"Anatomy of the Ship" Series Review-A-Thon

[Sailor Steve]

Originally Posted by nikimcbee

Subnuts, do you have John Lambert's book on the Corvettes?

I'm the weird one here. You guys are into corvettes (don't get me wrong, I like them too), but I treasure things like David Lyons' The First Destroyers, which is a rundown on development of the British TBD from 1893 to 1900, all information coming from the actual first-hand documents (and drawings by John Robers, of course). This also explains why my favorite Anatomy book is Dreadnought.

[TBear]

I have the one on Takao, and it is awsome

[Platapus]

Originally Posted by Subnuts

Anatomy of the Ship: The Submarine Alliance
John Lambert
1986

I think you just earned your Subsim member's paycheck with this one. From the title, I probably have overlooked this in the used book stores. The title does not suggest anything that you wrote.

I guess you can't judge a book by its title?

Thank you for the review and I now want to add this to my library. I too have had disappointments with the "Anatomy" books especially with the submarine ones. They have always been in my "meh" category and worthy only to fill up my library to impress the chicks.

But this one seems really worth hunting down.

For this review, much thanks.

[Oberon]

Just stumbled into this thread, fantastic reviews by the way. I noticed they've done a Warspite one...might have to have a look at this, I have a weakness for the Grand Old Lady.

[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

[Oberon]

Thanks for the review Subnuts. Great intro, the Warspite certainly was a grand old lady, I think it criminal that she wasn't preserved, but at least she went down fighting.

[Subnuts]

Dug this review out of my archives and edited it a little. Enjoy!

Anatomy of the Ship: The 100-Gun Ship Victory
John McKay
1987

After Brian Lavery's frustratingly inconsistent take on the Bellona in 1985, two new draughtsmen new to the series published volumes on historic
English wooden fighting ships in 1987. The first was by the Canadian architectural draughtsman John McKay, whose four "Anatomies" are probably the most consistently good out of the 38 published titles. His subject was the HMS Victory, Horatio Nelson's flagship at the Battle of Trafalgar, and the last surviving First Rate fighting ship in the world. The introduction provides some background information on the role of the First-Rate ship in the Royal Navy, and a brief service history and time-line of the ship's career. This section also includes details on the hull construction, general arrangement, armament, fittings, masts, and rigging. 20 photographs are included, most of them from the 1950s and 60s, depicting details of the exterior and interior of the ship undergoing restoration.

The drawings (which I'm assuming are the reason you're thinking of buying the book, unless you read Playboy for the articles) took 3,000 hours to create over a five year period. For General Arrangements, we get side, bow, stern, and sectional views of Victory at 1:192 scale, followed by views of each deck. Section B is devoted to the ship's structure overall views of the hull framing, the arrangement of the keel, and the layout of the inner construction. This part includes detailed plan views of the structure of the stern galleries, the bow, and each deck, along with six perspective views of the hull structure, showing the keel, frames, planking, beams, decks, and finally the completed hull.

Section C has 33 transverse sections through the hull, while section D covers some of the external details, such as the beakhead bulkhead, stern davits, side railings and channels, and the entry port on the middle deck. Section E focuses on deck fittings and opens with views of the fittings around the fore and main masts, before detailing the hawse holes, riding bitts, capstans, anchors, steering gear, stern lanterns, and boats. Section E details the armament, and includes views of six types of guns and their carriages.

Section G covers the masts and yards, and will probably be the most useful section for model builders. Each of the masts and spars are depicted in detailed dimensioned drawings, with numerous plan, profile, and cross-section views of details as small as mast caps, cross-trees, and the driver boom jaws. The final section depicts Victory's rigging. The standing and running rigging each receive a single profile and perspective view each, while the rigging associated with each mast in shown in frontal view, along with a plan showing where each line was belayed (secured). Rounding it out are dimensioned drawings of 19 common rigging blocks, and a "rigging schedule" giving the length and circumference of every major line, and the type and size of the blocks used with it.

The 100-Gun Ship Victory is unfortunately the weakest of McKay's four anatomies, which still puts it above many of the books in the series. His style would evolve over the next six years, and this book's successors would be better detailed, better edited, and more polished. Of course, if you're building a model of the Victory it's a must have (though not the only book you'll want to have), and there's still some wonderfully detailed stuff in here for Age of Sail enthusiasts, such as the detailed plans of the deck structure. Where the book fails are the crude drawings of boats, the unreadable (1/384 scale, seriously?) rigging diagrams, and a relative lack of perspective views.

