"Some doubts about HMS Victory" Topic

Hello everyone,
I'm working on my first ship of the Meridian brand, HMS Victory. I have some doubts about the color of the cover, carriage of guns and other accessories. I'm using as a model the photo of following link. I would like to confirm me the degree of commonality of this drawing with the HMS Victory at Trafalgar, thanks for everything.

link

Best regards,
Julián

The official HMS Victory website has some good photographs.

Julian – what do you mean by the 'cover' ?

Gun carriages were usually oiled or varnished wood with black metal fittings and wheels but some ships (not sure if Victory in 1805 was one) painted them red lead or red ochre (same as the interior sides).

Decks were 'holystoned' – Vallejo Deck Tan is a good colour for that.

The yellow has always been a bit debatable as to its actual colour. The modern version is probably brighter than original, cheap Yellow Ochre is duller and tends to the brown.

Pink? link

No doubt you have seen the new colors for Victory;

link

Many thanks for the info… it's very helpful for me!

Thanks for that link jowady. Now I know why the color was changed. Now I have to repaint my Brits!

Hi Vol,
I would not do that! It looks so wrong and Pink, very pink. I know of no painting that comes close to that colour!
Be safe
Rory

Hi Vol,
I would not do that! It looks so wrong and Pink, very pink. I know of no painting that comes close to that colour!
Be safe
Rory

That color comes from a very thorough analysis of the actual paint on the ship at the time of Trafalgar.

link

link

For those who don't like the color, well, the Royal Navy has accepted it and HMS Victory is being restored in those colors.

Now I have to repaint my Brits!

That's probably not necessary, Vol. At the time of Trafalgar, color schemes, although very similar, were not yet standardized. Not all the ships in the fleet would have recently been repainted and not all would have been done in identical shades. As a printer, I deal with color controls all day, every day, and I can attest that even with pigments produced under stringent quality controls and mixed with modern equipment, some very different hues can result from identical formulas. The Royal Navy's paints, made by hand from many sources and mixed on the spot by ships' crews, almost certainly varied considerably.

The cross-section sample that was shown by Crick Smith in the video very clearly showed that the Victory started out in a very yellow-ochre scheme (after her reconstruction at the turn of the century), followed by the off-white that was chosen for her recent touch-up, followed again (probably at intervals of a few years) by several quite different shades of off-white, including one that was distinctly light gray. It's also clearly visible in the sample that there was significant discoloration in the outer part of the lighter colored layers, most likely from deterioration of the pigment by exposure to light and salt water, so that after a couple years they may have appeared more ochre-ish than white.

It's also generally accepted that she was done in plain varnish with black strakes (like virtually every warship in European waters during most of the 17th and 18th centuries) before her reconstruction, and she would have appeared in that scheme at Cape St. Vincent. So, unless you're going to repaint her for each battle in which she appeared, you may as well just pick the paint scheme you like and leave her that way.

I would also recommend taking anything stated in the Daily Mail article linked above with a healthy grain of salt or two, since they misidentified a photo of the figurehead as a "masthead", and claimed that, at the time of her reconstruction, she "had become a symbol of Britain's naval strength", when in fact she had just been designated to become a prison hulk/hospital ship for wounded prisoners of war because she was 40 years old and very much worn out.

Whew! Thanks Jeff, you just saved me a lot of work! ;-)

Here's a more expansive explanation of the color research:

link