The Design Accuracy Delimma

Building ships from four manufactures who produce the same named ships always brings up the question "Who's ship design is the accurate one for this vessel?" I have asked this question many times on different  chat sites like The Miniatures Page and Sails of Glory Anchorage. The answer I usually get is "Go with Rod Langton". One of the responses argued Rod Langton lives in the UK and has access to all of the original ship plan drawings. This settled my mind at the time.....until yesterday!

As anyone who follows this blog knows, I have been working on a Spanish fleet for the game I love, Kiss Me Hardy. I had previously posted that I had a Montanes Langton model and four Montanes GHQ models. They don't look anything alike! I built the Langton first and named it Neptuno, one of the 80 gun sister ships to Montanes. Then, because I was assuming the Langton was the accurate design for the class, I landed on another class of 74 gun ships for the GHQs. Yesterday I was looking through a great Spanish Navio website http://www.todoababor.es/listado/index.htm and found a good article about the Montanes design with excellent graphics. Immediately I recognized that the GHQ Montanes model was a dead on exact duplicate of the actual ship! Compare:





From: http://www.todoababor.es/vida_barcos/nav_74can.htm

 

As you can see, the GHQ model matches the graphic on the Spanish Navio site to an impressive degree IMO.

 

From: http://www.todoababor.es/vida_barcos/nav_74can.htm

As you can see from the photo of the completed Langton Montanes below, it doesn't match the design.

I don't have photos, but the deck detail is not even close. So what am I to think? All of this time I have relied on the accuracy of Rod Langton's sculpts to set my standards. I guess from now on GHQ will be my standard.