H.M.S.Victory-First Rate 1765
by Jonathan Eastland and Iain Ballantyne.
Seaforth Publishing; July 2011.
ISBN 978-1-84832-094-9
by Jonathan Eastland.
HMS Victory - First Rate 1765 front and back cover
H.M.S Victory is probably the best known historic ship in the world.
Horatio Nelson's flagship at the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805 is also the oldest warship still in commission with the Royal Navy, a fact some find a little ironic in this day and age when the U.K. Government is currently so busy stripping its fleet of perfectly usable grey hulled capital ships only a fraction of Victory's age.
Politics aside, my interest in H.M.S.Victory dates back to the end of the 1960s when I first took up residence in Portsmouth and founded the
Ajax News & Feature Service press agency specialising in maritime affairs.
The public relations office of the Royal Naval Base was always keen to promote the ship, not only for the obvious reasons of encouraging tourism but more indirectly for the purpose of contributing to and maintaining the highest public profile for the 'Senior' service. Access to the ship for journalists and press photographers was encouraged and there always seemed to be plenty of opportunities for stories about restoration or visits of V.I.Ps.
As 2005 approached, I realised my
agency archives contained a large collection of images of H.M.S.Victory and while some of these had been published in newspapers and magazines over the decades, many had not. My colleague and editor of the magazine
Warships International Fleet Review Iain Ballantyne and I hatched a synopsis for a semi-biographical work exploring the history of all seven ships named Victory which had served in the nation's Navy.
The book H.M.S Victory was published in late 2005, too late in fact, for it to have had any impact of consequence for its authors on the collector, model maker or naval historian market, let alone the wider public. Not only was publication too late, in my opinion the publisher made a complete ham-fist of the design and layout of the book, crowning their incompetence by printing all of the images intended for colour reproduction in grey and white.
A few more years passed. Seeing the cover of the '05 Victory book coming up in periodic searches to find who was using any of my images without permission exacerbated my irritation and frustration at the publisher's cock-up; finding another publisher willing to treat the material with some respect would not be easy.
In due course, Julian Mannering, the co founder and editor of
Seaforth Publishing, called to discuss ideas for a new and more highly illustrated Victory book. Presentation would be a key factor in any success or failure - and heaven knows there had been dozens of the latter over the years.
The more Julian and I talked, the more we veered toward a handy format presented in glossy and sumptious colour on high quality paper. The look of it was partly inspired by older publications of the National Geographic Society magazine with graphic ideas from modern Japanese publications thrown into the mix, a bit of a designer's nightmare, but one we thought was achievable given the extent of images available. In any event, the book, once published, had to have some lasting appeal; we wanted it to still look fresh a decade down the line.
Once design ideas were reasonably established it simultaneously became apparent that a great deal of existing archive material was already too dated to republish. More importantly, from my perspective as a
photographer and co-author, I could see gaping holes in image continuity, not to mention aspects in need of re-shooting.
pages from the July 2011 issue of Warships International Fleet Review
I had a clear vision of what I wanted in the way of pictures based on ideas I had begun to form in 2004, but which opportunity and circumstance then had prevented more than a few frames being canned. In 2010, staff at the R.N. Public Relations department and Victory's C.O. Lt.Cmdr. Oscar Whild gave permission for me to make several new visits to the ship.
pages from the July 2011 issue of Warships International Fleet Review
One of my biggest problems was scheduling these to give me a free run of the interior of the ship before it was opened to the public. Setting up cameras, the arrangement of lighting and making tests in an environment that sometimes felt akin to mountaineering in the dark all took time, but it was something that had to be done for every new location. Keeping a visual sense of the existing lighting ambience in parts of the ship while pushing just the right amount of light into a scene to enable book viewers to see enough detail on the page was another issue. While the mix of daylight from gunports and electric lanterns could sometimes be used to advantage, the more practical problems of ascertaining sharp focus and or motif composition where there was no existing light, proved difficult.
There was also a lot of consideration given to particular angles of view and the selection of lenses. From the outset, I made a decision to shoot as much of the new material as possible on digital cameras, in this case,
Nikon single lens reflexes and an
Epson rangefinder. These tools have exceptional image capture ability with a high dynamic range enabling shadow detail to be safely pulled out when necesssary, a feature I considered essential for the subject and one that would have been the more difficult to accomplish on film without considerable extra lighting.
A tiny compact
Ricoh GRD with a fixed focal length 5.9mm lens (35mm equivalent angle of view; 28mm.) was also used as its colour palette and high image quality closely matched the larger sensored tools.
Wide angle lenses from 15mm to 20mm were used for most of the interior shots, while exteriors were captured using the same optics as well as 58mm and 80-200mm lenses.
H.M.S. Victory is a large static display but it does take on a life of its own. Light and prevailing weather conditions play a large part in a photographer's interpretation of the object and this is why, in a
book of this nature, many visits through the different seasons were necessary to try and capture something of the soul of Nelson's flagship. Only be returning to it time and time again, can one get a feel for the subject and perhaps, if one is fortunate, the vaguest inkling of what moods the ship imposed on its inhabitants more than two centuries past. My hope is that some of this will come through for the reader.
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Copyright;Jonathan Eastland 2011. Article first published in Warship International Fleet Review Magazine July 2011 issue entitled HMS Victory's Beauty. >www.ajaxnetphoto.blogspot.com< 2011.
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