The Application and Scheme of Paintworks in British Men-of-War in the Late Eighteenth and Early Nineteenth Centuries

Abstract

The question of the authenticity of the colour scheme for the preserved HMS Victory has been the subject of some debate. This article uses historical evidence and technical analysis of paint samples to draw conclusions about the external and internal appearance of HMS Victory and other ships of this time in both the British and French navies. An investigation of a carpenter's account book from 1805 has revealed some interesting evidence on the use of paint aboard ship. Finally the author makes recommendations for possible improvements in the paint scheme for HMS Victory that will be more historically accurate.

Keywords:

• HMS Victory
• paint
• Royal Navy
• Nelson
• Trafalgar
• preserved ships
• technical analysis
• John Masefield

Notes

¹ Curatorial Report no. 70 to VATC, 18 May 2010, ‘The Painting of Cabins based on Ships of War circa 1805’.

² The subject was well covered by Carr Laughton, but he was working some 90 years ago, and there is room for modern research. Carr Laughton, Old Ship Figure-heads and Sterns, 273.

³ Victory Curatorial Archives (VCA) do not reveal any formal decisions relating to a new policy on paint schemes.

⁴ The Victory Advisory Technical Committee was established by the Society for Nautical Research in 1922 and was replaced by a new National Museum of the Royal Navy Technical Committee in 2012.

⁵ National Museum of the Royal Navy (NMRN), 1064/83, record number 2376. Transcribed by the author in 1992.

⁶ Account of the Works performed in Fitting Ships for Sea Service 1803, etc. NMRN MSS. 259, Portfolio I (3). Evidence for cisterns is found in San Joseph (100): ‘repaird binns & lockers, 2 paint cisterns . . .’; Canopus (80): ‘made 4 paint cisterns’; and Spartiate (74): ‘128 tinplates to bulkheads &c. made 2 paint cisterns’.

⁷ NMRN 1064/83; Record number 2376.

⁸ NRNM 1064/83; Record number 2376. Another expense, entered by the Victory's carpenter dated 18 August states: ‘To painting Boats the Quarter deck and Refreshing ye. Paint on the Ships Sides this Mo. [month]) 11’. The Paint and materials listed in the margin are as follows: ‘Paint White 95 lbs. Paint Yellow 24 lb. Paint Black 67 lbs. Oil 30 gallons. Brushes Six No.’

⁹ Linseed oil was also mixed with lead to form putty for filling seams and flaws in surfaces prepared for painting, and as a natural wood preservative. Indeed good carpenters applied it to the handles and hafts of their tools. In that era it was equally used by ship's doctors; often recorded as ‘lintseed oil’ (sic).

¹⁰ NRNM 1064/83; Record number 2376.

¹¹ See also old coloured postcards of the ship; some of these images are still being reproduced in multiview form by current postcard printers.

¹² Lavery, Nelson's Fleet at Trafalgar, 51 and 112

¹³ Roberts, Eighteenth Century Shipbuilding, 173.

¹⁴ NA ADM 354/221/17. Note that ‘Private Ships’ are those ships not carrying a flag officer, or when an admiral and his entourage have quit the ship leaving it under the charge of the captain.

¹⁵ Certainly the current colour has a strong ‘orange hue’ compared to the creamier colour that I recall on my first visit in 1964.

¹⁶ Such as harbour launches, victualling craft and tank-cleaning vessels.

¹⁷ http://www.frickers.co.uk/blog/2012/06/15/nelsons-bright-yellow/

¹⁸ Paul, ‘An artist's notes at the battle of the Nile’, 272–3.

¹⁹ Clowes, The Royal Navy, vol. 4, 357.

²⁰ NA ADM 354/221/17.

²¹ Carr Laughton, Old Ship Figure-heads and Sterns, 273.

²² Ibid., plate 7, fig.C.

²³ Bruce, ‘The colour of men-of-war’, 29.

²⁴ NMRN 1064/83, record number 2376. This substance most likely in the form of a black stain (lamp black) used as a pigment mixed with linseed oil and well rubbed into the wood grain.

²⁵ Sz, ‘Colour of men-of-war’, 154.

²⁶ Sz, ‘Colour of men-of-war’, 154.

²⁷ Fine examples being the American whaling ship Charles W. Morgan (1841), Mystic Sea Port Connecticut, and the British tea clipper Cutty Sark (1869) Greenwich, London.

²⁸ Examples: Hastings (74) (1818); Bomb vessel Erebus (1826); Vernon (50) (1832); Royal Albert (121) (1854) whose round stern has green gun-port linings.

²⁹ Although not historically profound, a pale ‘fine’ green was used for internal quarter deck bulwarks of the frigate in the 1951 Hollywood movie, Captain Horatio Hornblower R.N.

³⁰ NMRN 1064/83, record number 2376. The reference to three yauls (yawls) appears to relate to the 25-foot yawl, the 25-foot cutter and the 18 foot cutter, making up the Victory's complement of six boats.

³¹ White; external hull, transom and rudder. Yellow; all inboard works and the wash strake. Black; the sheer strake and/or rubbing strake.

³² NMRN 1064/83, record number 2376. Note, no red is listed.

³³ Ibid. Again, no red.

³⁵ Goodwin, ‘The Development of the Orlop of HMS Victory’, 460–6.

³⁶ Goodwin, ‘The Orlop Deck of HMS Victory’.

³⁴ Masefield, Sea Life in Nelson's Time, 15.

³⁷ Roberts, Blaise Ollivier, 173

³⁸ NMM examples: section model of a 74-gun ship (1826) with white gun port linings; Vanguard (80) (1835) with inboard works and inner faces of gun port lids pale yellow, the gun port linings red; Hood (80) (1849) with pale yellow/white inner faces of gun port lids and half ports; Agamemnon (80) (1852) with pale yellow edges of gun port lids and gun port linings, also pale yellow external faces of half ports.

³⁹ Lavery and Stephens, Ship Models, 13.

⁴⁰ Bristow, Interior House Painting and Reynolds, Directions for House and Ship Painting are obvious references.

⁴¹ NMRN. 1064/83 Record number 2376

⁴² VCA, guide books

⁴³ NMRN. 1064/83 Record number 2376

⁴⁴ NA ADM 354/221/17.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Peter G. Goodwin

Peter Goodwin served in the Royal Navy in nuclear submarines, qualifying as a marine engineer. He completed an MPhil at the Institute of Maritime Studies, at the University of St Andrews. From 1991 to 2011 he was the keeper and curator of HMS Victory. He has written numerous books and articles on the sailing navy.