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SUBSIM: The Web's #1 resource for all submarine & naval simulations since 1997
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SUBSIM: The Web's #1 resource for all submarine & naval simulations since 1997 |
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08-12-10, 07:16 PM
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#1 |
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The Old Man
 Join Date: Apr 2008
Location: Denver, CO
Posts: 1,529
Downloads: 334
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Thanks for sharing.
 I have 3 of the 4 you've reviewed so far and I agree with your reviews. I was pretty dissapointed with the Type VIIC book as well. I'm eagerly awaiting more, especially on the Bismarck. Amazon is pretty proud of that one and I want to see if it is worth the price. 
__________________
“Prejudice is blind. There will always be someone who says you aren’t welcome at the table. Stop apologizing for who you are and using all your energy trying to change their minds. Yes, you will lose friends, maybe even family. But you will gain your self-respect. You will know your worth. Once you have that, nothing can stop you.” |
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08-12-10, 09:03 PM
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#2 | |
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The Old Man
Join Date: Feb 2005
Location: Connecticut
Posts: 1,658
Downloads: 14
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Quote:
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08-14-10, 05:55 PM
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#3 |
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The Old Man
Join Date: Feb 2005
Location: Connecticut
Posts: 1,658
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Anatomy of the Ship: The 74 Gun Ship Bellona
Brian Lavery 1985 Gather 'round the campfire kids, while I bring you back to a mysterious time in naval warfare. A time when mankind managed to make entire forests float, and propel them through the water with oversized novelty handkerchiefs. A time when ships were made entirely from splinters, and carried as many guns as a small nation's army. A time when nations fought giant pissing contests across the seven seas - even when naval battles were fought at ranges shorter than an average pissing contest. Yes, folks, I'm talking about the Age of Sail, a time when men were men and women ran in terror from our smell. A glorious, romantic age of vomit, scurvy, unidentifiable food, and amputation as a cure for bed rash.  Ya' know, like this. The 74-Gun Ship Bellona was the first book in this series to depict a sailing warship, though to be utterly pedantic, the Fairmile D was the first wooden ship to be depicted. Although this book has the same basic layout as the preceding Anatomies, Brian Lavery, an esteemed naval historian in his own right had to take a different tack in approaching the subject. He takes some baby steps in doing so, and the occasional giant leap, but the final result is a bit mixed. Bellona (named after an ancient Roman war goddess, and not a disturbing lunch meat or a Stevie Nicks solo album, as you might have assumed) was one of the first 74 gun ships and served as a prototype for the class. Laid down in 1758, Bellona fought in four wars and wasn't broken up until 1814. To quote Lavery's own Nelson's Navy: "The 74 was a great success because it was the ideal compromise. It combined good sailing qualities with strong gun power, being the smallest practicable ship to carry a full battery of 32-pounders on the lower deck. It had scantlings strong enough to withstand any likely attack, but, unlike the three-decker, it did not need the largest and most expensive pieces of timber. As a two-decker, it was well proportioned and weatherly." While only 10 ships with 100 guns or more were in service with Royal Navy in 1804, 94 74s were in commission. The introduction is a little more detailed this time, and makes extensive use of tables. Lavery briefly describes the development of the 74-gun ship, before describing Bellona's history, structure and layout, decorations, fittings, masts and yards, and so on. The 20 tables cover subjects as varied as the sizes of gun tackles, dates and costs of repairs, dimensions of caps and tops, and observations on the ship's sailing qualities from 1763 and 1783. Photographs are a bit limited - there are nine in total, seven showing two period models of the ship, and two paintings from the same era. The first set of drawings show a sheer, half-breadth, and body plan of the ship, and a rather crude longitudinal section. Section B details the ship's structure in great detail. Numerous plan and profile views of every part of the hull are included, with exploded views of keel, deck beam, and stem scarphs construction. Perspective views of the bow, stern, and midships framing are included, along with a midships section, and plans of the hull framing, wales and planking, the waist and gangways, and the diagonal bracing fitted in 1805. Section C depicts the arrangement and structure of the hold and four decks at 1/192nd scale, with plans depicting the deck arrangement on the right side, and deck structure on the left. Section D details the decorations of the stern and quarter galleries, and the arrangement of the head, while Section E depicts a number of external details, such railings, hammock netting, hatches, bulkheads, and bitts. Section F focuses on the ship's fittings, including the steering system, anchors, capstans, pumps, boats, and copper sheathing. Section G looks at accommodations (if you want to use that word), with plans of the gun deck hammock arrangements, the galley stove, and the layout of officer's cabins on the upper deck. The masts and yards are shown in Section H, with forward and side views of each spar, close-ups of mast tops, and perspective