Anatomy of the Ship: The Cruiser HMS Belfast
Ross Watton
1985
1985 was certainly a busy year for the "Anatomy of the Ship" series, and in that year, we were introduced to Ross Watton, a freelance illustrator and former Royal Navy sailor who would go to create four books in this series. For his first book, he chose to detail the HMS
Belfast, the ninth
Town-class light cruiser.
Belfast was laid down in 1936, and went on to serve an illustrious 24-year career with the Royal Navy. She is presently a floating museum on the Thames River in London, the only British warship larger than a destroyer that served in World War Two and is still preserved today. As an aside, the large exploded-view cutaway painting aboard the ship was painted by Ross Watton himself.
If you've read my reviews of the previous Anatomies, there are no "Gotchas!" to be found in
The Cruiser HMS Belfast's presentation. Same text introduction, same section of 20-odd black and white photographs, and the drawings are still presented in the same "A- General Arrangements, B- Hull Structure" manner. Consistency isn't necessarily a bad thing in a book series, and for that reason, I'm not going to go exhaustively in-depth with this one.
General Arrangements are what you'd expect. Plans of each deck, a center-line cross-section, 13 transverse sections, and profiles of the ship as it appeared in 1942 and 1959. The section on hull structure is a bit different from previous books, with an emphasis on detailed perspective views. Section C covers the ship's machinery, with detailed plans of the machinery spaces, and drawings of components such as boilers, turbines, the steering gear, and propeller shaft arrangements.
Crew accommodation is briefly depicted in Section D, while Section E covers the superstructure, focusing on the changes after the 1959 refit. Section F details
Belfast's rig, depicting the evolution of the fore and main masts from 1939 to 1959, along with details such as the RDF lantern, boat booms, accommodation ladder and crows nest. The armament is depicted in the next section, which includes some very nice drawings of the ship's 6-inch triple turrets, the 4-inch Mk XIX twin guns, the anti-aircraft guns, and the torpedo tubes and depth charge racks.
Section I includes a couple views of some of the fire control devices fitted during the ship's service, while the final 20 pages focus on a hodgepodge of different subjects, including fittings, ground tackle, boats, and aircraft arrangements.
When I first bought this book (it was one of my first Anatomies), I was rather disappointed and initially passed Ross Watton off as a poor man's John Roberts. Almost three years later, I've finally warmed up to his style. There's quite a bit of praiseworthy material contained within, especially the perspective views of the ship's structure, which are beautifully executed and show everything down to individual rivets and angle bars. Perspective views are where Mr. Watton really shines, though the traditional drawings are well done, too.
Unfortunately, despite his artistic talents, Watton didn't possess that same fanatical attention to detail that John Lambert, John McKay, and John Roberts (what's with all the Johns, anyway?) show in their own titles. Don't expect to find exploded views of door hinges, plans of boiler room steam pipes, or cross-sections through a quadruple-riveted butt lap. He would come close to this attention to detail from time to time, but I get the impression he was pressed for time and space - 120 pages isn't much to work with after all!
The Cruiser HMS Belfast is pretty nice for a first effort, but better things were to come from Ross Watton.
Final rating: 7.5/10 (although it's worth it just for the perspective views alone)
Here's the midships structure cutaway, just to give a taste:
