The tragic tale of HMS Captain centers around the invention of the revolving gun turret in the late 1850’s.  This turret was invented by a Royal Navy officer named Cowper Coles. (At roughly the same time, a different turret design was developed by inventor John Ericsson, who designed the USS Monitor.  There is no surviving evidence of any common influence between the two men.)  Coles was an intelligent, innovative and ambitious officer.  However, he was also stubborn, opinionated and, like many naturally capable individuals, did not recognize his own limits of knowledge and experience.   He was also politically astute, and this combined with his other attributes would lay the seeds of disaster.

After developing a prototype during the Crimean War, Coles patented his turret and heavily lobbied the Royal Navy to incorporate it into their ship designs.  Thus, the Navy commissioned several experimental costal vessels, which successfully showed the potential of the turret.  There was, however, a major barrier to installing the turret on a first-class battleship: masts and rigging.  Although steam power had been in use for several decades, it was considered too inefficient, unreliable and lacking in fueling infrastructure to be solely relied upon in a seagoing vessel.  As a consequence, all front-line warships to date retained a sailing rig.  Obviously, this restricted the firing arcs of any turret and thus limited one of its greatest advantages.

The chief constructor (naval architect) of the Royal Navy, another brilliant individual named Edward Reed, believed turrets were inappropriate on a fully rigged ship.  He preferred the traditional broadside mounting below decks, in a heavily armored central citadel.  The debate over adopting turrets on masted warships led to Reed and Coles sparring with each other on several occasions. The two men soon became bitter rivals.

Despite Reed’s misgivings, the Admiralty decided to pursue a fully rigged battleship incorporating turrets.  Reed (reluctantly) designed such a ship, which became HMS Monarch.  Reed did his best to limit the interference of the masts and shrouds by placing a light hurricane deck above the upper deck and turrets, with many of the shrouds placed here, out of the way of the turrets.  Nevertheless, there were major blind spots fore and aft.  Reed took little pride in his creation, but Monarch was highly regarded in the fleet and was later considered to be one of his most successful ships.

Coles was not satisfied, however.  He attacked HMS Monarch as too conservative.   He objected to the raised forecastle and other deck clutter blocking the turrets, believing it to be unnecessary.  He also thought the freeboard of the ship was too high.  Low freeboard was popular for early turret ships, as it reduced the exposed area of the ship’s hull and, all else being equal, allowed for more concentrated side armor.  Coles had no formal education in ship design, though that did not stop him from having strong opinions on the matter.  He was either ignorant of or indifferent to the engineering reasons behind HMS Monarch’s ‘compromised’ design.

Unfortunately, the attacks by Coles on Monarch’s design found willing ears in the press and parliament.  They readily bought into Coles’ narrative: That Reed and the Navy were dragging their feet because he was an outsider who was disrupting their conservative and hidebound practices.  Now under considerable public pressure, the exasperated Admiralty made an unprecedented offer: Coles would be permitted to commission a warship, designed OUTSIDE of the Navy Constructor’s Department, which embraced his concept of a proper masted turret ship.  Coles was, of course, not qualified to design a ship himself.  The design would be executed - under Coles’ supervision - by the Laird Brothers’ Yard.  Laird Brothers had an excellent reputation as the foremost builder of iron warships.  This was the genesis of the ship that would become HMS Captain.

Significantly, the Constructor’s Department, while officially having to endorse the design (including signing off on drawings), insisted that the responsibility for success or failure was borne entirely by Coles and the Laird Brothers.  The official division of responsibility and oversight was not well defined – another error which would have major consequences.

The development of HMS Captain proceeded.  Coles was now directly involved in the design process, which forced him to face the same realities that compromised HMS Monarch.  Thus, some of his big ideas were watered down.  Captain would have a prominent forecastle and poop, limiting the firing arcs of the turrets to about the same as Monarch.  The ship still had significant differences to her friendly adversary.  She was the first British battleship to have twin screws.  Tripod masts were introduced - these eliminated much of the rigging that interfered with the turrets (but even this feature, which strengthened the masts, may have contributed to her loss).

But the most significant difference was the freeboard (the height of the weather deck above water).   HMS Monarch had a freeboard of 14 feet, which was comfortably high.  Captain was designed to have a freeboard of just 8 feet – by far the lowest of any masted battleship.

The freeboard (the height of the weather deck above water) has a large influence on the maximum safe roll angle of the ship.  Once the ship rolls past the point where the edge of the deck submerges, the natural tendency of the hull to ‘right’ itself begins to decrease.  If the ship continues to roll further, the forces which push the hull back upright will continue to drop, and eventually disappear entirely.  At this point the ship will capsize.

Reducing the freeboard of the hull thus reduces the maximum safe roll angle.  A ship lacking sails, if properly designed, can mitigate this risk and be reasonably seaworthy (in part because the center of gravity will naturally be lower than a high decked ship).  Once sails are added, the situation is much more difficult.  Not only is the center of gravity inherently higher, but the wind pressure on the sails will add significant lateral forces pushing the ship over.

HMS Captain was the first major ship to combine a sailing rig with low freeboard, and Reed warned that this was an inherently risky combination.  Even so, the ship might have remained sufficiently seaworthy but for two major deviations during construction.  First, she the ship as completed was significantly overweight.  This further submerged the hull, and the freeboard was reduced from 8 feet to barely over 6 ½.  Second, the center of gravity as completed was 10 inches higher than the design figure.  These deviations on a conventional hull might be tolerated – but with little margin for error, they sealed the fate of this ship.  The lack of clearly defined oversight no doubt contributed to these errors, as well as a lack of appreciation of their consequences.

