Hi, huge sovereign fan in building and history... awesome book, now on order. Sovereign of the seas by Doris O. has some amazing corrections on her build... from off centre bow-sprit to rear decorations... worth checking out for you build. Great video
FROM Frank L Fox EXPEET IN THAT MATTER: In the acknowledgements to his book, Sovereign of the Seas 1637, John McKay thanks me for advising him on the ship's design. What he does not say is that he rejected most of what I told him, did not ask me about many subjects on which I could have offered help, and I most definitely do not want readers to think that I endorse the results. He commits a gross error in giving an English warship of 1637 a square-tuck stern. A round tuck was adopted by English shipwrights by at least 1616, with a period of transition earlier. By 1620-23, when Sir Henry Mainwaring compiled his Seaman's Dictionary, the stern timbers and planking near the waterline in English ships were already called "buttocks" because of their convex shape. There are about a dozen careful stern view drawings and paintings by marine artists, especially Willem van de Velde the Elder, of English ships built or rebuilt in or before 1637, and one draft. All show round tucks, none square. Mr. McKay goes so far as to claim that master shipwright Sir Anthony Deane shows square tucks in his designs around 1670. They in fact show nothing whatever of the shape of their sterns. Deane's large ships all had normal round tucks as shown by numerous drawings, paintings, and dockyard models. Mr. McKay's authority for the square stern is the portrait of shipwright Peter Pett (who built the Sovereign to his father Phineas's design) attributed to Sir Peter Lely. This shows conflicting evidence; it has the knuckles of a square stern, but the stern planking is curved as in a round tuck. In square-tuck ships, the planking is dead straight and diagonal. Mr. McKay ignores the carvings design superimposed on the above-water draft by Peter Pett in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, which he reproduces. This clearly shows shading at the lower corner of the stern, proving a round tuck. Why would one accept the ambiguous evidence of a Dutch portrait painter with no marine art to his credit over that of the shipwright who built the vessel? There is in fact an anachronistic painting in the National Maritime Museum, London, by Jacob Knyff portraying the ship as she appeared in the 1650s (royal arms and insignia removed); it shows a round tuck. This book not only shows a square stern, but a bizarre square stern in which the flat portion extends below the waterline almost to the keel. This would absolutely ensure a rough, turbulent flow of water to the rudder, which would thereby be rendered quite useless. The rudder itself has problems. Its head extends partly into a huge hole in the counter as in the 18th century, and the tiller enters the hull beneath the upper deck rather than beneath the middle deck as it should. There is no sign of a sweep for the tiller and no gooseneck. From the text, the author seems not to understand that the whipstaff slid THROUGH the rowle right to its end, which is why the helm could swing 20 degrees. The next major mistake is the falls (abrupt step-downs) in the decks. These had been condemned by the Naval Reform Commission of 1618. The designer's dimensions list for the Sovereign unequivocally states, "All the decks flush fore and aft," and Peter Pett's draft at Boston shows them flush. Why would Mr. McKay ignore direct evidence from the designer and the builder? The author is swayed by a drawing by Van de Velde the Elder showing the middle deck ports under the quarter-gallery lower than the others. Though Mr. McKay supposes this was an early drawing, it was actually made in the mid-1670s, as shown by the little bridge therein which is first mentioned at that time as running to the landing stage at the ship's mooring off Gillingham. The drawing is a copy of the decorations and features in the famous Payne engraving, superimposed on the hull Van de Velde saw in the 1670s (it is actually a cut-out pasted in over his original). That it is copied from Payne is proven by both sharing the same curious mistake: the grating over the halfdeck extends only part way up the door in the quarterdeck bulkhead. People under the grating would have had to crawl around on hands and knees, or duck-walk. The explanation is that John Payne, as known from a documentary source, drew the ship in drydock well before her launching. The grating was undoubtedly still under construction, resting on sawhorses or some such, and had not yet been raised into position. The reason for the differing height of the middle deck gunports in the Van de Velde version is that in the ship's rebuilding in 1659-60, the decks had been re-laid about 18 inches higher at the side than in the original, and the draft increased by some three feet. With the quarter-gallery thereby becoming lower