johnsmachines

This is what was in the Amati plans for the transom for HMS Bellerophon….

I have

I have these nice photoetched brass letters, but I was wondering how to position them accurately while gluing them into position following the curves of the planking. (Also, this picture shows first painting after filling the sizeable gaps in the frieze.)

So I looked up my favourite model ship websites for advice.

Another site member had asked the same question, and yet another member, an experienced modeller answered that if the model ship in question was an English (British) naval vessel there would have been no hull name visible AT ALL. Quoting an Admiralty order.

Well, that was news to me. Apart from the Amati plan above, I have quite a collection of pictures of British navy ships, with and without names on the transom, so I have delved further.

When the date of the painting was known, in every instance where the name was on the transom, it had been painted after Bellerophon had been broken up. None of the contemporaneous paintings or drawings had the ship’s name on the transom.

So, I have not made a firm decision, but still gathering evidence about the transom name practice. And also the timing of the Admiralty decision when it was ok to display the ship’s name.

(continued a day or 2 later). Apparently the 10 year window when names were permitted followed 1770, Bellerophon (launched 1786) would not have had 600mm high letters on the transom like the kit build above.

Or this late 19th century drawing of the Embarquation/(surrender) of Bonaparte on Bellerophon 1815..

What’s the big deal? some of you are no doubt asking.

Well, I am building a scale model of Bellerophon as it would have appeared at Trafalgar 1805. More or less. And I have taken the odd bit of atistic license where it suited me. But to plaster a name on the back which is approxmiately 2’x20′ and would not have been there in 1805, 1815, or any other time in Bellerophon’s history as far as I can determine, is a bit too much, a bit beyond the pale.

So I am not going to glue on those very nicely made letters B-E-L-L-O-R-E-P-H-O-N on the stern of my model.

(but I might just put them on a nameplate on the stand, with date and name of the modeller).