Revell 05408 H.M.S. Victory 1:225 Scale Unbuilt/Unpainted Plastic Model Kit

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I ended up using this as a test bed to learn rigging, using Lennarth Petersson's wonderful book. This is actually my second ship model, first was the Revell Santa Maria. The shade of yellow paint employed by the British fleet prior to Trafalgar appears to have varied from ship to ship. Some ships used yellow neat, others mixed yellow with white in a ratio of 2:1 or 3:1, whilst others mixed yellow and white at 1:1. Some progress on the Revell kit - finally decided to ditch the ugly plastic stand and epoxy the model to a pair of metal pedestals , courtesy of our HECEPOB friend Artist in the... well, that thing BTW, I have edited the original post with simple things I added to the original kit, which might be of interest for those building it.

Warshipguy, I'm definately interested in that kit if it's vintage. If you'd ship to Spain plase PM what you want for it :) Mighty nice looking model. Rigging a model to such a tiny scale isn't easy, but this one looks impressively to scale. And I like the sails. (Those who frequent this Forum know I don't often say that.) Lots of people know a great deal more about H.M.S. Victory than I do, and if one of them happens to read this post and offers some evidence I haven't heard about I'll be delighted to read it. (How about it, Forum? Does anybody out there know of a piece of actual evidence that those entry ports were there in 1805?) Constructed with precision and meticulousness, the Revell H.M.S. Victory assembly kit provides an enriched and accurate portrayal of the naval ship. It is a naval ship model product that caters to individuals with an intermediate to advanced skill level.Yellow ochre as supplied to ships was a dark colour that was commonly mixed with white (1804 handbook of instruction for RN officers). It must be borne in mind that this was an earth pigment and the actual colour varied widely. I think the first point to bear in mind is that Victory has changed colour innumerable times since 1922, we have simply been honest about what we have done, and based the change on all available evidence.

RDiaz, you're not alone. I'm inclined to agree, in fact. The entry ports she has now are beautiful, but it looks to me like the weight of the evidence is against their having been there in 1805.

Pure yellow aged in the sun would indeed pale over time and to match this when repainting, a yellow / white mix may attempted to match the aged yellow color. A new yellow color would be quite alot brighter and if there were many ships in a fleet painted at different times then I can see Nelson's issue and request for a pale yellow color to be used as standard. There's lots of evidence that at the time of Trafalgar the ship had shoulder-high bulwarks around the poop and forecastle. The Heller kit doesn't. I know there's been a lot of argument in various quarters about them. A lot of people seem to believe in them rather emotionally. But I've looked at quite a few paintings and photos of the ship prior to her restoration (in the early twentieth century), and I have yet to find a contemporary picture that shows the entry ports.

From the surviving carpenters' accounts of British ships at Trafalgar, we can discern that ship's sides were either painted with pure yellow (Prince, Temeraire), used a mix of two or three parts yellow to one part white (Ajax and Revenge prior to the battle) or used a mixture that was (or was close to) equal parts yellow:white (Mars, Thunderer).Measuring at a depth of 400 millimeters and a height of 330 millimeters, this ship model is compact yet intricate. It is scaled at 1:225, making it a faithful replica of the original H.M.S. Victory. To see if I could get some further information to help inform the debate and assist in members deciding which colour scheme to go with I thought I’d go to the man who should know, Andrew Baines, Deputy Director of Heritage and Curator at the National Museum of the Royal Navy. Dr. R.C. Anderson, who supervised the restoration in the 1920s, admitted flat out that the low forecastle bulwarks were "a mistake for which I must bear my share of the blame." He said that research had established that the bulwarks were raised during the refit shortly before Trafalgar, but the researchers revealed their findings just after Dr. Anderson and his team had finished building the low, knee-high ones. They hesitated (understandably) to scrap work they'd just finished, and "the result, while wrong historically, is certainly pleasing to the eye."