The National Maritime Museum in Greenwich houses the largest collection of scale ship models in the world. This book is the first in a series which will use selections of the best models to tell the story of specific ship types. Each volume reproduces a large number of model photos, all in full color, including many close-up and detail views. Although pictorial in emphasis, the book weaves the pictures into an authoritative text, producing an unusual and attractive form of technical history of the sailing frigate.

The National Maritime Museum in Greenwich houses the largest collection of scale ship models in the world. Many of the models are official, contemporary artifacts made by the craftsmen of the Royal Navy or the shipbuilders themselves, 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 evidence, they offer more detail than even the best plans, and demonstrate exactly what the ships looked like in a way that even the finest marine painter could not achieve. Now available in...