HMS Victory colors

[Stuart Little]

Being a model railroader as well as ship modeler, one must consider several factors in paint selection and final appearance.

First is the what and when are you modeling, as in fresh dried paint in port after new paint was completed, or a ship that has been at sea for months or years after getting last fresh paint. Sun, wind and water will all effect the look of paint on a ship, train or any other items left out to mother nature.

Is is a glossy finish, or dull weather worn color, regardless of what color that is.

As paint ages, black fade to lighter shades almost grey in some cases, and red fade to lighter shades or light pink, who knows what yellow changes to after some time.

Just look at what happens to the color of copper as a ship sales in the salt water after being plated over the planking.

From my model railroading period, UP armor yellow comes to mind, & boy, were there some variations in shade!

 

[Green Highlander]

 

[Kurt Konrath]

US Navy specifications of the World War 2 era included instructions, not necessarily exact formulas for mixing paints.

So, what has this got to do with HMS Victory?

Until recent times exact color matching was impossible. Warships would have carried basic color pigments to be mixed as needed. The pigments themselves were made from naturally occurring colors that varied, and mixing was anything but scientific. Even today, some paint colors can vary. Back in my working days, industrial specifications specified Red Oxide Primer as a coating for shop fabricated piping assemblies shipped to the field construction site. The paint used in our Marietta, Ohio shop was a dull brown-red. The paint used in our Duluth, MN shop was almost a bright red. Both were Red Oxide Primer.

The search for the exact HMS Victory color is futile.

Roger

That does remind me of the supposedly somewhat true story of "the Pink Submarine" from WWII Pacific theater.

As for same title with different hue, I have dealt with many a shade of Zinc Oxide Green, standard primer for internal surface on aircraft parts. Each manufacture had their own formula and shade, from almost yellow, to light green to dark lime green.

 

[Green Highlander]

Colors difference.

 

[fred.hocker]

