Overview of Anatomy of Ship Book Series by Conway Press
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- Written by Gary Renshaw
The Anatomy of the Ship set of books is a highly acclaimed series providing the finest documentation of individual ships and ship types to be published. This series gives model ship builders valuable information on the technicalities of each type covered. The books offer an introduction on the service and design history, each title includes many photographs detailing each vessel.
Each book begins with a general history of the vessel, followed by a set of detailed scale drawings showing every part of the interior and exterior, from keel to masthead. It has black and white photographs and engravings as well as ship models for older types. Since late 1990s each volume has included a large scale plan on the reverse side of the fold off dust jacket.
The aim of the series is to provide the best documentation of individual ships and ship types ever published. The series is unique because of the beautifully done line drawings, including a conventional type of plan and explanatory view.
The ships chosen are a mix of famous vessels, such as HMS Victory and Yamato, and less-famous ships that are well-documented representatives of their class. This blog post provides information about some of the ships in the series, but does not include them all. New additions to the series are made regularly.
We have focused this list on a number of the books our audience would be most interested in.
The 74 Gun Ship Bellona by Brian Lavery
The 74 gun ship Bellona was launched in 1760 and served with distinction in 4 wars. The 74 was the classic line of battleships of the late eighteenth century. It was designed by Thomas Slade and built in significant numbers for over 20 years. The Bellona served with distinction over 54 years and fought in 4 wars.
Brian Lavery is one of Britain’s leading naval historians and a prolific author. A Curator Emeritus at the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, and a renowned expert on the sailing navy and the Royal Navy, in 2007 he won the prestigious Desmond Wettern Maritime Media Award. His naval writing was further honoured in 2008 with the Society of Nautical Research’s Anderson Medal.
Olha Batchvarov provides a good look inside this book on her YouTube channel. This is in English and provides an excellent overview of the quality of this unique book Anatomy of a Ship Bellona by Brian Lavery
The Armed Transport Bounty (1787) by John McKay
The Bounty was a small merchant ship purchased and converted into a naval carrier to transport breadfruit into the plantations in the West Indies. There are good surviving documents so a detailed account of the purchase by the Navy of the merchant vessel Bethia and her conversion into a naval transport named The Bounty is available. This ship was made famous by the mutiny against Captain Bligh in 1789.
The Ship Modelers Library on YouTube created by Olha Batchvarov has a good look inside the book Anatomy of the Ship – The Armed Transport Bounty (1787).
Frigate Diana (1794) by David White
HMS Diana was a 38-gun Artois-class fifth rate frigate of the Royal Navy. She was launched in 1794. Diana served in the Royal Navy’s campaign in Egypt between March and September 1801. Her crew and officers were awarded the clasp for Egypt to attach to their Naval General Service Medal in 1850.
Diana participated in an attack on a French frigate squadron anchored at Saint-Vaast-la-Hougue at the action of 15 November 1810. This led to the destruction of a French frigate.
After a long career in nearly all French Revolution and Napoleonic wars in March 1815 Diana was sold to the Dutch navy for £36,796. On 27 August 1816 she was one of six Dutch frigates that participated in the bombardment of Algiers. Diana was destroyed in a fire on 16 January 1839 while in dry-dock.
First published in 1987, this popular volume includes a new large-scale plan of the ship on the reverse of the extended fold-out jacket and over 100 perspective and three-dimensional drawings accompanied by in-depth descriptive keys and photos. Both accurate and impressively detailed, this volume is an essential reference for age of sail enthusiasts and modelers alike. 24 photographs. 300 line drawings.
The 32-Gun Frigate Essex by Portia A Takakjian
At the end of the War of Independence, the American navy was disbanded, and it was not until the late 1790s that a regular naval force was reformed. The American merchant ships were in need of protection from the belligerent European nations and the pirates from the Barbary area. Congress decided on a programme of frigate building, which included the 32-gun frigate Essex.
Designed by William Hackett, Essex was a typical medium frigate of her time. Working from both US and British sources, the author has reconstructed many previously undetermined details of the ship and has rehabilitated the reputation of the designer as one who was responsible for one of the best balanced of that generation’s frigates.
Portia Takakjian was a professional ship modeller who before devoting herself to modelling and to maritime research was a book illustrator. Her early training is apparent in the quality of the draughtsmanship displayed in this book. Her ships’ plans collection is held by Mystic Seaport, The Museum of America and the Sea.