relative to the deck, gunports could no longer fit under them. Two Van de Velde drawings of the Sovereign in 1673 and a painting of 1678 formerly at Lowther Castle show that there were NO middle deck gunports under the gallery after 1660. For Van de Velde to show them there as in the Payne engraving, he had to place them lower than the other ports which had been raised. The framing shown by Mr. McKay is nothing like that of a 17th-century ship. He shows huge gaps between floors and first futtocks. For what these should be like, I recommend Richard Endsor's new book, The Master Shipwright's Secrets. This shows that the floors and first futtocks were bolted together at the frame bend stations, timbers between laid in loose, and the density of framing almost solid in the lower parts of the hull, and drastically reduced in the upper portions. This Mr. McKay could have known even from the preserved framing of the Tudor ship Mary Rose. There are many other errors. There are no chocks at the timber heads. The riders are of 18th-century form, extended upwards by complex scarfs which weren't used for these in the 17th century. Mr. McKay shows the main pumps as brake pumps, though large English ships used chain pumps by at least the early 1620s. He shows a triple crab capstan with holes for bars on all levels, whereas English three-deckers had two double jeer capstans operated only from the upper level, and no belowdecks spindle. The position deep in the hold shown for the cook-room is improbable. If not in the forecastle or on the second deck below the forecastle, it would have been on a platform laid on false beams beneath the gundeck under the waist. Mr. McKay seems not to realize that the term "orlop" before the mid-1660s meant the gundeck. Below the orlop/gundeck, big English ships before the 1660s had heavy "false beams" supporting a series of platforms which were not a continuous deck. Then there are the guns. Mr. McKay misunderstands the Sovereign's "drake" guns. In these the whole bore was not tapered as he supposes, but just the chamber. It was designed for small charges, so that a thin-walled weapon could fire a large-caliber ball for the gun weight. Drakes had a very short range and a violent recoil. The cannon-of-seven fired a shot weighing 42 pounds, not 60 as he says, and was in use in the Royal Navy until the mid-1780s. He also shows four-truck gun carriages, while the carriages made for the Sovereign were all drake carriages with "whole trucks and half trucks;" that is, semi-circular skids at the rear end to slow the ferocious recoil. Also, a dedicated train tackle (he indicates two per gun) was not issued to British sea gunners until the second half of the 18th century. Even the ship's history is incomplete. Mr McKay omits three great actions in which the Sovereign took a major part: Solebay and the two Schooneveld battles, in the last of which the Sovereign was the fleet flagship for the first time. It is also untrue that Robert Lee, who rebuilt the ship in 1684-85, said her original timbers had never been changed. He said the SHAPE of the original timbers had not been changed. Overall, this book is characterized by draftsmanship of marvelous quality, and many may buy it for that reason alone. But Mr. McKay's research was doomed by a lack of understanding of the context of his sources, and of Early Stuart shipbuilding practices. Thus, any modellists who attempt to recreate the Sovereign of the Seas based on this book are going to get badly inaccurate results.
Hi Mancone, Thank you, I was made aware of the short comings of the book by members of a very good forum ships of scale, whilst it may not be 100% accurate on all aspects, it is has more detailed information than that contained within the Deagostini kit, which for example didn't even include the capstan, the scale of the model and deck heights are incorrect, the head on the model was also incorrect, Experts may surmise what is right and what is wrong, but unfortunately as no one alive today has ever seen the ship, no one can be sure of exact details.
@@g-kip cool and yes i agree with you I have seen so many version of the ornaments and lay out , its confusing but in your opinion which brand does have the closest one to the real one , mantua, occre etc...
Hi Mancone, Ive only seen the Mantua version, which also has many issues like deagostini, I have seen a model that was displayed at the opening of the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich which dates back to 1827, images can be seen on their website, the structure of the decks do not resemble any of the models available today.
@@g-kip I LIVE NEAR BY THE MUSEUM if you want i can get vids and pics of the model to add to your collection , they got some of he original drawing but not in all details sadly
@@g-kip I was just reading that the picture that Deagostini show of the Sovereign is not even the kit that you build. It is a scratch built model that someone in Italy made.
