For The Shipbuilders

A number of bloggers I follow have recently been writing about naval wargame rules and the building of ships to take part. Naval history and the making of model boats is another of my interests, and I'd like to share a couple of sources with you.

Just arrived in the post yesterday is a copy of the new Osprey in their naval titles. This one is New Vanguard number 262 entitled "British Ironclads 1860 -75, HMS Warrior and the Royal Navy's 'Black Battlefleet'".

As the title explains, the booklet covers the development of the Royal Navy's battlefleet from the building of the 'Warrior' to the first mastless turret ship the 'Devastation'. It covers design and development, tactics, armour, ordnance and life on board.

Each class has a brief description with a small table of important essential information, such as size, speed, armament etc. ; and many have a small coloured profile illustration. I've given examples of both in the following pictures.

 

 

 



For those interested in this period on warship developemet it is a handy little reference.

 

 

The second source is one I've only just discovered, having been pointed to it by a friend while I was digging out details of HMS Glatton. It is probably unknown to a lot of people and likely to remain a mystery to most, unless you have a good reading knowledge of Polish, as it is a model boat magazine in that language.

 

It is called MODELARSWO OKRETOWE and comes out at intervals. The issue I obtained direct (www.modelarstwookretowe.pl) was issue 69, with 45 pages of text and drawings. As I was only after the Glatton drawings the language barrier is no problem, though I could probably find someone to do a translation for bits I needed.

 

 

 

This particular issue covered, among other things, five pages of close print with illustrations, of new release kits, both plastic and card; a to page colour spread on the great Jim Bauman's 1:700 HMS Magnificent of 1899, a fold out plan of a patrol vessel 'Tur' at 1:100, a drawing of the Danish coast defence monitor of 1909-39 'Peder Skram', six pages mainly of drawings, of the British 4.7 QF mkIX mounting, two pages of drawings for HMS Glatton at 1:400, and a seven page monograph on the Deutchland class of WW11, including details of many books on the subject and a catalogue of kits issued over the years.

 

 

one page of the Glatton drawings



 



 

one page of the Deutschland article. Nice to see the old Eaglewall kits in the listing.

 

Evidently many back issues are still available, so I may look into what else may be useful. The web site shows them with an index of contents.

I hope this has been of some interest to some of you. I will get round to normal posts eventually.