I have been hesitant to join this discussion, since paint and colour is such as subjective issue and the topside colours of Victory are an especially fraught matter. The recent pinkish buff is certainly an unpopular choice with virtually everyone, in part because the ship has been black and yellow for the last century and that is the abiding impression everyone has had all their lives. But I think I need to stand up for my colleagues in the preservation trade, who get pilloried in this question on a regular basis for doing their jobs. So I would like to make a few points about how we do this kind of research and why, as well as some specific challenges with Victory.
1. As preservation and research professionals, it is not our job to reinforce or confirm widely held beliefs. Our job is to follow the evidence, where ever it takes us, and report the results accurately. We do this knowing that every time we provide a new view of a widely accepted idea there will be some backlash. Partly we do this to inspire people to think about things rather than accept them blindly. If nothing else, that horrible pink (which I do not like any more than anyone else does) has made a lot of people much more aware of how we study painting history on historic structures. Just because paintings and model kit box tops have portrayed the ship a certain way for decades does not make it true, and if the actual evidence of how it was painted exists, we should try every technique we have to discover what the reality was.
2. Paint history analysis is not voodoo or guesswork, it is a well developed, scientific research process that has been proven on numerous projects over many years, from individual pieces of furniture and paintings to entire buildings. It consists of three parts: scraping or sanding through all the paint layers back to clean wood to reveal how many different layers are present, tying one or more of the revealed layers to specific times or events, and chemical and microscopic analysis of the layers to identify the pigments (and an appreciation of how they might have appeared). This has been used to reveal orginal compositions of reworked paintings, the aesthetic history of buildings, and the original finishes of objects with long lives. We have used it on Vasa to reveal the original colour scheme, which turned out to be be very different and much more garish than people had thought. The results are often surprising or unsettling; people who are used to the dark tone of many Old Master paintings are put off by their bright appearance once cleaned of later varnish that has darkened with age. To them an Old Master painting has a dark, brownish tone, but that is not what Rembrandt painted.
3. Ad hominem attacks on the people who are trying their very best to do the right thing is not very honourable. If you disagree with the results of a research project, please bring a good argument, based on the evidence, to the discussion rather than rubbishing the qualifications of people you do not know. As scientists, we question our conclusions all the time and are always looking for more and better evidence. Most of us are not wedded to our conclusions at the cost of reason, but want to know the truth. The people who undertook the study of Victory's painting history did not do so for the purpose of making people angry, they employed the standard techniques used on historic structures with the goal of developing not just a paint scheme for Trafalgar, but a comprehensive painting chronology that is part of a much larger study of the ship's entire history. And before you go down the "scientists are often wrong" route, think about two things: scientists brought you the cell phone you might be reading this on, and if you had to have a brain tumour removed, would you rather it was done by someone with a scientific education or the local carpenter who happens to have an interest in medicine? Scientists are often wrong, that is part of the job, but real scientists are constantly learning and understanding why they are wrong in order to get to the right answer.
4. As others have pointed out here, H.M.S. Victory has been a lot of different colours over the years, even during its operational career, due to changes in Royal Navy practice, individual preferences by commanding officers, variations in paint formulation, etc. This is before one considers changes in the paint over time due to abrasion, U/V radiation, weathering, interaction with other coatings, etc. Trying to replicate a painting scheme for a specific event, which is the expected path for this ship because it is so closely tied to a specific battle, is an extraordinary challenge. Victory may only have had the Trafalgar scheme for a matter of weeks or months, but was painted and repainted in other colours over much longer periods. Trying to pin down one particular scheme is a complicated task, especially if you consider that we are not just interested in the big picture colours of the background and gunport bands, but need to understand the entire colour scheme and its details. It may be possible, for example, to recover the original colour or the colour of a specific item at a certain date because that item has been preserved, but finding enough bits of evidence from the same target date is a challenge. On Vasa, in contrast, there is only the original paint scheme and all of the original timbers are preserved, so our challenge is a walk in the park by comparison to Victory.
5. Very little original surface from 1805 survives. The ship is now more than 250 years old, and has been under near-constant repair, alteration, and restoration. The ship was extensively repaired almost immediately after Trafalgar, losing substantial areas of the planking, and later repair and restoration efforts have continued to remove what one could call the Trafalgar surface. At the start of the current restoration, it was realized that not only was very little of the upperworks original to the early 19th century, but much of it (including almost all of the exterior planking) dated to 1955 or later. Even where old, pre-1955 timber survives, it is a challenge to assign it a year. This is a fascinating detective story. In a few cases, the installation date of a specific timber or structure is known, so the first colour applied to that timber can be dated exactly. This provides a benchmark that allows the construction of a paint chronology, which then can be used to identify which timbers are earlier and which ones are later, as well as giving an indication of the general trends in colour choice. It can also allow the correlation of paint layers on different objects, so it is possible to say something like, when timber A was painted green, timber B was painted red, then both timbers were later painted black. With a little luck, it can be possible to build up an overall paint scheme for a particular period, especially in later years when the ship was photographed. The people working on the ship have also used dendrochronology (tree-ring dating) to determine when certain timbers were felled. This has had some unanticipated and disappointing results, such as showing that the famous "Nelson knee" against which the admiral supposedly died, is from a tree cut down many years after Trafalgar. On the other hand, the research has also shown that some parts thought to be later restorations or anachronistic are actually from the working life of the vessel. The restoration project has produced a number of maps of the structure, which show the construction and restoration history in graphic form. It is a fascinating story, but the Trafalgar surface has proven elusive.

So please understand that the people doing this work are passionately committed professionals in search of conclusions based on real evidence, they are not idiots or misguided, incompetent bureaucrats. Their goal is not simply to replace rotten timber for another round of repairs, but to identify and conserve as much of the ship's historic structure as possible. The challenge they face is extraordinarily complicated and their audience is dedicated and quick to criticize. They are using the most effective research methods available and often pushing the edge of the envelope, developing new techniques where none existed before. The archaeological mapping of the hull structure, for example, is one of the most comprehensive documentation projects I have ever seen, and once complete will provide a definitive construction, repair, and restoration history of the ship. It will likely reveal a great deal that may surprise people, not just the change to an unpopular colour.