Before you compare McKay's version of HMS SotS to the DeAgostini model, is it important that you recognize the egregious errors and points of guesswork the John McKay has in his interpretation of the ship design. The ladders leading up to the upper forecastle are a guess. No one knows if access to the upper forecastle was done with external port and starboard ladders off the weather or only from a ladder leading up from the lower level (which would be more secure, isolating the forecastle in event of boarding). McKay's square stern is incorrect by most researchers, and it should have a round tuck, not a square one, despite how the stern was depicted in Sir Peter Lely's painting "The portrait of Peter Pett". McKay's square tuck transom design is so wide at and below the waterline that the rudder is absolutely useless. McKay's details of the bulkhead trim is well done, but also guesswork. His color illustrations are incredibly nice, but many ship features, like the booby hatch for the "officer's companionway" are from 200 years in the future, and not typical of early 17th century design. Plus, that ladder is redundant, being just aft of another ladder connecting the same decks! As a modeler currently taking the DeAgostini model, throwing 90% of the design out the window due to inaccuracies and scratch building the rest from exhaustive research, take it from me, you have to validate and cherry pick the features of the model kit and the information from John McKay's book based on more trustworthy, albeit also flawed, sources such as Payne's engraving, Willem van de Velde's drawing, James Sephton's "HMS Sovereign of the Seas - the Seventeenth Century Warship", and others. When the resources don't cover a specific feature, you turn to other English ship examples of the time to guidance on a best guess. McKay ignores Peter Pett's information on the hull frame shapes in favor of Dean's design information from decades later, and Peter Pett designed the Sovereign! As a modeler doing research, you have to sift through information and choose the most likely options. Your choices will differ from others, but if you have research to back yours up, you're probably closer to the mark. If you are modeling HMS Sovereign of the Seas, join us builders on the Ships of Scale forum and we can share resource info and ideas on this most extraordinary royal great ship.
Hi Jean, there are a few disputed issues with the shape of the stern, and the step downs with the decks, so a few minor changes could be made, but as we will never really know (as no-one alive has seen the ship) there will have to be some assumptions made.
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Hi, huge sovereign fan in building and history... awesome book, now on order. Sovereign of the seas by Doris O. has some amazing corrections on her build... from off centre bow-sprit to rear decorations... worth checking out for you build. Great video
Im considering starting the Sovereign from scratch using the book plans, so much wrong with the model kit.
FROM Frank L Fox EXPEET IN THAT MATTER:
In the acknowledgements to his book, Sovereign of the Seas 1637, John McKay thanks me for advising him on the ship's design. What he does not say is that he rejected most of what I told him, did not ask me about many subjects on which I could have offered help, and I most definitely do not want readers to think that I endorse the results.
He commits a gross error in giving an English warship of 1637 a square-tuck stern. A round tuck was adopted by English shipwrights by at least 1616, with a period of transition earlier. By 1620-23, when Sir Henry Mainwaring compiled his Seaman's Dictionary, the stern timbers and planking near the waterline in English ships were already called "buttocks" because of their convex shape. There are about a dozen careful stern view drawings and paintings by marine artists, especially Willem van de Velde the Elder, of English ships built or rebuilt in or before 1637, and one draft. All show round tucks, none square. Mr. McKay goes so far as to claim that master shipwright Sir Anthony Deane shows square tucks in his designs around 1670. They in fact show nothing whatever of the shape of their sterns. Deane's large ships all had normal round tucks as shown by numerous drawings, paintings, and dockyard models. Mr. McKay's authority for the square stern is the portrait of shipwright Peter Pett (who built the Sovereign to his father Phineas's design) attributed to Sir Peter Lely. This shows conflicting evidence; it has the knuckles of a square stern, but the stern planking is curved as in a round tuck. In square-tuck ships, the planking is dead straight and diagonal. Mr. McKay ignores the carvings design superimposed on the above-water draft by Peter Pett in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, which he reproduces. This clearly shows shading at the lower corner of the stern, proving a round tuck. Why would one accept the ambiguous evidence of a Dutch portrait painter with no marine art to his credit over that of the shipwright who built the vessel? There is in fact an anachronistic painting in the National Maritime Museum, London, by Jacob Knyff portraying the ship as she appeared in the 1650s (royal arms and insignia removed); it shows a round tuck.
