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Further Reading

HMS Victory Model Ship Buyer's Guide

HMS Victory is clearly the most modeled ship. More companies sell more variants in more scales than any other ship, by a wide margin. Any collector of model ships will confront, probably sooner rather than later, the question of which model to buy. These models are fully assembled, not kits, so questions other than those of the modeling skill of the purchaser come into play.

1. Budget : Vendors will sell you as much or as little Victory as you are prepared to pay for. The upper end is nearly $10,000 for the highest quality models, and a multiple of that for large museum-class models. In the real world, less than $500 is probably not worth fooling with, since either the model is too small to make much of a display, or more likely is so badly modeled as to be nearly un-recognizable [or rather, is a bad charactature of the Victory that is painful to look at.
2. Size : Where are you going to put the thing? These models are three to five feet long, and require some non-trivial berth if they are not to be an accident in waiting. Unlike models of modern warships, they are nearly as tall as they are long, so putting them on a shelf is not an option. Another issue with size is understanding what dimension is being cited by the vendor, some of whom are quoting just the length of the hull [billet head to taffrail], while others are including the rigging [bowsprit and mizzen boom].
3. Scale : Closely related to size is scale, which goes to the question of which other models in your collection can be displayed with HMS Victory. We have a 1:87 USS Constitution, a 1:96 USS Monitor and a 1:104 CSS Virginia, and would like to display HMS Victory with this group. There are a few pretty obvious scales - 1:96 and 1:100 are easy, but most of these models are built to scales for which there is no ready explanation. And different vendors have different ideas as to how the size of the model translates into scale.

All models are lies, just as all maps are lies. Both models and maps must make compromises with reality in order to depict that reality in a useful fashion. Models must simplify to become smaller, and to stay within a price range objective. Models must delete some details so that others may remain clearly visible, and must render some elements out of scale for purposes of emphasis and clarity. When shopping for an HMS Victory model, several elements stand out:

1. The three lanterns on the stern gallery taffrail should not obstruct the lateral motion of the mizzen boom, and yet this is the case with most models.
2. HMS Victory had a bottom sheathed in copper plates - while some models provide a reasonably high fidelity presentation of this construction, most either depict the bottom in plain wood, or suggest the copper plates with a coat of copper paint.
3. The stern gallery is one of the most distinctive design elements of 18th Century ships of the line, and the original HMS Victory comes readily to hand, yet the gallery is suprisingly difficult to render accurately.

So what kind of choices are there??

1. Probably the best all around models are those from Stephens & Kenau, the designers builders of the much acclaimed STEPHENS & KENAUT range of museum quality Historic Sailing Ship Models. The Model Ship Yard, Mosselbay, South Africa, is the builder of the Stephens & Kenau range of museum quality sailing ship models. There are a number of websites that claim to be dealing in STEPHENS & KENAUT ship models. This is simply not true. Many of the photographs and text have been copied and pasted directly from the Model Ship Yard website, without permission. But for many years Ancient Mariner has offered the 1:96 Stephens & Kenau HMS Victory, priced at $ 3,850, which is rather less than the $ 4,832 list price directly from Model Shipyard.
2. Three 41" models offer an attractive compromise between price and detail: the $ 1,531 offering from Premier Ship Models, the $ 1,525 model from Nautical Models, and the $ 1,289 product from Admiralty Ship Model
3. The 38 " model for $ 599 Handcrafted Model Ships on e-bay is a really decent value for the budget minded.