The National Maritime Museum in Greenwich houses the largest collection of scale ship models in the world, many of which are official, contemporary artifacts made by the craftsmen of the navy or the shipbuilders themselves and ranging from the mid-seventeenth century to the present day. As such, they represent a three-dimensional archive of unique importance and authority. Treated as historical ...
Despite a supreme belief, the Royal Navy of the early eighteenth century was becoming over-confident and outdated, and it had more than its share of disasters including the devastating sickness in Admiral Hosier’s fleet in 1727; failure at Cartagena, and an embarrassing action off Toulon in 1744. Anson’s great circumnavigation, though presented as a triumph, was achieved at huge cost in ships and ...