 

[Green Highlander]

Hello fellow modelers!
By posting pictures of HMS Victory,my intention was just to show the new colours of the ship,which most of you have probably already seen,without going into the comments.Each of us can paint the ship according to our own choice.And my Victory is in yelloe and black because I like those colors better.
Greetings to everyone.

 

[fred.hocker]

Hello fellow modelers!
By posting pictures of HMS Victory,my intention was just to show the new colours of the ship,which most of you have probably already seen,without going into the comments.Each of us can paint the ship according to our own choice.And my Victory is in yelloe and black because I like those colors better.
Greetings to everyone.

Absolutely! To me, models are like paintings, they are an interpretation based on how we see the subject and what it means to us. And for the record, I prefer black and yellow as well, purely for aesthetic reasons.

Fred

 

[Bilge Ratt]

Almost every day, "science" is proven wrong, so I'll stay with yellow. To back the yellow version, there are contemporary paintings, by artists who saw her, as well as testimony from a crewman at Trafalgar in a letter home. He wrote "the French are just like ours, black with YELLOW stripes". I'll take his word over 21st century revision. (Painting by Turner, who "only painted what he saw")

View attachment 498803

I have many books on the works of maritime artists, from the Nelson era and earlier. Lots of yellow and no pink! I agree entirely with Enjay; the artists were around at the time, and saw their subjects in reality. 'Experts' desperate to make a name for themselves by promoting theories in direct contradiction of contemporary evidence, both written (thanks Enjay, I was not aware of that) and artworks.

Put the telescope to the blind eye: 'I see no pink!'

ratty

 

[Bilge Ratt]