The Bomb Vessel Granado 1742 by Peter Goodwin
HMS Granado was launched at Harwich in 1742, during the War of the Austrian Succession as a sloop-of-war. During this war she captured a French privateer.
During the Seven Year’s War she served both as a sloop and as a bomb vessel, and participated in naval operations off the coast of France and in the West Indies. When the Navy sold her in 1763 she became the mercantile Prince Frederick.
Around 1775 she became the northern fisheries whaler Prudence. Around 1781 she became a government transport and was wrecked on 20 May 1782 on the coast of India.
Peter Goodwin is widely acknowledged as one of the leading writers on the sailing warship. His published titles include the classic The Construction and Fitting of the Sailing Man of War (Conway, 1990), The Naval Cutter ‘Alert’ (in the Conway Anatomy of the Ship series) and the acclaimed Nelson’s Ships: A Comprehensive History of the Vessels In Which he Served 1771-1805 (Conway, 2002). He is Keeper and Curator of HMS Victory, in HM Naval Base Portsmouth.
The 24-Gun Frigate Pandora by John McKay and Ron Coleman
HMS Pandora was a 24-gun Porcupine-class sixth-rate post ship of the Royal Navy launched in May 1779. The vessel is best known for its role in hunting down the Bounty mutineers in 1790. Pandora was partially successful by capturing 14 of the mutineers, but wrecked on the Great Barrier Reef on the return voyage in 1791. HMS Pandora is considered to be one of the most significant shipwrecks in the Southern Hemisphere.
This Youtube clip by Olha provides such an interesting overview of this important book in the Anatomy of the Ship Series.
The Ships of Christopher Columbus Santa Maria, Pinta and Nina by Xavier Pastor
1992 marked the 500th anniversary of the European discovery of the Americas by Christopher Columbus.
The details of Columbus’s ships the Santa Maria, Nina and Pinta remain lost to historians, for the ships were built before the first manuals of shipbuilding were written, and no documentation or illustration has survived. Nevertheless, extensive research has allowed the construction of a number of replicas over the years, and those built for the 1992 celebrations are without doubt the most accurate reconstructions yet.
Many years of research by Jose Martinez-Hidalgo and his successors into the Naos and caravels of the 15th and 16th centuries has allowed a whole new insight into the design and construction of the famous ships of Columbus.
Be sure to have a look at the excellent book review on Youtube called Anatomy of the Ships – Ships of Christopher Colombus.
HMS Endeavour by Karl Heinz Marquardt
The Endeavour, was made famous by Captain Cook’s first voyage in her in 1768-71. It was originally the collier Earl of Pembroke and was chosen by Cook for his voyage because of her strong construction. She was purchased by the Royal Navy at Whitby and converted to an exploration ship for a scientific mission to the Pacific Ocean and to explore the seas for the surmised Terra Australis Incognita or “unknown southern land”.
Commissioned as His Majesty’s Bark Endeavour, she departed Plymouth in August 1768, rounded Cape Horn and reached Tahiti in time to observe the 1769 transit of Venus across the Sun. She then set sail into the largely uncharted ocean to the south, In September 1769, she anchored off New Zealand, becoming the first European vessel to reach the islands since Abel Tasman’s Heemskerck 127 years earlier.
In April 1770, Endeavour became the first European ship to reach the east coast of Australia, with Cook going ashore at what is now known as Botany Bay. Endeavour then sailed north along the Australian coast. She narrowly avoided disaster after running aground on the Great Barrier Reef, and Cook had to throw her guns overboard to lighten her. Endeavour was beached on the Australian mainland for seven weeks to permit rudimentary repairs to her hull.
Resuming her voyage, she limped into port in Batavia in October 1770, her crew sworn to secrecy about the lands that they had visited. From Batavia Endeavour continued westward, rounded the Cape of Good Hope on 13 March 1771 and reached the English port of Dover on 12 July, having been at sea for nearly three years.
After her voyage she was sold out of service in 1775, and finally condemned sometime in the 1790s.
Relics from Endeavour are displayed at maritime museums worldwide, including an anchor and six of her cannon. A replica of Endeavour was launched in 1994 and is berthed alongside the Australian National Maritime Museum in Sydney Harbour.
Karl Heinz Marquardt is an internationally known ship modeller and has spent a lifetime researching the era of the sailing ship. He is an accomplished draughtsman and has illustrated many books.
