HMS Victory Forecastle Snatch Blocks

[Jonathan_219]

Building the Caldercraft Victory and I'm unsure about the placement of the forecastle snatch blocks which has raised other questions. In the Caldercraft instructions and on the plans the blocks go in a notch in the forecastle bulwark where the top of  the snatch block is level with the top of the bulwark. I've been having trouble visualizing how that area is going to go together but in looking at MccKay, Longridge and a Victory walkthrough video the snatch block is clearly on top of the bulwark. I have that hole in the bulwark where the snatch block should be placed but I guess I could fill  that and make it pretty clean since both sides will get painted.

 

One other thing I've noticed is that my forecastle side bulwarks are quite different and much higher in the Caldercraft kit than in McKay/Longridge/videos, and in the Caldercraft instructions it mentions that if you're building the "Trafalgar condition" add the two side pieces that make it different and I did add those. Does that mean that McKay and Longridge aren't documenting the Trafalgar configuration? That would also mean that the pictures online I've seen don't show the Trafalgar configuration, I thought the plan was to restore back to the Trafalgar configuration but I think there's a lot of restoration going on and I'm sure the pictures I'm pulling up on the internet are several years old.  If this is the case then the Caldercraft plans are probably right it's just different than all the resources I've been using.

 

That brings one final question which is if that area in McKay, Longbridge and videos of the current ship isn't Trafalgar what else might be different? Is this where I just need to trust the instructions/plans and the research Caldercraft  has done?

 

Appreciate any thoughts, I've been reading online what I can find about changes in configuration over time but there's a lot to go through and a lot of it goes over my head as I try to learn more.

 

[Y.T.]

I personally am currently building HMS Victory and pay little attention to such minor differences. Using 3 books at a time before installing any item: McKay, Longbridge, McGowan. Sometimes Lees and Peterson - these are little help. There are some small differences between them. I just ignore them picking one of the methods.                         

[Jonathan_219]

Update:

 

Spent  most of the afternoon poking around and have gotten better at googling queries that have gotten me more information. The best information I've found comes from a PDF from Chris Watton titled "A few aspects of researching a 1:64 scale Victory for the retail market" where Chris states that in his research he believes it unlikely the higher forecastle bulwarks were present at Trafalgar and he gives the evidence  that lead him to this decision, but there are people who believe they were and at present it seems like there's no way to definitively prove it one way or another. For an afternoons searching Chris' document seem the best researched thing I've found and tend to agree that it's unlikely the higher bulwarks were present at Trafalgar. That said I think I'm too far into this to go back now but I'll at least sleep on it. There were a couple other discussions in forums where people on both sides stated their case and probably won't change their mind. 

 

I do find it very interesting that even on what is probably the most documented ship of that era we still have things we're not completely sure of and unless some new evidence pops up we'll probably never know. 

 

And just FYI,  here's a picture of where I am currently on the build. I didn't start a build log because there are so many great ones already.