The biggest problem, however, is the 2010 edition you'll receive if you buy this book through Amazon. The photos look fine, as do about half the plans, but the rest look horrid. It looks like someone went over the drawings with 80-grit sandpaper, xeroxed them, rescanned them, and attempted to fix them up in Photoshop. A lot of fine detail has been lost, such as the wood grain in the cross-section views, and the hull planking in the exterior plans. Many of the drawings look faded, washed out, and in some cases, badly digitized. The plans of the running rigging feature jagged lines due to JPEG compression - simply unacceptable in a book that currently retails for $47.95. In fact, I'd recommend hunting down a 1987 edition of the this book if you want it, despite the presence of some errors that were fixed in later releases. It has to look better than this!

Final rating: 7.75 for the 1987 edition, 5.0 for the 2010 edition.

[Subnuts]

Pardon me for resuscitating this thread after a long absence, but I seem to be suffering from some kind of syndrome that makes me buy book after book but prevents me from being able to review them. Anyway, on with the "Anatomy of the Ship" series.

The Frigate Diana
David White
1987

By 1987, the "Anatomy of the Ship" series included three titles on historic English wooden fighting ships, each by a different draughtsman, each tackling a similar subject vessel from a wildly different stylistic approach. By this point, it must have been obvious that the format established early on by John Roberts worked better with steel, engine-powered ships than with wooden sailing ships. That said, The Frigate Diana is one of my favorite books in this series.

Launched in 1794, Diana was a 38-gun frigate of the nine-ship Artois-class. Diana was a typical warship of the period, albeit one with an unusually long and active service life. She served in the Royal Navy for 21 years, virtually all of the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars, before being sold to the Dutch in 1815. She served for another 24 years in the Royal Netherlands Navy, before being destroyed in an accidental fire in 1839.

Once again, the introduction is pretty brief, and includes a look at the ship's design, a short service history, and a few tables giving dimensions of the masts, spars, and hull. For photos, we get 11 large shots of three different models of Diana from the NMM collection that were built the same time the ship was.

The drawings section opens with a set of hull lines plans, along with a drawing describing some of the terms used by 18th century naval architects in draughting the midships section, and a cross-section profile through the hull. The next section focuses on the hull structure, with detailed views of the keel, cut-water, bow and stern framing, quarter galleries, and hull framing, along with plans depicting the components of five frame bends.

Section C details the arrangement, structure, and fittings of Diana's decks. The four decks and hold each receive three views: one split down the center-line, showing the layout of deck planking and fittings on one side, and the deck's structure on the other, a second showing the deck in profile, and a third showing the basic arrangement of the deck. The section also includes drawings of the belfry, Brodie stove, and pumps, plans depicting the stowage of ballast and casks in the hold, five transverse sections showing the hull and deck structure, and views of the shot lockers, magazine, and filling room. Section D covers the exterior, with detailed close-ups of the ship's side, multiple views of the head, and a drawing showing the arrangement of planking.

Anchors and cables are detailed in Section E, with drawings of the cable layout, anchors, and a cross-section of the main capstan. "Spars and rigging" are the focus of the book's longest chapter. This section includes plans of each mast, spar, and mast top, drawings depicting the arrangement of running and standing rigging, views of numerous sails, drawings of the running rigging of the courses, staysails, and studding sails, and a series of plans showing where each line was belayed. The final three sections cover the guns, carriages, and gear, the steering arrangements, and four of the boats carried onboard.

When this book was published, David White was a naval architect and the man responsible for the National Maritime Museum's large collection of ship plans. This was the book he created for the series, which is a shame. The plans on display here are meticulously detailed, crisply drawn, and very classy looking. In some cases, detail has been simplified, but almost always for the benefit of the reader. The drawing keys are overflowing with authentic 18th century naval jargon, sure to please anyone who's into that kind of thing. The only real misstep lies in the compressed nature of the chapter on spars and rigging. David White devotes 27 pages of this book to the subject; Karl Heinz Marquardt would devote 48 pages to it for his book on the Endeavour. As a result, many of the drawings in this section are rather flat-looking or simplified. That aside, The Frigate Diana would make a fine addition to the collection of any Age of Sail fan.

Final rating: 8/10

[Subnuts]

I know I've been running silent for months now, and this is a very, VERY old thread, but I've recently fallen in love with this series after buying the new book on USS Kidd and scored a set of nine first-edition "Anatomies" (along with a rareish book on the Essex class") on eBay, and I'm seriously thinking about writing some more reviews in the next few weeks. So watch this space!