HMS Captain was completed with much celebration and hype.  To Coles, the ship was the pride of his life’s work, and he accompanied the ship on all three of her voyages – including the final one.  Dockside tests were carried out to confirm the stability of the competed ship.  However, there was insufficient concern by all involved, and the ship put to sea before the results were published.

The fateful day arrived on September 6, 1870.  Captain was at sea with the fleet, with the weather deteriorating throughout the day.  It was noted that the ship was quite slow to recover from rolling, tending to ‘hang’ at the maximum roll angle.   When he visited the ship, Admiral Milne was disturbed that, as the ship rolled, he could easily step onto the deck from his launch without assistance.  As the day progressed, the wind picked up and sails were reduced.  By midnight there was a full-blown gale, and orders were given to drop sail entirely.  As that order was being executed, the ship rolled – and kept rolling – until she capsized. The final nail in the coffin may have been the tripod masts – weaker traditional masts might have collapsed and narrowly averted disaster.

The disappearance of the ship was not noticed by the fleet amidst the drama of the storm – only the next morning was it realized that the Captain was missing.  By this time all that could be found was a single launch which had the fortune to break free as the ship rolled over, containing just 18 men.  Coles was not among them.

Thus, HMS Captain’s short career came to an end, taking Cowper Coles and 471 other lives with her.  In the court martial that followed, the evidence vindicated the Navy and Edward Reed (who sadly resigned in frustration even before the loss).  It was noted that at only 14 degrees of roll, the righting moment of Captain was 410 foot-tons.  Under the same conditions HMS Monarch’s righting moment was 6,500 ft-tons.  Ultimately the committee found: 

“Before the Captain was received from her contractors a grave departure from her original design had been committed whereby her draught of water was increased about two feet and her freeboard was diminished to a corresponding extent, and that her stability proved to be dangerously small, combined with an area of sail, under those circumstances, excessive. The Court deeply regret that if these facts were duly known and appreciated, they were not communicated to the officer in command of the ship, or that, if otherwise, the ship was allowed to be employed in the ordinary service of the Fleet before they had been ascertained by calculation and experience.”

HMS Captain of 1870 was the last ship of the Royal Navy to carry the name.

Packaging: The kit comes in a small box stuffed with Styrofoam squares.  The hull and photo etch are separate, but all other parts, including the hurricane deck, are squeezed into a single bag.  In my case this resulted in a seriously warped hurricane deck (see below).  I noticed no other major damage, but this seems risky.

Detail Overview: Combrig has an excellent reputation as one of the top resin kit producers,

For reference, the design freeboard was 8’ 6” (= 3.7mm), and the actual freeboard on trials was 6’ 7” (= 2.9mm). This is less than a millimeter, although percentage wise it is significant. Some sources state that the ship floated even deeper under full load. In any event, I think Combrig made the right decision to err on the high side, particularly since many builders will be putting the ship in a sea base.

The hull is finely cast and detailed. Details are crisp and well defined without appearing overly exaggerated. There is less surface detail than you would see on, say, a Flyhawk kit, such as plate seams and rivets (this applies to other parts such as turrets). The decision to include or omit such detail in 1/700 is controversial since such small details are inevitably overscale. Personally, I think the ship does quite well without. The planking is well done and subtle. Butt ends are not represented but are barely visible in this scale anyway. Other nice details are the doors and side hatches, coaling hatches in the deck, deadlights and the complex traversing rails for the chaser guns.

Although not stated in the instructions, it appears that some openings need to be cut in the bulwarks forward on the forecastle deck. These ports are where the anchors are ‘hooked’ when stowed. The outlines for the openings are visible in the bulkhead but blocked with solid resin. Strangely, the instructions show the anchors in the proper position but ‘teleported’ through the solid bulkheads. As far as precisely cutting the openings in the extremely thin and fragile bulkheads, my advice is: Godspeed, good sir. 

In terms of accuracy, one detail that seems to have been overlooked is the height of the poop deck. On Combrig’s model, this is the same height as the rest of the hurricane deck, and that deck from bow to stern is continuously flat. On the real ship, the poop was slightly lower in height than the forecastle and midships hurricane deck, with a slope in the hurricane deck just aft of the mizzenmast to make the transition. The top of the bulwarks remained at the same height as the rest of the ship. As a consequence, these bulwarks are taller at the stern (relative to poop deck). This is quite difficult to notice and in my opinion is only a minor omission.

Detail is again excellent, including the row of tiny hammocks lining each side. Other details include the funnel base, deadlights and grated vents above each turret. Filling the seams where this piece mates with the forecastle and poop will be tricky due to the plank detail. According to the original plans, there is a large deadlight just aft of the mainmast and directly below one of the boats. The deadlight and boat are both absent from Combrig model. For what it’s worth, this feature is not present on the builder’s model although that area is suspiciously discolored – perhaps the museum cat knocked it off. Photographs confirm the presence of the boat in this position on the real ship, but it’s impossible to tell if the deadlight is present.

Another unusual feature of HMS Captain was a blast shield shrouding the gun ports. Curiously, it was only installed on the front turret. Perhaps this was due to the proximity of the bridge. In any event Combrig correctly offers the shield on the front turret only. The shield is part of the photo etch- however the shape is not quite correct. The actual shield was arched over each gunport such that when looking straight at the gunports it resembled a wavy ‘M’. On the kit this is depicted as a flat plane with no undulation. It may be possible to carefully bend the PE into the correct shape.

The funnel is again well cast. The surface detail is a bit sparse, but since the funnel is retracted in most photos and references, it’s difficult to say if anything is missing.

This is not a good kit for beginners or casual model builders due to the intricate parts, complicated assembly and supplementary research on paint and rigging. With that caveat, this kit is highly recommended. Here’s hoping that Combrig releases HMS Monarch, the perfect companion for this ship!