Book Reviews
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Book Reviews Nick Ball and Simon Stephens. Navy tional Maritime Museum, the work pro- Board Ship Models, Barnsley, S. Yorks: vides a ready reference to Navy Board Seaforth Publishing and Royal Muse- ship models in a full-colour volume that ums Greenwich, www.seaforthpublish- illustrates the museum’s collection with ing.com, 2018. 192 pp., illustrations, numerous photographs of the models table, glossary, notes, bibliography, from various angles, highlighting spe- index. US $64.95, UK £40.00, cloth; cific decorations and construction de- ISBN 978-1-5267-0111-4. tails. Co-author Nick Ball has maritime It might surprise many people to know museum experience at both the Na- that ship models were not initially tional Museum of the Royal Navy and items for hobbyists. They had specific Royal Museum Greenwich’s National technical, economic, commercial, and Maritime Museum (NMM) in London, military functions. Further, the craft of where Simon Stephens curates. Addi- ship modeling is centuries old. Ship tionally, Stephens wrote another defin- models have served many purposes, itive work on models (with co-author among them technical, design, exhibi- Brian Lavery), Ship Models: Their Pur- tion, and pleasure. Located within the pose and Development from 1650 to British Admiralty, the Navy board was the Present (1995). Ball and Stephens’ responsible for the day-to-day civil ad- extensive working knowledge of the ministration of the Royal Navy from the collection launches readers right into sixteenth to the early-nineteenth centu- an immersive tour of the NMM’s de- ry. Navy Board models—a subcategory finitive collections. As summarized by of exhibition models—were made for museum director, Kevin Fewster: both display and technical purposes. In “The ship model collection at Roy- this detailed and visually-rich volume, al Museums Greenwich is the largest Navy Board Ship Models, authors Nick publicly owned one in the world, to- Ball and Simon Stevens significantly taling over 4,500 models. Foremost contribute to ship model literature. Fo- amongst them is the highly-prized col- cusing on the collection of Britain’s Na- lection of fifty-four Navy Board models The Northern Mariner / Le marin du nord, XXIX, No. 2 (Summer 2019), 159-208 160 The Northern Mariner / Le marin du nord dating from the 1650s through 1775... (138).” the Museum’s ship models provide un- The authors succeed in providing a rivalled insight into many aspects of definitive Navy Board model reference the seventeenth-and-eighteenth-century for modelers, collectors, historians, and British Navy (6).” anyone interested in ship models and The authors divide the work into construction. The book is especially three sections: Historical Background, valuable for the general study of exhi- Construction and Materials, and Cata- bition models and for tracing the history logue of the National Maritime Muse- of specific collections, as it includes a um’s Navy Board Ship Model Collec- directory of “Navy Board Models Held tion. The first section gives the reader Elsewhere.” Usefully, the directory ma- an introductory background of the his- trix identifies Navy Board models and tory of Navy Board models, placing models that are similar in style, includ- them in a social and cultural context. ing the name of each identified model The second chapter outlines basic ma- and its location at the time of writing. terials, tools, and construction, and the Additionally, the table includes the year final section illustrates each of the 54 the model was built, number of guns, models in the collection, complete with rate, and scale. The appendix contains drawings, photographs, and detailed a comprehensive glossary and index, descriptions. Coverage of each model and notes provided from the co-authors’ includes introductory information for a curatorial perspective are beneficial. general audience, as well as details that The volume enhances standard would interest model makers and cura- works on ship models, including vol- tors, as evidenced from the pages illus- umes such as Brian Lavery’s The Ship trating the 70-gun ship, Bedford: of the Line: A History of Ship Mod- “Apart from the newly introduced els (2014); Navy Board Ship Models: 80-gun ships of the 1690s, the 70-gun 1650-1750 by John Franklin (1989); Third Rates remained the most prolif- and Philip Reed’s Building a Miniature ic during the first half of the eighteenth Ship Board Model (2009). This volume century, up until 1756 with the intro- rightly takes its place among books that duction of the new 74-gun ship. Under interested readers, historians, modelers, the 1695 building programme, Parlia- and collectors will want to own. ment granted funds for three...named after senior officers of the Admiralty. Gina Granados Palmer The Bedford was named after Admiral Newport, Rhode Island Edward Russell, who was First Lord of the Admiralty and later created