I have been hesitant to join this discussion, since paint and colour is such as subjective issue and the topside colours of Victory are an especially fraught matter. The recent pinkish buff is certainly an unpopular choice with virtually everyone, in part because the ship has been black and yellow for the last century and that is the abiding impression everyone has had all their lives. But I think I need to stand up for my colleagues in the preservation trade, who get pilloried in this question on a regular basis for doing their jobs. So I would like to make a few points about how we do this kind of research and why, as well as some specific challenges with Victory.
1. As preservation and research professionals, it is not our job to reinforce or confirm widely held beliefs. Our job is to follow the evidence, where ever it takes us, and report the results accurately. We do this knowing that every time we provide a new view of a widely accepted idea there will be some backlash. Partly we do this to inspire people to think about things rather than accept them blindly. If nothing else, that horrible pink (which I do not like any more than anyone else does) has made a lot of people much more aware of how we study painting history on historic structures. Just because paintings and model kit box tops have portrayed the ship a certain way for decades does not make it true, and if the actual evidence of how it was painted exists, we should try every technique we have to discover what the reality was.
2. Paint history analysis is not voodoo or guesswork, it is a well developed, scientific research process that has been proven on numerous projects over many years, from individual pieces of furniture and paintings to entire buildings. It consists of three parts: scraping or sanding through all the paint layers back to clean wood to reveal how many different layers are present, tying one or more of the revealed layers to specific times or events, and chemical and microscopic analysis of the layers to identify the pigments (and an appreciation of how they might have appeared). This has been used to reveal orginal compositions of reworked paintings, the aesthetic history of buildings, and the original finishes of objects with long lives. We have used it on Vasa to reveal the original colour scheme, which turned out to be be very different and much more garish than people had thought. The results are often surprising or unsettling; people who are used to the dark tone of many Old Master paintings are put off by their bright appearance once cleaned of later varnish that has darkened with age. To them an Old Master painting has a dark, brownish tone, but that is not what Rembrandt painted.
3. Ad hominem attacks on the people who are trying their very best to do the right thing is not very honourable. If you disagree with the results of a research project, please bring a good argument, based on the evidence, to the discussion rather than rubbishing the qualifications of people you do not know. As scientists, we question our conclusions all the time and are always looking for more and better evidence. Most of us are not wedded to our conclusions at the cost of reason, but want to know the truth. The people who undertook the study of Victory's painting history did not do so for the purpose of making people angry, they employed the standard techniques used on historic structures with the goal of developing not just a paint scheme for Trafalgar, but a comprehensive painting chronology that is part of a much larger study of the ship's entire history. And before you go down the "scientists are often wrong" route, think about two things: scientists brought you the cell phone you might be reading this on, and if you had to have a brain tumour removed, would you rather it was done by someone with a scientific education or the local carpenter who happens to have an interest in medicine? Scientists are often wrong, that is part of the job, but real scientists are constantly learning and understanding why they are wrong in order to get to the right answer.
4. As others have pointed out here, H.M.S. Victory has been a lot of different colours over the years, even during its operational career, due to changes in Royal Navy practice, individual preferences by commanding officers, variations in paint formulation, etc. This is before one considers changes in the paint over time due to abrasion, U/V radiation, weathering, interaction with other coatings, etc. Trying to replicate a painting scheme for a specific event, which is the expected path for this ship because it is so closely tied to a specific battle, is an extraordinary challenge. Victory may only have had the Trafalgar scheme for a matter of weeks or months, but was painted and repainted in other colours over much longer periods. Trying to pin down one particular scheme is a complicated task, especially if you consider that we are not just interested in the big picture colours of the background and gunport bands, but need to understand the entire colour scheme and its details. It may be possible, for example, to recover the original colour or the colour of a specific item at a certain date because that item has been preserved, but finding enough bits of evidence from the same target date is a challenge. On Vasa, in contrast, there is only the original paint scheme and all of the original timbers are preserved, so our challenge is a walk in the park by comparison to Victory.
5. Very little original surface from 1805 survives. The ship is now more than 250 years old, and has been under near-constant repair, alteration, and restoration. The ship was extensively repaired almost immediately after Trafalgar, losing substantial areas of the planking, and later repair and restoration efforts have continued to remove what one could call the Trafalgar surface. At the start of the current restoration, it was realized that not only was very little of the upperworks original to the early 19th century, but much of it (including almost all of the exterior planking) dated to 1955 or later. Even where old, pre-1955 timber survives, it is a challenge to assign it a year. This is a fascinating detective story. In a few cases, the installation date of a specific timber or structure is known, so the first colour applied to that timber can be dated exactly. This provides a benchmark that allows the construction of a paint chronology, which then can be used to identify which timbers are earlier and which ones are later, as well as giving an indication of the general trends in colour choice. It can also allow the correlation of paint layers on different objects, so it is possible to say something like, when timber A was painted green, timber B was painted red, then both timbers were later painted black. With a little luck, it can be possible to build up an overall paint scheme for a particular period, especially in later years when the ship was photographed. The people working on the ship have also used dendrochronology (tree-ring dating) to determine when certain timbers were felled. This has had some unanticipated and disappointing results, such as showing that the famous "Nelson knee" against which the admiral supposedly died, is from a tree cut down many years after Trafalgar. On the other hand, the research has also shown that some parts thought to be later restorations or anachronistic are actually from the working life of the vessel. The restoration project has produced a number of maps of the structure, which show the construction and restoration history in graphic form. It is a fascinating story, but the Trafalgar surface has proven elusive.

So please understand that the people doing this work are passionately committed professionals in search of conclusions based on real evidence, they are not idiots or misguided, incompetent bureaucrats. Their goal is not simply to replace rotten timber for another round of repairs, but to identify and conserve as much of the ship's historic structure as possible. The challenge they face is extraordinarily complicated and their audience is dedicated and quick to criticize. They are using the most effective research methods available and often pushing the edge of the envelope, developing new techniques where none existed before. The archaeological mapping of the hull structure, for example, is one of the most comprehensive documentation projects I have ever seen, and once complete will provide a definitive construction, repair, and restoration history of the ship. It will likely reveal a great deal that may surprise people, not just the change to an unpopular colour.

