Steamboats of HMS Victoria

[Micha_Pol]

Good evening fellow Ship Modellers. I am planning to build the most beautiful of ironclads - the HMS Victoria 1/350 Combrig kit this year, and while I am not a very advanced modeller I still prefer to know what I am looking at. The Combrig Kit includes a number of beautiful ship´s boats including the steam-powered ones. While I identified one as 50ft Steam pinnace and found a detailed plan of, the others remain a mystery to me. I am especially curious about the large, torpedo-bearing craft. There is only a tiny number of scale models of said ship, Brian King´s large one from his book being my main reference.  None of the photos of the actual ship offers a good view of the boats, and my only written source - the 2014 issue of Morskaya Kolektsiya - does not mention them at all (I am Russian-German, so this is not an issue of langage). Any info - type of boat, any pictures from other warships, blueprints, detailed models etc. would be of great help. I will attach pictures of the instruction so it gets cleat what we are talking about, as well as a shot of the Brian King model. Thanks a lot in advance

[Adm Lord De Univers]

Hi Micha,

 

I have these as one 1st class torpedo boat of 63ft, one 52ft and one 37ft steam pinnaces, one 42ft steam launch, two 30ft cutters, two 27ft whalers, one 30ft gig, and one 14ft dinghy. Seems like the kit either has better research than me (or more were added), provided spares or double some incorrectly.

 

David

[Micha_Pol]

Thank you.  So it is a 63ft torpedo boat. What is the large drum-like object at the stern then -  a sort of conning tower? The boat placement on HMS Victoria is a bit of a mystery to me anyway, I will probably stick with the Bryan King arrangement as much as possible; the Combrig instructions do not show them at all, being as a whole verty sketchy and unhelpful. They also give you only one screw despite there being 3 steam boats; the "steam pinnace" is the large rowing boat on top of 1st row? That one does not seem to have a steam engine at all - an oversight by Combrig?

[Adm Lord De Univers]

I think it's the torpedo director position, but that's a complete guess. The NMM's prints page does give a few pics including some layouts of later torpedo boats, but I couldn't clearly make out the text on my phone.

 

Hopefully others will confirm which is which, but I believe the steam pinnaces are meant to be the ones with the funnels on the runner (you'd have to measure them out to check) and the top one is the 42ft 'steam' launch (sans engine, funnel and prop - maybe it is just modelled as a launch?). But again all a guess, this era really isn't my forte. The NMM print page and regular site has photos and drawings of these boats that may help decipher.

 

In terms of the layout, a sleuth on wiki gave me a link to a Sans Pareil model (either by shipbuilders or crew apparently), of which I found this link of photos, here. Shows fewer boats than I have record of though. I could research from my books more of you want, but my internet search just now wasn't clear of boat arrangements and I'd assume theyd change from plans to ongoing operations etc. The wiki victoria page has a pic of the general layout, but again I didn't see boats.

 

David

[Micha_Pol]

Thank you David. Unfortunately, the link to the Sans Pareil model shows no pictures at all, just the text. Here is the only depiction I have that actually shows the position of the boats, but it differs from the Brian King model in both number and placement...