under the quarterdeck - where the lids would have the effect of keeping some gear at least a little drier than if the ports were left open.

Oh - I can testify with virtual certainty that the pieces making up the guns in that kit are not recycled from any other one.  As of 1965, when the Revell Golden Hind was released, the company had only made four other sailing ship kits with guns:  the Constitution, Santa Maria, Bounty, and Victory.  (My source there is, as usual, Dr. Graham's history of Revell.)  The guns in those kits look nothing like those of the Golden Hind.  Revell was notorious for pulling disreputable marketing stunts, but this kit most definitely was not one of them. 

Interesting stuff - if trivial in the grand scheme of things.  The solemn, unfortunate truth is that, when it comes to sixteenth-century ships, we just don't know much.  Donald McNarry calls models of ships from that period and before "too early models"; he'd rather concentrate on later subjects, for which the contemporary documentation is so much better.  He has a point.  On the other hand, trying to figure out what the Golden Hind might have looked like is a fascinating, fun exercise.  We need to acknowledge, though, that any model of her - or of any other sixteenth-century ship - is, at best, a piece of educated guesswork.

 The glass is niether half full, nor half empty. It is simply designed twice as large as necessary.

 Sir Drake, Nice build, and excellent pictures. Beautiful paint job!!!! Now, to my opening comment;Her guns are run out, or , at least appear to be. The designers of this kit weren't thinking about recoil. In the photo looking down on the fo'c'sle break, each of the cannon trucks end way too close to the hatches to allow for recoil. The point? I can allow for material strength, causing an "out of scale" situation. Bulwarks can be too thick, and blocks or deadeyes can be too large, and I usually don't notice. What my eye spots, rapidly, are the things that cannot work. In this case cannons that cannot recoil. I suspect that Revell used existing molds for the cannon, that they considered "close enough". There is a difference between too large for scale, and too large to function properly.

   In my own defense, I am currently learning kit developement, and have three kits designed, that I am working on, so I may be a little oversensitive to these matters. I am hoping to learn how not to make these mistakes, by being just a bit more observant.

I don't know where I picked up the England connection.  Maybe by illogical inference.  (Drake - Golden Hind - Durham - excellent use of the English language - stupidity on my part....)

I haven't been fortunate enough to visit Germany, but my German history colleagues tell me it's a beautiful country - and, since the events of the early nineties, an extremely hospitable one.  Best of luck.

jtilley wrote:

Sir Drake - Sorry to hear you're leaving, but I'm sure you're looking forward to going home.  I've spent enough time in England (it doesn't take much) to feel a great deal of envy.  Have a good trip - and pack your models carefully!

England is certainly a beautiful place. Alas, I'm going to Germany :-)

As for the models, I'll leave them here - though there are no real ship enthousiast among my friends, sadly.... But as I just re-started modeling a year ago, there are not too many of them. I'll miss the Golden Hind, though. Who knows, I might look at ebay and maybe build it again. It is a beautiful kit.

 SD

Sir Drake - Sorry to hear you're leaving, but I'm sure you're looking forward to going home.  I've spent enough time in England (it doesn't take much) to feel a great deal of envy.  Have a good trip - and pack your models carefully!

Grem 56 - I imagine the two Revell kits you're referring to are the smaller, 18" ones (rather than the enormous "Spanish Galleon" and "English Man-O-War," which, as Revell boasted in its trade advertising, were designed for interior decorators rather than scale modelers).  The smaller "Spanish Galleon" (I'm relying here, as usual, on Thomas Graham's Remembering Revell Model Kits) was released in 1974, and is indeed a modified reissue of the 1965 Golden Hind.  (According to Dr. Graham, the changes were a "new figurehead, row of shields added to sides, two lanterns on stern, and new stern carving.  Cross, saint decals for sails.")  It was a typical Revell marketing scam of the period.  The Golden Hind, as interpreted by those skilled, conscientious designers back in 1965, resembled a Spanish Galleon about as much as the U.S.S. Kidd resembles a Japanese battleship.