USS Constitution by Karl Heinz Marquardt
Find out all about the building of the world’s oldest commissioned warship the USS Constitution with the guide in the “Anatomy of the Ship” series by Naval Institute Press.
This wonderful book has hundreds of drawings, illustrations, diagrams, measurements and technical information for the builder, artist, model maker, or naval architect. Karl Heinz Marquardt is an internationally known modeler and marine artist whose models are shown in over ten European museums. He is an exceptional draughtsman and is a regular contributor to the Conway journal Model Shipwright.
This Volume Features: A full description of the Constitution; most famous historic preserved ship in her 1812-1815 appearance. It has more than 250 perspectives and 3-view drawings, with in- depth descriptive keys, of every detail of the ship – general arrangements, hull construction, fittings, masts and yards, rigging and sails, and armament as well as a pictorial section showing full-view and on-board photographs
The USS Constitution Museum is a great resource for all things connected to this wonderful ship.
The 100-Gun Ship, Victory by John McKay
HMS Victory is a 104-gun first-rate ship of the line of the Royal Navy, ordered in 1758, laid down in 1759 and launched in 1765. She is best known for her role as Lord Nelson’s flagship at the Battle of Trafalgar on 21 October 1805.
She additionally served as Keppel’s flagship at Ushant, Howe’s flagship at Cape Spartel and Jervis’s flagship at Cape St Vincent. After 1824, she was relegated to the role of harbour ship.
In 1922, she was moved to a dry dock at Portsmouth, England, and preserved as a museum ship. She has been the flagship of the First Sea Lord since October 2012 and is the world’s oldest naval ship still in commission, with 244 years’ service as of 2022.
The acclaimed Anatomy of the Ship series, 100-Gun Ship Victory was first published in 1987.
Three hundred perspective and three-view drawings, with fully descriptive keys, illustrate every detail of the ship, including hull construction, masts and yards, armament, rigging, decoration and fittings offer ship buffs, historians, and model makers a full view of the ship and her position in the development of the First Rate.
John McKay is an architectural draftsman by profession and devoted over five years and 3,000 hours to designing this book. He lives in Vancouver, Canada.
HMS Beagle: Survey Ship Extraordinary by Karl Heinz Marquardt
HMS Beagle was a Cherokee-class 10-gun brig-sloop of the Royal Navy, one of more than 100 ships of this class. The vessel, constructed at a cost of £7,803 and was launched on 11 May 1820 from the Woolwich Dockyard on the River Thames.
Later reports say the ship took part in celebrations of the coronation of King George IV of the United Kingdom, passing through the old London Bridge, and was the first rigged man-of-war afloat upriver of the bridge. There was no immediate need for Beagle so she was moored afloat but without masts or rigging. She was later adapted as a survey barque and took part in three survey expeditions.
The second voyage of HMS Beagle is notable for carrying the recently graduated naturalist Charles Darwin around the world. While the survey work was carried out, Darwin travelled and researched geology, natural history and ethnology onshore. He gained fame by publishing his diary journal, best known as The Voyage of the Beagle. His findings were very important in the development of scientific theories on evolution and natural selection.
Key Takeaways
- The "Anatomy of the Ship" series by Conway Press is renowned for its comprehensive documentation of individual ships, providing detailed histories, technical descriptions, and scale drawings from keel to masthead.
- The series features a mix of famous and lesser-known ships, offering a wealth of information for model ship builders, historians, and enthusiasts, including photographs, line drawings, and plans.
- Notable volumes include detailed accounts and analyses of ships like the 74 Gun Ship Bellona, the Armed Transport Bounty, Frigate Diana, the 32-Gun Frigate Essex, the Bomb Vessel Granado, and others, each meticulously researched.
- The books are valuable resources for understanding the design and construction of historic ships, aiding in the creation of accurate ship models.
- Available through various outlets including Amazon, these works range widely in price and are essential additions to the libraries of modelers and maritime history buffs.
Where to purchase books
These books were originally published by Conway Press. They are now available through Amazon. This site has a number of second hand books available too. These books are often advertised on other sites such as Ebay, and book stores.
They range in price considerably from several hundred dollars to lesser amounts. It is also a very good idea to do a google search on the book title as some may now be available as downloads and ebooks.
These books are an incredible addition to any modelers library and will be a handy reference book for your hobby at any stage.
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