Hornblower's Ships: Their History and Their Models

by Martin Saville

TV's dramatization of C.S. Forester's Hornblower stories was one of the most expensive series ever made for television. Much of the $30 million budget went into the lavish special effects used to recreate the epic sea battles featuring a fleet of eleven specially commissioned, fully working, scale models. The models included such famous fictitious vessels as the frigate Indefatigable (a full-scale sailing replica was used when filming the on-board deck scenes); Hornblowers's first ship, The Justinian, and the Baltic trader, Julia. Hornblower's Ships tells the story behind the creation of these models through the research, planning, design, and construction by author and professional modelmaker Martin Saville, who managed the entire project from Petrozavodsk in Russia where the models were built, to the huge tank at Pinewood film studios in London. Over 100 models sequences were shot for the first four Hornblower programs. The book offers revealing full insight on the production and photographic techniques used in the painstakin filming process. Each shot took three to four hours to set up and film to ensure that the wind, waves, and sea apeared realistic when the rigging and remote control miniature cannons functioned correctly. The book also includes a full reference section detailing the ship types, full specifications, historical precedents and fictional role of the series' vessels, as well as scale plans of the vessels that will delight both ship enthusiasts and ship model builders.

128 pages, Paperback

First published June 15, 2000

Reviews

[Teri · Rating 5 out of 5]

I use this book as a reference and as such not to be read cover-to-cover like a fiction book, which is why I marked it as read. Very good.