Scale: 1:224. Topographic model depicting cargo handling in the port of Southampton, Hampshire, in around 1480. The model is inscribed ‘Kenneth Britten 76’ and is based on research carried out by N. Upham.

The port of Southampton was visited annually between 1460 and 1553 by a Venetian State fleet of trading galleys and carracks and it is on one of these visits that this model is based. Cargoes of spices, drugs, precious stones, costly silks and velvets, glass, weapons and armour were brought for sale to English merchants. Southampton had a lively coastal trade at the time and also traded with the Channel Islands, the Low Countries, Spain, Portugal, France and Genoa.

The model shows the walled town and its busy harbour, with the galleys and hulks alongside a quay, where they would be unloaded either by way of a gangplank or by use of temporary derricks. Larger vessels that were too deep-draughted to go alongside were unloaded into smaller craft which acted as lighters taking goods to and from the quays.