The smaller "Elizabethan Man-O-War" was released in 1975.  It was a modified reissue of the smaller of Revell's two Mayflowers.  Dr. Graham says, "This is the Mayflower without its lifeboat, and with twelve cannons added."  I imagine it also deleted the carved flower from the transom.   That one is a little more believable.  Professor William Baker, who designed the Mayflower II (on which the original Revell Mayflower was based) thought the real Mayflower was a pretty old ship when the Pilgrims hired her.  She, or ships quite similar to her, might well have been around at the time of the Spanish Armada, and during that campaign a lot of English merchant ships were equipped with guns beyond their normal defensive armaments.

I do wonder sometimes whether any of the people who designed the Revell sailing ship kits of the fifties and sixties are still around.  If not, I suspect the blasphemous things the company did to their creations in the seventies and eighties made those individuals turn in their graves.

Jtilley, 

thanks a lot for the kind words. I'd love to come to Beaufort to one of your meetings - but after four years in Durham I will return back to Europe for a new job end of November. I'm lucky though, because a friend and colleague of mine who will be working next door to me is a model shipwright himself, and he builds great models from scratch. I'm sure I can learn a lot from him.

SD 

A very nice and clean build sirdrake, a model to be proud of. Is this model based on the "English man 'o war " and "Spanish Galleon " duo by Revell?

Julian

Sir Drake, that's an extremely impressive model and you have every reason to be proud of it. It demonstrates, among other things, what a fine kit the Revell Golden Hind is.  Even the vac-formed "sails" are far better than usual.  (The person who designed them shaped them extremely realistically, as though the ship were on the starboard tack.  The worst examples of the genre have "ropes" molded into their surfaces - and the "ropes" show up as raised lines on the front of the sail and grooves on the back.  Not these.)  And even if one just follows the instructions, the color scheme of that kit has to be one of the most challenging ones in plastic modeling.  (For the benefit of anybody who's not familiar with the kit - all those geometric shapes are indicated by extremely fine raised lines.)

I do have a few reservations about the kit - none of them really serious.  The biggest is almost endemic to plastic kits of this sort:  the bulwarks are too thin.  (There's just no way one of the ship's frames, with a layer of planking outside and another inside, would fit in that thickness on 1/96 scale.  A year later Revell issued its beautiful Mayflower, which has unceiled bulwark stanchions cast integrally with the hull halves.  I wish they'd used that system on the Golden Hind.)  I think the coat of arms on the transom may actually be a little too nice and detailed for the period - but I obviously don't know.  And if Professor Kelsey is right about the dubious name change, the hind figurehead is probably wrong.  But it's such a nice casting that I'm certainly not going to change it on mine.  (Besides which, sculpting a pelican for a figurehead probably would be beyond my capacity.)

Hope you can find the time to make the trip to Beaufort for one of our ship model club meetings.  The drive from Durham is a long one, but I think you'd find it worthwhile.  The next meeting is Saturday, December 2, at 2:00 in the North Carolina Maritime Museum's auditorium.  (We normally meet on the last Saturday of the month, but due to the holidays we have one meeting in early December count for both the November and December meetings.)  The featured event this time will be the annual auction, in which the members get rid of all the stuff from their workshops that they don't want any more - usually at ridiculously low prices.  It's always great fun.

Hi all,

 I can offer some pictures from the Revell Golden Hind. Built out of the box, including the evil shrouds/ratlines, deadeyes, and the too light and too thick rigging. Well, I'm learnig by doing... Still looks very nice to my eyes - the love of a father to his child [:-)]

Cheers,

SD 

I would appreciate some photos as a reference here. I can't remember having seen a 1/72 scale Airfix Golden Hind in the stores here in Holland.

