"The Design Accuracy Delimma" Topic

Building ships from four manufactures who produce the same named ships always brings up the question "Who's ship design is the accurate one for this vessel?" I have asked this question many times on different chat sites like The Miniatures Page and Sails of Glory Anchorage. The answer I usually get is "Go with Rod Langton". One of the responses argued Rod Langton lives in the UK and has access to all of the original ship plan drawings. This settled my mind at the time…..until yesterday!

As anyone who follows this blog knows, I have been working on a Spanish fleet for the game I love, Kiss Me Hardy. I had previously posted that I had a Montanes Langton model and four Montanes GHQ models. They don't look anything alike! I built the Langton first and named it Neptuno, one of the 80 gun sister ships to Montanes. Then, because I was assuming the Langton was the accurate design for the class, I landed on another class of 74 gun ships for the GHQs. Yesterday I was looking through a great Spanish Navio website link and found a good article about the Montanes design with excellent graphics. Immediately I recognized that the GHQ Montanes model was a dead on exact duplicate of the actual ship! Compare:

As you can see, the GHQ model matches the graphic on the Spanish Navio site to an impressive degree IMO.


As you can see from the photo of the completed Langton Montanes below, it doesn't match the design.

I don't have photos, but the deck detail is not even close. So what am I to think? All of this time I have relied on the accuracy of Rod Langton's sculpts to set my standards. I guess from now on GHQ will be my standard.

Rod Langton might have ready access to British ship plans; but why should he be in a superior position when it comes to Spanish ships? AND, can you trust the accuracy of the Spanish site?

The dilemma is,at some point you're going to have to stop worrying and play your games.

Sadly I suspect you will have to look at it on a model to model basis.

This is especially true with ships, as opposed to say aircraft, as the look of a ship could/can change considerably throughout its years of service.

This is especially true with ships, as opposed to say aircraft, as the look of a ship could/can change considerably throughout its years of service.

And not all ships in a class are identical as built.

True daubere. While ships of a "class" were generally similar, rather than being built to a precise identical plan they actually just conformed to a certain general set of specifications with considerable leeway allowed to the builder (unlike classes of ships built after the industrial revolution which were occasionally so similar that they needed distinguishing marks to tell them apart from a distance). Not to mention the many changes, authorized and unauthorized, made while the ship was in service, often at the whim of individual captains. This was an age when shipbuilding was still more art than science.

My advice, Vol, is to be content with a model that represents the general type of ship you intend it to be (without necessarily abandoning your quest for historical accuracy, of course) . . . otherwise it will drive you crazy.

And, by the way, many of those ship plans in Britain are available to anyone with an internet connection:
link

Regards,

Jeff

I second everything said. Don't go crazy. Even today there are questions regarding the appearance of HMS victory at Trafalgar, and that is probably the most researched ship of the era. An article in the Nautical Research Journal as recent as this quarter reviewed some points of controversy.

I think all of the above are right. Jeff hit the nail on the head. Just getting the right tree for its size and shape was hard to get. A class of ship would ordered from the higher ups to a number of different yards. Each would build as best as they could.
We paint and rig to the best we can. Your Victory will be different from mine. Just enjoy your ships. Or ask yourself how many blond soldiers would be in 28th foot in 1808? If you are making a large scale model all this would be important. I'm so glad to have you as my friend, and picking your brains. I would hate to see you pull your hair out over this Yes, look for the best and what is right. But it is only 1-1200 sale.
Be safe my friend
Rory
P.S. We may never know the answer to you question.

Vol,

Sure there was some variability between ships. That would be normal and expected. But if you like the idea that your models look close to the prototypes, which it sounds like you do, then that's good for you. Just remember that our 1:1200 ships are models, and not exact scale replicas. And if in your desire for a closer to proto is better fleet, and you end up with a bitsa fleet (bitsa this, bitsa that), and if it pleases your eye and desire, then that is most excellent. I certainly won't criticize you. My fleets are all GHQ hulls, because I like their look best, but with a mish-mash of some GHQ masts, lots of Langton masts, a few mixed ships, and all with Langton brass ratlines. Because that is look I like.

I guess you all have a point. It's just that if I have a specific named ship from Navwar, Davco, GHQ, and Langton, all different sculpts, then it helps me to know which is 5he more accurate sculpt for the name. Then I just find different names for the others.
I don't understand what happened to two comparison pictures. They were there when I first submitted the post??
If anyone wants to see them, go to my blog or better yet go to the Spanish website in the link.