This book not only shows a square stern, but a bizarre square stern in which the flat portion extends below the waterline almost to the keel. This would absolutely ensure a rough, turbulent flow of water to the rudder, which would thereby be rendered quite useless. The rudder itself has problems. Its head extends partly into a huge hole in the counter as in the 18th century, and the tiller enters the hull beneath the upper deck rather than beneath the middle deck as it should. There is no sign of a sweep for the tiller and no gooseneck. From the text, the author seems not to understand that the whipstaff slid THROUGH the rowle right to its end, which is why the helm could swing 20 degrees.
The next major mistake is the falls (abrupt step-downs) in the decks. These had been condemned by the Naval Reform Commission of 1618. The designer's dimensions list for the Sovereign unequivocally states, "All the decks flush fore and aft," and Peter Pett's draft at Boston shows them flush. Why would Mr. McKay ignore direct evidence from the designer and the builder? The author is swayed by a drawing by Van de Velde the Elder showing the middle deck ports under the quarter-gallery lower than the others. Though Mr. McKay supposes this was an early drawing, it was actually made in the mid-1670s, as shown by the little bridge therein which is first mentioned at that time as running to the landing stage at the ship's mooring off Gillingham. The drawing is a copy of the decorations and features in the famous Payne engraving, superimposed on the hull Van de Velde saw in the 1670s (it is actually a cut-out pasted in over his original). That it is copied from Payne is proven by both sharing the same curious mistake: the grating over the halfdeck extends only part way up the door in the quarterdeck bulkhead. People under the grating would have had to crawl around on hands and knees, or duck-walk. The explanation is that John Payne, as known from a documentary source, drew the ship in drydock well before her launching. The grating was undoubtedly still under construction, resting on sawhorses or some such, and had not yet been raised into position. The reason for the differing height of the middle deck gunports in the Van de Velde version is that in the ship's rebuilding in 1659-60, the decks had been re-laid about 18 inches higher at the side than in the original, and the draft increased by some three feet. With the quarter-gallery thereby becoming lower relative to the deck, gunports could no longer fit under them. Two Van de Velde drawings of the Sovereign in 1673 and a painting of 1678 formerly at Lowther Castle show that there were NO middle deck gunports under the gallery after 1660. For Van de Velde to show them there as in the Payne engraving, he had to place them lower than the other ports which had been raised.
The framing shown by Mr. McKay is nothing like that of a 17th-century ship. He shows huge gaps between floors and first futtocks. For what these should be like, I recommend Richard Endsor's new book, The Master Shipwright's Secrets. This shows that the floors and first futtocks were bolted together at the frame bend stations, timbers between laid in loose, and the density of framing almost solid in the lower parts of the hull, and drastically reduced in the upper portions. This Mr. McKay could have known even from the preserved framing of the Tudor ship Mary Rose.
There are many other errors. There are no chocks at the timber heads. The riders are of 18th-century form, extended upwards by complex scarfs which weren't used for these in the 17th century. Mr. McKay shows the main pumps as brake pumps, though large English ships used chain pumps by at least the early 1620s. He shows a triple crab capstan with holes for bars on all levels, whereas English three-deckers had two double jeer capstans operated only from the upper level, and no belowdecks spindle. The position deep in the hold shown for the cook-room is improbable. If not in the forecastle or on the second deck below the forecastle, it would have been on a platform laid on false beams beneath the gundeck under the waist. Mr. McKay seems not to realize that the term "orlop" before the mid-1660s meant the gundeck. Below the orlop/gundeck, big English ships before the 1660s had heavy "false beams" supporting a series of platforms which were not a continuous deck.
Then there are the guns. Mr. McKay misunderstands the Sovereign's "drake" guns. In these the whole bore was not tapered as he supposes, but just the chamber. It was designed for small charges, so that a thin-walled weapon could fire a large-caliber ball for the gun weight. Drakes had a very short range and a violent recoil. The cannon-of-seven fired a shot weighing 42 pounds, not 60 as he says, and was in use in the Royal Navy until the mid-1780s. He also shows four-truck gun carriages, while the carriages made for the Sovereign were all drake carriages with "whole trucks and half trucks;" that is, semi-circular skids at the rear end to slow the ferocious recoil. Also, a dedicated train tackle (he indicates two per gun) was not issued to British sea gunners until the second half of the 18th century.