JUlian

I have the Airfix kit of the Golden Hind - would anyone be interested in photos of the hull, to compare it to the Revell example?

This kit is 1/72 scale according to the box, which makes it the largest in scale of the Airfix sailing ship range. The crew figures definitely look like 1/72.

I'm not in any position to assert that his plans are "correct" in every respect.    But I deeply respect him, and I trust his judgment about such things.

  And I, your's. The subject, is building a model of a vessel for which there is limited, or no documentation, in which case it is better to err on the side of common practice of the time. My use of Phantom as an example, was based on the apparent fact that her rig was, for the time, rather unique, and not universally adopted in her day. In my limited experience, and knowlege, she is the only rig of this type that I've found. Coastal schooners built after Phantom eyed their shrouds around the masthead, and Chapelle describes the wire rope shrouds of the fishing schooners as being eyed over.  Unfortunately, the only photos I've seen of N.Y. pilot boats, do not clearly show the detail. Yes, I will rig Phantom according to the plans. The rig may be unusual, but it is still believable, and may have been more widely used than I'm aware of. An accurate model of the "Golden Hind"will remain debated until documentation can be found, that verifies her details.

We're talking about two extremely different subjects here, but I don't think the Phantom's standing rigging was terribly unusual for her day.  She was built in the mid-1880s, a transitional period in that sort of thing.  (Every period in the history of nautical technology can be called "a transitional period," but the term fits this era better than most.)  Wire was making its way into standard use for standing rigging, and iron forgings and castings for rigging fittings were becoming more common - presumably because they were more reliable, and, above all else, more affordable than they'd been in earlier decades. 

Photos of pilot schooners and fishing schooners confirm that quite a variety of new, relatively sophisticaged gadgets for rigging were coming into use - sometimes to become common, other times to disappear after having been installed on one or two ships.  (Take a look, for instance, at some of the mechanical contraptions designed for reefing topsails.  Some of those were patented as early as the 1860s.)  Some of these innovations made their initial appearances in smaller vessels, like pilot schooners.  The pilot schooner had to combine a number of attributes:  speed, ability to handle strong winds and heavy seas, and ability to be handled by a tiny crew.  For such a vessel wire standing rigging and good, sturdy iron fittings, such as a mast band to which the shrouds could be shackled, would be a godsend.  And the difference in cost between wire and rope rigging in such a small, simple vessel would be minor compared to what it would be in a clipper ship.

I haven't seen any photos of the Phantom, and as I understand it the surviving original drawings (which Howard I. Chapelle dug up many years ago, along with, I believe, a builder's half model) only show the lines and basic features of the hull.  The rest of the information on the Model Shipways plans consists, I think, of reconstruction on the part of the late Mr. Campbell.  I'm not in any position to assert that his plans are "correct" in every respect.    But I deeply respect him, and I trust his judgment about such things.  (This is a completely different story than Charles Davis's bogus reconstruction of the brig Lexington.)  I'd certainly be receptive to any hard evidence proving those plans wrong in any way (as I'm sure the Mr. Campbell would be), but in the absence of such evidence I'd strongly recommend believing them.

All of them seem to show ships considerably bigger than the Golden Hind.  Is it reasonable to infer that a ship like her would have similar lines and proportions?  The Revell kit seems to be based on that assumption, but nobody really knows.

    This wouldn't be the first time a ship has varied from the norm, "Phantom" rigs her shrouds in a manner completely removed from the practice of the period. I haven't been able to find any indication that she eyed her shrouds over the head of the mast, instead of the way the plans show, and I have it on excellent authority that the plans are correct.  I would have a tendancy to agree with jtilley that, in the abscense of documented fact, the practice of the period would be the acceptable way to go.

First - Welcome to the Forum! 

I've been working recently on an old Revell Golden Hind (which, as I understand it, is identical to the Heller kit), and I've done some digging among the literature about Drake and his voyage around the world.  I think I can offer the definitive answer to Mr. Putin's question.  The definitive answer is:  I don't know, and I don't think anybody else does either.

