Scale: 1:48. A contemporary full hull model of the 50-gun frigate HMS ‘Vernon’ (1832) mounted on its original wooden baseboard. It is complete with stump masts and bowsprit, an enclosed waist with gratings, a double wheel (made from bone and brass) and a half bust figurehead finished in gold paint or leaf. The hull is shown with both the guns and port lids omitted and is painted copper below the waterline, with minimal decoration on the stern and quarter galleries.

The ‘Vernon’ was built at Woolwich Dockyard and measured 176 feet in length by 44 feet in the beam and a tonnage of 1511. She was the first large ship designed by William Symonds in 1831, and due to the urgency of her construction she later developed serious dry rot and was eventually hulked as an accommodation ship in 1863. She later became the torpedo training ship at Portsmouth in 1876, renamed ‘Actaeon’ in 1886 and in 1916, was moved to Sheerness before eventually being broken up in 1922.