Even the ship's history is incomplete. Mr McKay omits three great actions in which the Sovereign took a major part: Solebay and the two Schooneveld battles, in the last of which the Sovereign was the fleet flagship for the first time. It is also untrue that Robert Lee, who rebuilt the ship in 1684-85, said her original timbers had never been changed. He said the SHAPE of the original timbers had not been changed.
Overall, this book is characterized by draftsmanship of marvelous quality, and many may buy it for that reason alone. But Mr. McKay's research was doomed by a lack of understanding of the context of his sources, and of Early Stuart shipbuilding practices. Thus, any modellists who attempt to recreate the Sovereign of the Seas based on this book are going to get badly inaccurate results.
Hi Mancone, Thank you, I was made aware of the short comings of the book by members of a very good forum ships of scale, whilst it may not be 100% accurate on all aspects, it is has more detailed information than that contained within the Deagostini kit, which for example didn't even include the capstan, the scale of the model and deck heights are incorrect, the head on the model was also incorrect, Experts may surmise what is right and what is wrong, but unfortunately as no one alive today has ever seen the ship, no one can be sure of exact details.
@@g-kip cool and yes i agree with you I have seen so many version of the ornaments and lay out , its confusing but in your opinion which brand does have the closest one to the real one , mantua, occre etc...
Hi Mancone, Ive only seen the Mantua version, which also has many issues like deagostini, I have seen a model that was displayed at the opening of the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich which dates back to 1827, images can be seen on their website, the structure of the decks do not resemble any of the models available today.
@@g-kip I LIVE NEAR BY THE MUSEUM if you want i can get vids and pics of the model to add to your collection , they got some of he original drawing but not in all details sadly
Hi Mancone, thank you for the offer, but i dont live to far away from the museum myself.
What an outstanding book! This would be so helpful with a build.
The Author also sells the diagrams to scale, at reasonable rates, im toying with the idea of building the next model using them.
@@g-kip I was just reading that the picture that Deagostini show of the Sovereign is not even the kit that you build. It is a scratch built model that someone in Italy made.
Before you compare McKay's version of HMS SotS to the DeAgostini model, is it important that you recognize the egregious errors and points of guesswork the John McKay has in his interpretation of the ship design. The ladders leading up to the upper forecastle are a guess. No one knows if access to the upper forecastle was done with external port and starboard ladders off the weather or only from a ladder leading up from the lower level (which would be more secure, isolating the forecastle in event of boarding). McKay's square stern is incorrect by most researchers, and it should have a round tuck, not a square one, despite how the stern was depicted in Sir Peter Lely's painting "The portrait of Peter Pett". McKay's square tuck transom design is so wide at and below the waterline that the rudder is absolutely useless. McKay's details of the bulkhead trim is well done, but also guesswork. His color illustrations are incredibly nice, but many ship features, like the booby hatch for the "officer's companionway" are from 200 years in the future, and not typical of early 17th century design. Plus, that ladder is redundant, being just aft of another ladder connecting the same decks! As a modeler currently taking the DeAgostini model, throwing 90% of the design out the window due to inaccuracies and scratch building the rest from exhaustive research, take it from me, you have to validate and cherry pick the features of the model kit and the information from John McKay's book based on more trustworthy, albeit also flawed, sources such as Payne's engraving, Willem van de Velde's drawing, James Sephton's "HMS Sovereign of the Seas - the Seventeenth Century Warship", and others. When the resources don't cover a specific feature, you turn to other English ship examples of the time to guidance on a best guess. McKay ignores Peter Pett's information on the hull frame shapes in favor of Dean's design information from decades later, and Peter Pett designed the Sovereign! As a modeler doing research, you have to sift through information and choose the most likely options. Your choices will differ from others, but if you have research to back yours up, you're probably closer to the mark. If you are modeling HMS Sovereign of the Seas, join us builders on the Ships of Scale forum and we can share resource info and ideas on this most extraordinary royal great ship.
i've read a few of his books so useful possibly not all true though
Hi Jean, there are a few disputed issues with the shape of the stern, and the step downs with the decks, so a few minor changes could be made, but as we will never really know (as no-one alive has seen the ship) there will have to be some assumptions made.