HMS Victory colors

[Bob Ellis]

Well said Fred, you've perfectly articulated my thoughts on this discussion. One of the things I really like and value about the ship modelling forums is that debate is almost always respectful, even when people disagree. Let's keep it that way, Twitter and Facebook are there for the other stuff.

Maybe a few illustrations will shed some light, or light some shade .

This is pink. The body is mine. One of these statements is untrue.
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This was the colour of the Victory in 2021. Although we have collectively called it 'pink', it's nothing of the sort. More the kind of vague beige that you get when you mix all your left over light colours together. Reminds me of the colour of the minced turkey we used to have by about day 5 after Christmas, when all other creative possibilities had been exhausted. I don't eat turkey any more.
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This is the Victory in 2013. Brilliant for modelling as it really pops but alarmingly orange. Reminds me of someone famous. Now, if I was an artist who was being paid shedloads of dosh to paint a stunning Trafalgar scene for one of HRH's palaces, I'd be going far more towards this colour than boring old muddy mucks above. Just saying.
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And these are from Turners painting of the Victory returning from Trafalgar in three views, painted in about 1822 IIRC. Oh dear, a bit miserable looking don't you think.
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But clearly, if we rely on JMT we are all wrong on at least one count. Our ubiquitously black stripes should in fact be something like burnt sienna, which is great because it means I'm in the right area if I go for a rich Van Dyck brown, and all of you'se are wrong . As for the yellow, OMG but we're in even worse shape. There's definitely a bit of grey and brown going on there, along with all manner of yellows and oranges, plus a few hints of red and pink. Could the man not make up his mind! Though sadly no t-shirt cerise. Maybe it wasn't invented back then.

But look at the masts.... don't they look a bit closer to 2021 than 2013?

Finally, de Loutherbourg's Battle of Trafalgar painted in 1805. Clearly, minced turkey was all the rage in both England AND France. Maybe this is why we fought for so long. It certainly put all our family in a bad mood, no Christmas was complete without an upended monopoly board or a cluedo candlestick wedged somewhere unspeakable. And it has to be said, those chaps sitting on the mast are looking remarkably relaxed given the circumstances. " 'ave you got a light, boy?"
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Back to the point though. The reality is that the closest thing to a definitive answer will come from scientific analysis. It might be wrong or we might not like it, but everything else, no matter how impassioned, is pure conjecture. The wrong scientific answer is likely to be several times less wrong than yours or my, preference-influenced guess. It's no good turning to contemporary paintings for answers. For a start, they contradict each other but in any case these are works of art, not photo-realism. They were painted to glorify the battle, not to give a faithful account. Turner was a proto-impressionist who took licence with everything, including colour, to create a... well... an impression (which got him into a spot of bother when it came to his Trafalgar scene). De Loutherbourg did naval scenes as a sideline to theatre sets and thought wavetops and lemon meringue pie had much in common. Pocock's paintings are supposedly more documentarian, but even he makes things up where it suits. How much of our attachment to the yellow ochre is because we've always believed it to be so, and we prefer it to the pink? What if the scientific analysis had been that, back in the day, it looked like the Soliel Royale on steroids? And if we have a preference for a certain colour, why wouldn't the same have been true for the artists?

In any case, is the 2021 colour really pink-hued, or is it just a funny shade of yellow? In a certain light...

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Enjoy your respective Victory's. Mine will probably end up being yellow ochre and a dark brown, because I think that will look good and will give a reasonable impression of a Victory. Though in honour of the debate I think I'll sneak in a bit of cerise somewhere.

Unfortunately we can't use contemporary art as a guide. After 200 years the pigments are oxidised, covered in dirt, or were the artist's interpretaion dependant on the light conditions at the scene they were painting, and of course they may not be that accurate in the first place!
Shame, it would save a lot of disagreement!!

 

[dafi]

Thank you @fred.hocker for this wonderful statement.

I think some of the confusion that comes, at least to me, that I have not yet seen so far a copy of the detailed analyses. Is there an official report for the public existing? I only found polemic newspaper or online reports so far. Nothing to really understand the deeper details.

I really can follow the way of analyses and determinig the possible date of the color samples found. Where I am still lacking information and therefor understanding is the provenance of those samples, I mean where exactely they were found and how the conclusion was made to see the whole ship in that color. Was it a few single spots or were the findings spread over the ship?

Also we are talking about preindustrial times, so I do believe each barrel had a different tone as the pigment was natural product with 50,000 shades of ochre. On top of it the barrels of paint were hand-mixed, so even with the exactely same color base it will give a completely different color if one part of the pigment is sticking to the ground of the barrel. Even todays armies with standardized colors and industrial made paints, one easily can pic a fresh painted area in the common monochrome olive drab So my personal expectation is the ships of those days looked even more patchwork like than some WW2-veterans from the grey navies after heavy duty operational times.

On the other hand I once read, that the shipyard was short on yellow ochre when Victory was near completition after the great repair in 1803 or after the small repair prior o Trafalgar. So the usual mix of yellow ochre with some white was still streched with some red that was on stock. And this would give exactely the salmonish color the scientists found. But here too I lack the sources for this. Does anybody knows more about that?

And some final remarks that I cant resist

In the the 1920ies the ship was painted in bright cadmium yellow. This was as for the contemporary remarks that the ship was yellow and black, exactely as stated in an earlier post in this thread. It was just discontiniued as for the ban of this paint for safety reasons and not as it was already longer known that with "yellow" it was not meant cadmium but the todays well accepted yellow ochre tone. Today we are quite sure, that this first color was a misinterpretation, so why not the one afterwards too? It is quite possible that this was still in the normal range of yellow colors, so nothing special to annotate. If one has a smaller range of names for all things yellow, then also yellow ochre and the salmonish tone and all the things in between were combined in the descripition of "yellow".

And one more very important remark: In those days pink was the color of the boys and blue of the girls. While blue - this including light blue - was considered a soft color also attributed to the virgin Mary, the red was considered dominant and male and therefor pink was seen as the small brother of this male color. The change for pink for the girls and blue for the boys started only after 1900 and was only becoming common practice after WW" :-0

So do not judge the colors by our todays taste. Perhaps Nelson and all his tars loved the more male touch of this new shade, that possibly just happend as for shortage of yellow ochre ;-)

Just some thoughts and as always some more questions, DAniel

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[Ragnar]

Did "Daedalus21" get an answer to his question of Jan 31, 2025?

Ragnar