views showing the assembly of masts, yards, and yardarm fittings. Section I details the sails and rigging. As expected, we're presented with views of the standing and running rigging, examples of different types of blocks, details of various sails and their fittings, and profiles showing the rigging associated with each mast. The final section covers Bellona's armament, with views of each type of cannon carried and their carriages, details of gun tackles, and plans showing the arrangement of the main magazine and aft powder room. As evidenced by my delay in reviewing it, I still haven't come to a definite conclusion regarding The 74-Gun Ship Bellona. The book covers a lot of ground in a short span, and I'm certain that Lavery's skill as a historian unearthed plenty of details an ordinary draughtsman may have missed. Who would have thought that the upper surface of the false keel was covered in a composition of hair and tar, to make it unnecessary to remove it for re-sheathing? Or that many British ships after 1780 had "made masts" scarphed together from four or five sections, due to the inability to acquire the necessary wood from North American forests? Unfortunately, we're presented with another "Anatomy" where a good chunk of the drawings are crude or lacking in detail. Lavery's views of the hull structure, decoration, and rigging are uniformly nice, but elsewhere the drafting quality is all over the place. To be diplomatic, Brian Lavery is a better historian than he is a draftsman. Most of the drawings in Sections E and F have a sketch-like quality, and the lack of a belaying plan is a curious omission. The drawings get the point across well enough, but modelers and ship buffs will probably be dissapointed by the lack of detail. The 74-Gun Ship Bellona is certainly a better book than The Type VII U-Boat, but it's far from being in my Top 10 favorites. It does an admirable job depicting an important and forgotten warship from the Age of Sail, but it falls short of being truly excellent. Two years later, John McKay would come along and set a new standard for detail with his book on the HMS Victory. Final rating: 7/10 |
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01-07-12, 09:50 PM
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#4 |
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The Old Man
Join Date: Feb 2005
Location: Connecticut
Posts: 1,658
Downloads: 14
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Utterly shameless necrothread bumpage, but I fully intend on reviewing the rest of this series when I get over my writer's block. Here's how collection stands right now:
 Here's how I'd rate each: Agassiz: Excellent Alliance: Excellent Bartolmeo Colleoni: Decent HMS Beagle: Good HMS Belfast: Good/Very Good Bellona: Decent Bertha L Downs: Very Good Blandford: Very Good Bounty: Very Good Campbeltown: Fair USS Constitution: Fair Dreadnought: Excellent Diana: Very Good Endeavour: Good/Very Good Essex: Very Good Fairmile 'D': Good/Very Good Fuso: Very Good Granado: Very Good Hood: Very Good/Excellent Intrepid: Good/Very Good Pandora: Very Good Queen Mary: Very Good Takao: Very Good/Excellent Type VII: Fair/Good Type XXI: Fair/Good Victorious: Very Good Victory: Fair/Good (Print quality of 2010 edition is atrocious!) Warspite: Good Yamato: Very Good I recently obtained a copy of the the Type XXI volume, and it's a bit of a disappointment. It was originally printed in Germany as an unrelated title, and got "Frankensteined" into an Anatomy of the Ship book when republished in English. Lots of interesting pictures, but most of the drawings are redrawn versions of original shipyard plans, many of which are basic General Arrangement plans which have been reproduced elsewhere. I'm still waiting for a definitive warts-and-all technical study of the XXI. These boats have always fascinated me, even if they've been hopelessly mythologized over the years. If you have to choose between the three submarine "Anatomies," go with the one on Alliance. If you're interested in the XXI, Eberhard Rossler's The U-Boat has a lot of excellent material on the Elekroboot designs. |
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01-07-12, 10:59 PM
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#5 |
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Eternal Patrol
 Join Date: Nov 2002
Location: High in the mountains of Utah
Posts: 50,369
Downloads: 745
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The only one I own is Dreadnought, and I agree it is excellent. Amazing, in fact. I bought it because of my interest in naval development in all periods, but especially the beginnings of modern warship design.
I keep meaning to get more, but my true collecting love is for Conway's Warship series. I have about one-third of them and am currently in a position to get more, so I am. They have wonderful articles on specific ship development, as well as weapons and other things. I'm glad to see you bring this back. I especially enjoyed re-reading your Bellona review. 'Pissing contest' indeed! 
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“Never do anything you can't take back.” —Rocky Russo |
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01-08-12, 01:50 AM
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#6 | |
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Fleet Admiral
 Join Date: Jul 2003
Location: Patroling the Slot.
Posts: 17,925
Downloads: 90
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Quote:
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01-10-12, 05:50 PM
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#7 |
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The Old Man
Join Date: Feb 2005
Location: Connecticut
Posts: 1,658
Downloads: 14
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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: 
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