Part 4
Many thanks again to all for showing interest and following my Victory construction project.
When I started building HMS Victory there was no Internet. All research had to be done through print media and involved years of building your own library. Centuries-old treasures lay in display cases in museums available only to visitors, and at that, only about 10 percent of their entire collection is on display. In 1994-95 along came the
World Wide Web (www). That's what it was called. The term,
Internet, did not exist yet. In its cave drawing days it was like a bad set of Encyclopedias, but it was a start. As Dr. Watson says, "After all Holmes, we are men of Science," and a giant network was born that expanded with light speed.
In 2014 I discovered the National Maritime Museum's website.
http://collections.rmg.co.uk/collections.html#!csearch;authority=subject-90308;collectionReference=subject-90308;start=260 (copy and paste)
I eagerly went to the ship models collection, which is the link above, and found two contemporary Victory models in her 1765+ configuration.
These models were not on display when I made multiple visits in 1988.
The NMM is under an umbrella called the Royal Museums Greenwich or RMG. This is only one snowflake on the tip of the iceberg. The wonders of the Internet, and thanks to the staff of RMG, are showing us not only what is on display, but the other 90 percent as well. I finally found what I needed to complete the build I wanted. Original plan drawings are in a section too.
With new inspiration I started back on the build and what changes had to be made. The first and most obvious was the fore and main channels had to lowered to below the upper deck gunports. I used brass pins to hold these in place so it was a matter of relocating them and replacing the missing moldings in their previous locations.
Before and after.
The entry port canopy was built in post 1803 style so these had to be removed and replaced with older style construction.
Before and after.
You'll notice other areas of progress between the above photos. Next thing on the list was the beakhead bulkhead and round houses. I had used contemporary model photos of another three decker for reference and the dimensions and moldings were too high. So this was cut out and newly constructed. Again before and after photos.
The last four photos are from 5-2016 to 5-2017.
Next, Part 5 will cover the stern galleries.