That's a fair comment Fred; I doubt that anyone thinks that the present colour was made up without thought or process. But if a contemporary crew-member describes the ship as 'yellow and black', and the work of contemporary marine artists backs that up, then I would be very dubious of anyone, no matter how well-founded the research seems to be, who claims that reality was different.

Pink as a colour has modern connotations which makes its advocacy doubly unfortunate, and one has to wonder at the possible hidden motives of at least some of those who made the claim that Nelson's ship was pink. It is most certainly not a colour which I have ever seen any reason to associate with the Royal Navy's sailing era, in anything associated with the paint scheme of ships; and to judge by the controversy this has ignited, nor have many, many others.

Ratty

 

[Stuart Little]

I have many books on the works of maritime artists, from the Nelson era and earlier. Lots of yellow and no pink! I agree entirely with Enjay; the artists were around at the time, and saw their subjects in reality. 'Experts' desperate to make a name for themselves by promoting theories in direct contradiction of contemporary evidence, both written (thanks Enjay, I was not aware of that) and artworks.

Put the telescope to the blind eye: 'I see no pink!'

ratty

I'm wholehearted in agreement with you 'Ratty' ( ). One can hardly believe all those painters were colour blind.
I'm at the stage of experimenting with Vallejo yellow ochre, bright yellow & white, to get what I consider an acceptable shade to my eyes. I did try adding a spot of carmine, which brought it towards the present colour - rejected by myself. Vallejo's ochre brown is a dark yellow ochre.

 

[GIG23]

S

 

[GIG23]

Hallo meine Herren,

Das ist ja der Wahnsinn. Vielen Dank, dass ich deine Diskussionen zur Farbe der HMS Victory lesen durfte. Aber wie gesagt, baue ich ein Schiff nach historischen Vorgaben, oder baue ich ein Schiff nach meinem eigenen subjektiven Empfinden. Beides hat Vor- und Nachteile. Eines haben sie aber alle gemeinsam. Es ist verdammt harte Arbeit, es kostet Zeit und Geld, ein Modell zu erstellen! Aber es macht Spaß, mit den eigenen Händen etwas Schönes zu schaffen. Und wenn das Ergebnis stimmt und man es seinen Freunden präsentieren kann, ist sogar ein bisschen Stolz dabei. Daumen hoch

 

[GIG23]

Hello gentlemen,

This is amazing. Thank you very much for letting me read your discussions about the color of the HMS Victory. But as I said, do I build a ship according to historical specifications, or do I build a ship according to my own subjective feelings. Both have advantages and disadvantages. But they all have one thing in common. It's damn hard work, it takes time and money to create a model! But it's fun to make something beautiful with your own hands. And when the result is right and you can present it to your friends, there's even a bit of pride involved.

 

[Pioneer]

Ha-ha-ha.

Hi I’m new to this forum, and my user name is Pioneer.
I am also building a 1:98 scale HMS Victory and whilst I’m no where near the painting stage, I like to be informed of any problematic stages during the build.
As far as I can tell at present the correct colour is a reasonably bright yellow.
I remember seeing Victory when I was young (I’m 62 now) and she was dressed in bright yellow and black, I saw her again last year and was disappointed to see her looking very dowdy indeed, I was told that the colour yellow had faded and had been bleached by the sun over the years that the yellow had turned to dirty pink, and that at the end of her current restoration would be returning to bright yellow.
On reflection I feel that the paint analysed is of this faded paint and would, I feel give an incorrect spectrum reading.
Thank you for your time guys.

 

[Stuart Little]

So, a lighter shade of black, and quite a nice shade to boot! This brings to mind something I’ve picked up recently from a couple of very talented people on the forums. The first, Bruma, has a stunning Cutty sark build on here, from whom I’ve learned to not use standard acrylic black, but something more ‘off-black’. I hadn’t even realised that there are umpteen shades of black out there! That led to me using Vallejo Nato black on my own CS, which allows better viewing of the detail. The second lesson was from a chap called John Ott, who recently completed a magnificent build of the Soleil Royale over on MSW. This really is a work of art. Instead of black, he uses van dyke brown to great effect. I haven’t tried this yet but as I’m close to painting a revised remake of the victory stern, I have it in mind to give that a whirl, perhaps mixing with a bit of black.

