Chih Yuen colour scheme?

[GrahamB]

Hi,

I'm about to start chopping and cutting the lovely Bronco Chih Yuen kit but maybe I'm missing something as I'm a little puzzled by the Victorian colour call-out for it. This is because every one of the, admittedly few, photos of this ship and its sister Ching Yuen (beautiful half-page photo in Friedman's British Cruisers book, by the way) show them in a basically mid-grey scheme (including funnel), with buff masts and ventilator cowl tops, and white superstructure items. Even the cropped photos in the instruction booklet show grey ship sides! They appear to have left Elswick's in grey and were in Chinese service in grey for a while at least.

What is going on here?

Cheers,

GrahamB

HMS Shearwater awaiting photography.
SMS Elster awaiting flag and photography.
HMS Grenade near to completion.

[Shanghaied]

Hi Graham

I have a book about the chinese Navy of that time..Seems like she was light gray or even white while in the yard and druring seatrials. For delivery they havd been painted black white and buff.
In a photobook abt the Titanic,it is mentioned that several important ships were painted grey because the cameras at that time seem to have problems with the contrast of black hull and white superstructure. So when they needed nice pics of their new ships (like in that case Olympic) they painted the ships grey while on the slipway.
Maybe Elswick did the same for their export ships. Just a guess.

Cheers

Tom

[Timmy C]

I just finished my build of her a few days ago - you can check it out in the gallery.

In photos, you can distinguish Chih Yuen from sister Ching Yuen by the height of the gaff - lower for Chih Yuen, higher for Ching Yuen. At least, that's what it seems like...

I have no photos of Chih Yuen in the Victorian scheme, but there are a few for her sister (ignore the mislabelling):

[GrahamB]

Hi Timmy and Tom,

Many thanks for these replies.You have found evidence for the Victorian scheme for Ching Yuen that has escaped me - probably because searches are highly spelling-dependent. The idea that builders may have applied grey for photographic purposes is plausible but Ching Yuen, at least, was certainly in full Chinese service (with bow gun removed, Chinese flags flying) in the grey scheme - as in the 'British Cruisers' photograph. Everyone is right!

I'll do mine in grey just to be different!

Cheers,

GrahamB

[Shanghaied]

HI Graham

Do you need a good pic of them in gray? Have some nice in my book.

Cheers

Tom

[GrahamB]

Hi Tom,

Many thanks for the offer . A photo or two of Chin Yuen in grey would be great - the one I have of Ching Yuen in Friedman's book is very good though.

Going to do mine waterline as well, not full hull.

Cheers,

Graham

[Shanghaied]

Hi Graham,

PM me your e-mail, then i can send you the scans.
BTW do you know this site (all pics I know of Zhiyuan and Jingyuan)

http://www.beiyang.org/bybq/zhiyu.htm

Its in Chinese, but under http://www.beiyang.org there are a lot of interesting pics about the chinese fleet of the late Qing Dynasty.

Cheers

Tom

[Timmy C]

And make sure to scroll down to the bottom of that page, where there are more pictures linked in the numbered list!

[GrahamB]

Thanks Timmy - this is a great source - and I realize now that I can use the 'translate' function to get through the Chines script to a ship's name - otherwise all those photos would have been invisible.

Cheers,

GrahamB