Scale: 1:96. Full hull model of HMS 'Royal Sovereign' (1891), a first-class battleship.

An example of a 19th-century exhibition model originally displayed in, and possibly made for, the Royal Naval College Museum, Greenwich. There is just enough detail to provide a good idea of the design, layout, and type of armament. For comparison, it is one of a set of three models made of warships of the period – HMS ‘Hood’ (SLR1219) and HMS ‘Centurion’ (SLR1227) being the others – that are stylistically very similar, and obviously made by the same hand. They were all on display together at the Museum, side by side, in the ‘Victory Room‘. The red painted outline detailing on the black upperworks is a curious, though well executed, feature. Much of the model has been poorly repainted, with an unsympathetic choice of colours, at some stage in its life. It has also been re-rigged.

The Naval Defence Act of 1889 authorised the construction of eight first-class battleships and two second-class ones. The ships thus built were the seven sisters of the ‘Royal Sovereign’ class, the ‘Hood’ of closely related design and the smaller ‘Centurion’ and ‘Barfleur’. The seven ‘Royal Sovereigns’ carried their four big 13.5-inch guns in pairs in open barbettes. They had their ten secondary 6-inch guns in two tiers – those on the main deck in separate armoured ‘casemates’ and those above, behind separate shields. HMS ‘Royal Sovereign’ herself wasn’t around for long. Built at Portsmouth dockyard, and launched in 1891, she was sold in 1913 – a relic of a bygone age in a world of rapidly changing technology.