Scale: 1:24. A contemporary waterline model of the ‘Queen’, a 110-gun three-decker ship of the line (1839). The model is decked, equipped, rigged and mounted in a flooded graving dock. It is complete with a number of boats: three large launches mounted on the spare topmasts and spars in the waist, and two smaller cutters rigged on wooden davits over the stern quarters.

The ‘Queen’ was the first of the large sailing warships designed by Sir William Symonds. It was laid down in Portsmouth in 1833 under the name ‘Royal Frederick’ and originally rated as a 120-gun ship. Measuring 204 feet along the gun deck by 60 feet in the beam, it had a tonnage of 3104 (builders old measurement). Symonds introduced iron riders (diagonal bracing of the hold) instead of the heavy and bulky wooden riders used in earlier vessels, which allowed larger and stronger ships with increased interior space to be built.

The ‘Queen’ was said to have been a very seaworthy ship with many of the senior officers writing to Symonds praising it very highly in all weathers. When all the principal sails were set, it gave a coverage of nearly 30,000 square feet. Serving as the flagship in the Mediterranean and Black Sea, the ‘Queen’ took part in the Crimean War and was set on fire by a shell during the bombardment of Sebastopol on 11 October 1854. Cut down to two decks, it was converted to a screw battleship of 86 guns in 1859 and eventually in 1871 withdrawn from service and sold for breaking at Castle’s Yard, Charlton.