Victoria, 1887, British Battleship, 1:250

[Don Boose]

Superb, Carl!

Is the buff-colored cylindrical structure abaft the after searchlight platform a conning tower?

Don

[Golden Bear]

No, it is supposed to be a brass mounted binnacle. Brass is tough to do in paper. I did the searchlight also as brass without any evidence for it but because I like the look.


Carl

[Don Boose]

Thanks, Carl. You are probably right about the searchlight being of brass. John Masefield* wrote a wonderful book about the British merchant navy around the turn of the last century in which there is much discussion of the various ship's impedimenta (binnacles, searchlights, lanterns, scuttles, and so on) fabricated of brass and polished with brick dust. I am sure that searchlights on Royal Navy ships of the Victorian era were also made of brass.

Don

*I THINK it was Masefield. I'm proofreading galleys of my book at the Casa Mani espresso cafe and don't have access to my list of books read and can't find the book in any Internet list of Masefield's works. I'll try to check tonight and verify the title and author, as the book is very much worth reading by anyone interested in ships and the sea in the age of steam and iron.

[birder]

GB your model is very pretty. Thanks for letting us watch the goings-on.

[Golden Bear]

If you look at on board photos of these British ships in their prime - these photos seem to be rarer than for the French of equivalent age - it is amazing to see the sort of bling that they carried. There were trophies and statues and all manner of things. I made an educated guess that shiny brass fittings would be desirable to the fashion conscious Mediterranean fleet.

Here is the research question for this week: Victoria's turret was open on top. This is clear from photos taken inside the turret. A sort of grating spanned this opening as shown in my modeling of the turret. I have found a reference, in Beeler I think, that Inflexible had open topped turrets. Photos and drawings indicate that these also had the gratings over them. However, ships as late as at least the Canopus class also had gratings on top of turrets. Were open topped turrets still being used that late in time? Note that the French had completely enclosed turrets for some time over the same period.


Carl

[B-Manic]

There are a great many different styles of binnacle used on major warships. Some were purely functional and some very decorative. Here are some examples. They all use large amounts of brass, the naval corrosion resistant metal of choice.

When you had huge numbers of crew that were not really fully employed except at battle stations keeping the brass tiddly was not really a big problem.

~ Douglas

[Don Boose]

The limited sources available to me (principally Burt and Parkes) don't provide any authoritative answer to the turret top question, but both say that the Majestic and Canopus classes had 2" turret roofs (Burt, pp. 120 and 147) and that the Majestics had "completely closed armoured shields (turrets) to protect the barbettes and gun crews." (Burt, p. 119) Burt also says that in the the Barfleur and Centurion "For the first time in a British battleship lightly armoured shields were provided for the barbettes." (Burt, p. 93) I don't know how this squares with the contrary evidence.

Meanwhile, it wasn't John Masefield, but William McFee, who wrote the book I referred to. The title of the book was "Watch Below."

Don

[Golden Bear]

I've looked at the references and I'm still not certain. There is a suspicious cover over the Magnificent (Majestic class) turret on p. 115 of Burt.

Before rooting into that topic, p. 85, discussing Hood, points out that the completely enclosed armored shield had been interduced in Renown and Majestic. The timeline on these ships can be a little dicey. On p.93 it is pointed out that Centurion's were open at the back.

Back to the subject of Majestic and Canopus... It appears to me that be the Formidables the question is not important. They appear solid topped. Canopus class vessels in WWI are photographed with solid tops - but did this get installed during one of the major rebuilds? The photo on p.115 makes me suspicious of the Majestics and the line drawing on pp. 138-39 of Canopus do the same for that class.

I've been diving into Beeler and Brown for hints but nothing yet.


Carl

[CharlieC]

I noticed on this image of HMS Victoria in 1888 - Image:Hms-victoria-c1888.jpg - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia on Wikipedia that the sailors standing on top of the turret are around the edge and not in the centre. Perhaps this suggests the top of the turret was open?

The wreck of HMS Victoria has been found - apparently it's driven vertically into the sea bed - perhaps there are some dive images of the turret roof?

Regards,

Charlie

[shrike]

Ok, I'm slightly confused. Not about the model, but about what was going through the minds of the naval architects responsible.
Provided these are proper turrets vs emplacements(see discussion elsewhere), what were they thinking by providing what amount to funnels (of the hardware store variety) into the bowels of the ship by leaving them open topped? I'd think the effects of plunging fire would be well known, if nothing else, from shore mounted large bore mortars.

Open at the back makes at least a tiny bit of sense, not only that the guns should be trained on the most likely threat, but acting as a vent in the event of a magazine explosion.

Am I missing something important, or were they missing the point then?


All of that aside, the words binnacle and barnacle are linked together in my head. I keep imagining polished brass filter feeders with precise and intricate markings...