This is a photo of a model called "an Elizabethan
galleon" built by The Science Museum,
London. The model was made according to plans contained
in the Baker
manuscript, described below. You will see that
the castles are still
significent in size.
According to "Ship Models, The Science Museum,"
the earliest scale plans of
ships known in England, are preserved at the Pepysian
Library, Magdalene
College, Cambridge. This manuscript, entitled Fragments
of Ancient English
Shipwrightry, was made about 1586 by Matthew Baker,
a master-shipwright. It
contains elevations, plans and sections which provide
information on the
exact form of Elizabethan ships. None of these
draughts can be accepted as
representing any particular ship of the period,
but the proportions of keel,
breadth, depth and overhangs are so close to those
of a number of the royal
ships, that the plans obviously represent the commonpractice
of the day. The
vessels are all galleon-built, with a forecastle
set well back from the stem
and a long projecting beak.To enable this model
to be made in the Science
Museum workshops, the data from a number of the
Baker drawings were combined
to obtain full plans of a typical ship of the period,
which corresponded
closely with the known dimensions of the large
galleon Elizabeth Jonas
re-built in 1597-8.