The documentation about this famous ship is extremely scanty, and what evidence does exist is, in many cases, contradictory.  The nearest thing we have to really firm data seems to be a set of dimensions for a shed in which the ship was supposed to be housed after she got back to England.  (She might have become the world's first indoor museum ship, but the plan for building the shed fell through.)  The dimensions of the shed correspond quite reasonably with those of the Revell/Heller kit.

So far as I can tell, nothing else is known with any certainty about the real Golden Hind.  Part of the problem is that, due to the extremely dubious legality of Drake's around-the-world cruise, little of a serious, objective nature about it was published for quite some time.  The most lengthy near-contemporary account is a book called The World Encompassed by Sir Francis Drake, which appeared some years later; nobody's sure who wrote it, though modern scholars seem to think Drake himself supervised or edited the publication.  There seem to be no reliable contemporary pictures of the Golden Hind.  A couple of eye-witness accounts do mention her armament, but they contradict each other. 

Harry Kelsey, author of the latest thorough, scholarly biography of Drake (Sir Francis Drake:  The Queen's Pirate, published by Yale University Press), goes so far as to suggest that even her name is in doubt.  It's well known that her original name was Pelican.  One contemporary account, by the expedition's chaplain, says Drake held a ceremony, shortly before passing through the Strait of Magellan, in which he renamed the ship Golden Hind.  The chaplain's manuscript seems to have been heavily edited before it was published (the original manuscript has been lost), and no other contemporary source mentions the name change.  Professor Kelsey thinks the members of the expedition probably continued calling her Pelican throughout the rest of the voyage. 

I think the Revell/Heller kit is an excellent one.  After a good bit of thinking and reading I decided to augment its armament a bit, with an extra gun on each side of the maindeck aft and four more on the quarterdeck and/or forecastle (I'm working on that problem at the moment).  The evidence on that point seems fairly weighty - though by no means definitive.  I do wish the kit manufacturers would be a bit more forthcoming in explaining their research, but it's pretty clear that the Revell kit relies heavily on the "Matthew Baker Manuscripts" at Oxford University.  (I think Revell may also have worked from a set of reconstructed plans drawn by an Italian author named Franco Gay, but I'm not at all sure about that.)  The Baker manuscript is the most reliable source we have on English ship construction during the Elizabethan era - but scholars freely admit they aren't sure how accurate, or representative, the pictures in that collection are.  All of them seem to show ships considerably bigger than the Golden Hind.  Is it reasonable to infer that a ship like her would have similar lines and proportions?  The Revell kit seems to be based on that assumption, but nobody really knows.

I haven't seen the Airfix kit outside the box.  I have the general impression that it represents a somewhat bigger vessel than the Revell version, but I may well be mistaken about that.  I also haven't studied the full-size replica currently in London closely, though I've seen pictures of it (and I got a look at its stern from a Thames cruise boat a few years ago).  In one of those pictures there are red crosses painted on the sails; that strikes me as extremely unlikely for an English ship of the period.  I've seen vague references to Drake's having disguised the ship to look Spanish, but I don't think there's any contemporary documentation to support that idea.  (There also seems to be no truth behind the various stories to the effect that the original ship was built in either Spain or France.  Professor Kelsey found a couple of contemporary documents, including one by Drake himself, referring pretty clearly to her having been built in an English shipyard in 1574.)  I think the replica has been used in the making of some movies; perhaps the crosses were painted on the sails for a movie company.

Personally, I find the Revell interpretation of the Golden Hind quite believable.  I would not, however, argue with anybody who came up with a significantly different interpretation.  In any case, as a styrene ship model the kit is, in terms of detail, one of the best I've ever encountered.  It certainly deserves to be taken seriously as a scale model.  I certainly don't think anybody who's built it needs to make any apologies for it.