I think one of the side benefits of this approach is that it frees up pure black as a tool to hide stuff. To paraphrase John, if you don’t want people to look at it, paint it black!

I propose to use Vallejo VAL 862 - black grey, with perhaps a spot of blue. It's very close to NCS s8500n. I loaded them both on adjacent 'monisters' for comparison. I've just realised that Vallejo have upgraded their Model Color range (& others), 30 old colours have been discontinued, & 32 new ones added. VAL 994 is now a contender, according to a review, it has a slight bluish tint.

 

[Stuart Little]

Peter Goodwin would recommend that you follow the ship's carpenter's manifest. 50% white, 50% yellow (the white would likely not be very pure but somewhat dirty) There is no better guidance than that.
As for the travesty that vandalises Victory now consider that Andrew Bains the 'curator' is a quantity surveyor who attended a post grad course in marine conservation. He is not a marine historian.
An analysis of Victory's paint was carried out by Lincoln University who found traces of vermilion in the samples and 'assumed' this was a part of the colour mix. So the ship is now painted an extremely unpleasant dirty pink. It goes without saying that Nelson did not choose this colour!!
I think it's likely that traces of red were picked up because at the Battle of Cape St Vincent she was painted red!
She was red while being used as a hospital hulk in the Thames approaches for some years until the loss of one of our first raters meant she was needed for Trafalgar. She was then scraped back and painted with the 'Nelson Checker'-dark grey and pale yellow. Traces of the original colour would be found still on the scraped hull. The inner bulwarks would also be the pale yellow of the carpenter's mix.
Unfortunately Caldercraft (the definitive Victory kit offering) have taken Bains' findings at face value and recommend the 'new' colour without stopping to question the history and the likely cause for confusion.
The old deep yellow ochre previously on Victory was equally inaccurate. That was a replacement for the black and white adopted by the navy in the 1820's when she was fitted with covered headrails etc. The version that nobody builds. We opt for the Trafalgar version....obviously!
I always use Humbrol matt enamels on wood, When fully hardened, 24 hours (though dry to the touch in about half an hour) it can be polished with a light rub with fine steel wool or even a cloth to give the best finish, far superior tp acrylics. It comes in small tins so the 50/50 mix is easily acheived.

I reckon, Bob, you nailed it! If the yellow had been 'slapped on', on top of the red, then there would have been a good chance of the red 'bleeding' into the yellow. I encountered this happening when spraying a car with white over a grey primer that had been thinned with thinners previously used to wash out the gun after red paint, not much rd, but enough to give a pinkish hue. Well that's my 2-pence theory!

 

[Kevin the Lubber]

2. Paint history analysis is not voodoo or guesswork, it is a well developed, scientific research process that has been proven on numerous projects over many years

3. Ad hominem attacks on the people who are trying their very best to do the right thing is not very honourable.

So please understand that the people doing this work are passionately committed professionals in search of conclusions based on real evidence, they are not idiots or misguided, incompetent bureaucrats. Their goal is not simply to replace rotten timber for another round of repairs, but to identify and conserve as much of the ship's historic structure as possible. The challenge they face is extraordinarily complicated and their audience is dedicated and quick to criticize.

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.


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.



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.


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.



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?"


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...



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.

 

[Stuart Little]

To save argument, think I might leave her in "Grey Ghost" primer

 

[Kevin the Lubber]

o save argument, think I might leave her in "Grey Ghost" primer

But do add the odd touch of gold wherever it would liven things up - blocks, deadeyes, cannons etc

 

[Stuart Little]

But do add the odd touch of gold wherever it would liven things up - blocks, deadeyes, cannons etc

How's this for a touch of gold - Vallejo brown ochre (Maroon ochre)? Who said; "The camera never lies"?
The second one came out too dark, whereas the first is a bit too light.