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Book Review: Imagining the Arctic: Heroism, Spectacle and Polar Exploration

Teachers of historic naval architecture are limited in the visual sources they can employ to illustrate their subject and each source has its flaws. Paintings and sketches have always been popular, but they may lack detail and can easily be falsified. Ship’s draughts were precise and while they were required to build vessels, they lacked detail. They abound at the National Maritime Museum, but they can seem abstract and thus require a practised eye to understand; surprisingly many people cannot read these working drawings. Therefore, ship designers and builders learned early on that the best way to understand and promote a ship design was to have an accurate scale model of it made to present to its potential owners. Admiralty models are particularly renowned for their detail and beauty, as well as their numbers; the Navy Board had models built of, if not every ship, at least every class of ship and they were of two types, solid, vividly painted block models, or plank on frame presentation pieces. They can be considered as works of art and they too are kept at the National Maritime museum as well as the Science Museum, London. Paintings and ship draughts are reproduced in this volume but the main feature of this book, indeed for the series of books, is the use of photographs of these ship models as well as of dock yard models. The photos take up about one-half of the page space, the text is concise, and the author has chosen exceptional examples to illustrate his work. They are well-reproduced; the model photos are especially pristine, so the book and the photographs complement one another. Museum catalogue numbers are provided for each photo such that further information can be found on the Museum’s website. Admiralty models have always been inspirational to artist and model makers, so this book with its illustrations can, in a way, be considered a respectable book on art. That the author uses the photos as a vehicle to explain ship building makes it even more worthy.