Duke of G.H. Bennett. The Royal Navy in the Bedford in 1694...” (136-139) Age of Austerity 1919-22: Naval and This model has now been positive- Foreign Policy under Lloyd George. ly identified as the Bedford, launched in London and New York: Bloomsbury 1698, by comparing known dimensions, Academic, www.bloomsbury.com, together with contemporary drawings 2018, xvii+273pp., tables, index. US by Willem van de Velde. This is backed $39.95, paper; ISBN 978-1-3500-6711- up further with the carved dolphin cra- 0 (E-book available.) dle supports bearing the initials ‘FH’ and the date 1698. “This refers to Fish- After the First World War, the Royal er Harding, Master Shipwright at Wool- Navy entered a period of challenges for wich and designer of the Bedford... the British state and the application of Book Reviews 161 naval power in relation to diplomacy United States Navy, in part to cultivate and the national economy. Although a special relationship with a close ally. on the winning side in the fight against Diplomatic conferences in Washington Imperial Germany, Great Britain suf- and London restricted the size, compo- fered from a tightening financial situa- sition, and number of warships on be- tion, certain core industries ill-suited to half of signatory parties and gave cer- peacetime adjustment, calls for limita- tain security guarantees, at a time when tions in arms, imperial over-reach, and money was in short supply. The Royal shifting strategic alliances. Canadians Navy, like most arms of government, like John Ferris, Keith Neilson, Greg was expected to live within its means Kennedy, and Christopher Bell have as savings forced by the Treasury took been among the historians who have effect. Building of new warships was reassessed and revised understanding deferred and in many cases curtailed, of the Royal Navy during the interwar the Admiralty forced to argue and lobby years, a field previously dominated by for new classes of ships that would ben- the work of Stephen Roskill in his ca- efit from the lessons of the last war and pacity as official and semi-official histo- meet new operational demands from rian of the Admiralty and naval service. aerial and sub-surface threats. Harry Bennett, a reader at the Univer- The impact on the domestic ship- sity of Plymouth, synthesizes much of building industry was dearly felt in the existing scholarship and argues for regions of the country, where unem- a political economy approach that puts ployment amongst workers and closing naval policy in the broader context of down of shipyards were the direct re- governmental, economic, diplomatic, sult. The Royal Navy’s efforts to get and imperial imperatives, most partic- the warships that it wanted dovetailed ularly during the stewardship of Prime with concerns over social unrest, exo- Minister David Lloyd George. He finds dus to labour and socialist parties, and interconnectedness as the central tenet the government’s rising bills for finan- that draws together several important cial assistance at local levels. Naval themes that anchor the Royal Navy in shipbuilding became little more than its time and various communities of in- a form of state-inspired welfare, even terest. as the Lloyd George government con- The span and breadth of Bennett’s tinued to wring out as much financial survey acknowledges that it was a mere room as possible for the national bene- four years, the same length of time as fit. Bennett spends some time showing the war itself. Great Britain and the the connections between power brokers Royal Navy emerged changed from that in parliament and the house of lords, conflict, and the post-war period was the bureaucracy, the press, and higher equally important from beginning to leadership in the Admiralty, civilian and end when naval policy had to keep pace naval. The successes gained included with an evolving world and national a pair of new-build battleships and de- circumstances. The first inconvenience ferral of a naval arms race, which Great was the alliance with Japan that had Britain could ill-afford. Still, Bennett served Great Britain well since 1902 sees failure in the inadequately de- and became increasingly untenable as fended Singapore naval base—starved Japanese strength and power grew in of the necessary funds to complete its the Pacific. The Royal Navy conced- works—intended to hold on until a fleet ed any numerical competition with the arrived and weak position overall in re- 162 The Northern Mariner / Le marin du nord gard to a resurging Japan in the years there was no general maritime history leading to the Second World War. De- of the English Civil War period. Over- cisions made in the early 1920s came whelmingly, accounts of the civil war back to haunt the Royal Navy. address political matters and military This book is a cheaper paperback operations. The fact that the King’s release of the hardback previous- navy aligned with Parliament and that ly published in 2016.