OcCre
are a specialist Company using state-of-the-art technology such as 3D
CAD, high resolution digital cameras and computer image processing to
produce incredibly detailed and lifelike scale models of trams and
trains, ships and buses for modellers to build and display. Their latest offering is of the
HMS Revenge. An English race-built galleon of 46 guns which participated in several battles under Sir Francis Drake's command.
The Revenge comes in 1:85-Scale and measures just over 27″ long and
about 22.4″ high. This plank-on-bulkhead kit includes English
instructions, with step-by-step images of assembly, planking in sapelle,
walnut and lime wood. Fittings come in cast metal, wood, and turned
brass. It also includes a sewn sails set that just needs to be rigged.
The model is suitable for those with some experience of model making.
Ship’s history
HMS Revenge was an English galleon built by Sir John Hawkins in the
shipyards of Deptford in 1577. The design had some special
characteristics. The ratio between the length and the breadth was
narrower, forecastle and stern castle smaller than typical galleons with
low freeboard. These features provided better artillery stability.
Under Sir Francis Drake's command participated in several battles.
As an integral 1590 Frobisher expedition against the Indian fleet, she
was captured as war booty. A terrible storm sank Revenge on her trip to
Spain.
The following excerpts taken from Wikipedia:
Revenge came to her end in a glorious but bizarre episode
that has become a legend. In order to impede a Spanish naval recovery
after the Armada, Sir John Hawkins proposed a blockade of the supply of
treasure being acquired from the Spanish Empire in America by a constant
naval patrol designed to intercept Spanish ships.
Revenge, was on such a patrol in the summer of 1591 under the command of Sir Richard Grenville.
The Spanish had dispatched a fleet of some 53 ships under Alonso de
Bazan, having under his orders Generals Martin de Bertendona and Marcos
de Aramburu. Intent upon the capture of the English at Flores in the
northern Azores. In late August 1591 the
Spanish fleet
came upon the English while repairs to the ships caused the crews, many
of whom were suffering an epidemic of fever, to be ashore. Most of the
ships managed to slip away to sea. Grenville who had many sick men
ashore decided to wait for them. When putting to sea he might have gone
round the west of Corvo island, but he decided to go straight through
the Spaniards, who were approaching from the eastward.
The battle began late on 31 August, when overwhelming force was
immediately brought to bear upon the ship, which put up a gallant
resistance. For some time he succeeded by skillful tactics in avoiding
much of the enemy's fire, but they were all round him and gradually
numbers began to tell. As one Spanish ship retired beaten, another took
her place, and for fifteen hours the unequal contest continued. Attempts
by the Spaniards to board were driven off.
San Felipe, a vessel three times her size, tried to come alongside for the Spaniards to board her, along with Aramburu's
San Cristóbal. After boarding
Revenge,
San Felipe was forced to break off. Seven men of the boarding party died, and other three where rescued by
San Bernabé, which grappled her shortly after. The Spanish also lost the galleon
Ascensión and a smaller vessel by accident that night, after they collided each other. Meanwhile,
San Cristóbal, which had come to help
San Felipe, rammed
Revenge underneath her aftcastle, and some time later, Bertendona's
San Bernabé
battered the English warship with heavy fire, inflicting many
casualties and severe damage. The English crew returned fire from the
embrasures below deck. When morning broke on 1 September,
Revenge
lay with her masts shot away, six feet of water on the hold and only
sixteen men left uninjured out of a crew of two hundred and fifty. She
remained grappled by the galleons
San Bernabé and
San Cristóbal, the latter with her bow shattered by the ramming. The grappling manoeuvre of
San Bernabé,
which compelled the English gun crews to abandon their posts in order
to fight off boarding parties, was decisive in securing the fate of the
Revenge.
"
Out-gunned, out-fought, and out-numbered fifty-three to one", when the end looked certain Grenville ordered
Revenge to be sunk: "
Sink me the ship, Master Gunner—sink her, split her in twain! ... Fall into the hands of God, not into the hands of Spain!
". His officers could not agree with this order and a surrender was
agreed by which the lives of the officers and crew would be spared.
After an assurance of proper conduct, and having held off dozens of
Spanish ships,
Revenge at last surrendered. The injured Grenville died of wounds two days later aboard the Spanish flagship.
The captured but heavily damaged
Revenge never reached
Spain, but was lost with her mixed prize-crew of 70 Spaniards and
English captives, along with a large number of the Spanish ships in a
dreadful storm off the Azores. The battle damaged
Revenge was cast upon a cliff next to the island off Terceira, where she broke up completely. Between 1592 and 1593, 14 guns of the
Revenge
were recovered by the Spanish from the site of the wreck. Other cannons
were driven ashore years later by the tide, and the last weapons raised
were salvaged as late as 1625
Her final action inspired a popular poem entitled
The Revenge: A Ballad of the Fleet by Lord Tennyson , which dramatically narrates the course of the engagement.
