This dockyard model represents a British nineteenth century sixty gun frigate believed to be H.M.S. Raleigh, a fourth rater of about 1845 that was lost near Hong Kong in 1857 after striking what is now known as "Raleigh Rock".
Dockyard models were precisely constructed to scale by the master shipwrights who built the actual vessel. In the case of naval vessels, the model would have gone to the admiralty where the admiralty lords would discuss the merits and potential of each design before the vessel was actually built. The admiralty used this approval process from the mid-eighteenth through the early 19th centuries.
Existing models of this type are the most accurate, and often the only, enduring record of what british sailing ships-of-war of the period were actually like. This particular example shows the quality of the original shipwright builders and as a naval vessel would quite possibly have resided at one point in the admiralty boardroom.
