[Subnuts]

For some reason, I can't shake my writer's block. Well, here's my "brief" review of the Warspite book. I recently scored a "Very Good" copy of the book on the royal yacht Caroline for $40, which is borderline miraculous in my book.

Anatomy of the Ship: The Battleship Warspite
Ross Watton
1986

The Warspite is one ship that needs little introduction. When the Warspite walked into a room, everyone got quiet. When the Warspite bought liquor, it didn't need to show it's ID. When the Warspite...ok, you get the idea. What I personally find amusing, is the fact that ship broke it's table cable on the way to the scrapyard, ran aground, and had to be scrapped in place over a nine year period. After being almost sunk by the Germans half a dozen times, the ship still had some fight left in her!

The Battleship Warspite follows the same basic format as the other steel surface ship anatomies, so no real surprises in that department. The introduction is a little short this time - only eight pages, with a brief timeline of the ship's career and a summary of external alterations. 25 pictures are included, mostly overall views of the ship throughout it's 30 year career, and two nice line-and-wash drawings by Ross Watton.

Except for a side view of the ship in 1917, all of the General Arrangements depict Warspite in her 1942 fit. There are plans of each deck and the double bottom, a section through the center-line, and 13 transverse sections, all at 1/450 scale. The section on hull construction includes overall views of the hull plating and armor arrangement, sections through the bow and stern structure, and details of the bulge structure, double bottom framing, armor belt, and shaft brackets.

The machinery section features plan and side views of the engine and boiler rooms in 1915 and 1937, along with drawings of the steering gear, propeller shaft arrangements, and a boiler. The next section includes drawings of a couple of accommodation spaces as they appeared in 1915, along with the arrangement of a typical Water Closet. The evolving arrangement of the superstructure is the focus of Section E, which depicts a number of deckhouses as they were refitted over the years, including the funnels, forecastle deck, and forward superstructure.

Section F details the evolution of the ship's rig, showing the changing arrangements of the fore and main masts and their tops. Armament is covered in Section G, opening with a number of nicely detailed sectional views of the twin 15-inch turrets and it's breech mechanism, before moving on to the ship's smaller mounts AA guns, and one of the torpedo rooms. The next few chapters cover fire control devices, deck fittings, ground tackle, ship's boats, and the aircraft carried by Warspite over the years.

The Battleship Warspite includes some superbly detailed material, but also suffers from a number of flaws. First, the good stuff. Watton wisely chooses to depict the Warspite as an evolving entity, while many books in this series tend to depict their subject as frozen in time. Some of the drawings are very nicely done, including an actual shell expansion plan (a first for the series!), a plan of a Main Deck crew space detailed down to hose connections and curtains, a view of the forecastle deck in 1915 showing the location of every fitting, and sharp, crisply detailed drawings of the 15-inch gun turrets. Finally, the perspective views of the superstructure are very nicely done.

Unfortunately, this book suffers from the same grapeshot approach that the weaker entries in this series suffer from. Despite being the same length as it's predecessor on the Belfast, it's nowhere near as detailed. General Arrangements are rough looking, and the last 20 pages are almost devoid of drawing keys. It doesn't breathe where it needs a chance to - I've always been most interested in hull structure and machinery, but these sections put together only total 13 pages.

In all fairness, The Battleship Warspite was probably meant to appeal to people building a model of the ship who wanted detailed views of the rigging and superstructure. There's some interesting stuff for naval buffs to chew on, but not much when compared to the titles on the Hood and Alliance, for example. Fortunately, the series would bounce back soon afterwards, and many of the books released over the next few years would be classics. Ross Watton himself would deliver an outstanding title on the Queen Mary in 1989.

Final rating: 6.5/10