The Queen's Navy - 1/1200 Scratchbuilds

Here's some old ships that I built a while back. 1988, to be precise !  The construction is pure balsa, with wire for the guns & masts. Let me amend that, some of the ship's boats are metal castings, but I haven't the foggiest memory of where I got them.

Here's HMS Majestic and Caesar in their spiffy Victorian livery:

And a couple armored cruisers, HMS Diadem and Argonaut.

You'd think that with as much time I sunk into detailing these, I'd have gone to a little extra trouble to sand the wood smoother in spots. But such were my construction techniques at the time. 

What do these have to do with the new project ?  Being the wrong scale, they relate only indirectly.  But the naval element ca. 1900 certainly plays into it. More anon.