After reading “In the Heart of the Sea: the Tragedy of the Essex” (the most epic story I’ve ever read), I just have to build a 19th century whaling ship. I’ve looked at a few online stores and didn’t find a whaling ship kit. Somebody tell me there does exist a whaling ship kit!
I saw one on oldmodelkits.com. I believe they had various sizes of the Charles Morgan.
I’m aware of three. There’s a very small plastic kit by Academy: http://www.academy.co.kr/eng/1p/1p_plaview.asp?pView=PLA0000006&pCode=542&pScale=SCALE00001 . I think it’s a reissue of an ancient Pyro kit. It’s quite small, and basic, and has some obvious errors in terms of accuracy, but if you have the itch to build a whaler in a hurry this one may satisfy it.
Revell used to make an excellent Charles W. Morgan. It originated in 1968, and reappeared briefly a year or two ago in a Revell Germany box. The Revell Germany website doesn’t list it now, but I suspect it could be found with some searching. It’s on a pretty small scale (about 18" long), and it has a couple of problems that ought to be noted. One - it represents the ship as visitors to Mystic Seaport saw her in the sixties - with a single-topsail, full ship rig. She is now rigged as a bark (as she was in the latter years of her whaling career), and a recent major restoration has changed a lot of details. Two - the whaleboats are problematic. Their hulls are beautifully shaped, but only two of them have details in their interiors. The others are supposed to be hidden under vac-formed “canvas” covers, which no working whaleboat had. (Those boats were crammed with masts, sails, oars, harpoons, line tubs, etc., etc.; there’s no way a canvas cover would work.) But it’s a very well detailed kit, and quite accurate - if you want a model of the Morgan as she looked in the sixties.
Then there’s the Model Shipways version. It’s a plank-on-bulkhead wood kit, and quite expensive: http://www.modelexpo-online.com/product.asp?ITEMNO=MS2140 . It’s a highly advanced project, intended for people who have plenty of experience with wood kits under their belts. An experienced modeler probably would need at least a couple of years (part-time) to do it. It’s highly accurate, having been designed with the collaboration of the folks at Mystic Seaport. (One small reservation about that: I’m sure the recent restoration changed some things from the way the model depicts them.) A member of our model club built one, and it’s extremely impressive.
Model Expo’s website (see the above link) gives you the opportunity to read the instruction book, which will give you an idea of what you’re getting into if you buy that kit. It’s a fine kit, but one of the worst possible choices for breaking into wood ship modeling.
So far as I know, that’s what’s currently available. Marine Models and Scientific used to make somewhat simpler wood whaler kits, but they’ve been out of business for decades.
Bluejacket and Model Shipways both make wood whaleboat kits; those also are advanced projects - and not cheap.
The unfortunate truth of the matter is that the available range of plastic sailing ship kits is so small that it doesn’t even scratch the surface of the history of the sailing ship. It seems like a 1/96-scale whaler would be a natural. But none of the manufacturers has shown much interest in sailing ships for the past thirty years or so.
Thanks for the information. The Academy (1/200) & Revell (1/160) kits seem very small. According to my calculation, the Revell kit’s length is about 20 cm.
Wood kits look incredible, but I have never built a complex wood kit. I’ll do more research on wood whaler ship models.
I think somebody mislabeled that Revell kit. It’s somewhere in the neighborhood of 1/110 scale - about 18" long (like the others in Revell’s old “$3.00 series,” which climbed above $5.00 before Revell quit selling them).
Old Model Kits has an old Scientific Morgan for a reasonable price: http://www.oldmodelkits.com/index.php?detail=30614&cat=Civil%20Ship&manu=Scientific&erl=Scientific-1-72-Charles-W-Morgan-Whaler-183 . It has a solid hull (beware of that “hardwood” description; it’s almost certainly basswood, which is, by definition, a softwood - though far, far superior than balsa for the purpose) and cast metal fittings. (They’re probably lead alloy, which might or might not be problematical.)
Scientific sailing ships varied a great deal in quality. Some of them were awful, but others were quite capable of being turned into fine models. I think this may be one of the better ones. And I’m surprised at how low the price is.
I built Revell 1/160 kit back in 1972, really nice kit.
The Revell Charles W Morgan is a very nice kit and shouldn’t be too expensive as it was re-released recently, as has been mentioned. I also like the Aurora Wanderer, which is larger but not so accurate. It’s a nice kit though, but can fetch higher prices due to it being out of production.
For the Revell kit to be 18 inch long, the scale has to be about 1/110. That would be the perfect size for me.
I think the Revell kit is very nice. One challenge is that it’s a full rigged ship at a small scale. Rigging her with running rigging- the ropes associated with setting sails, would be tedious and so difficult that it would be a good reason to go wood. But it doesn’t need running rigging. Just the standing- the ropes that hold everything up, is just fine, and the lifts on the yards.
It probably has cast ratlines and shrouds. Easy to live without and substitute just the shrouds, which are the verticals
It could easily be modeled as a bark, simply by taking off the yards on the mizzen mast. The masts are all one piece each, as I recall. If you cut off the topmast and topgallant mast part of it, and install a new simple topmast, that would look pretty good. If you get the kit I can walk you through it. That’d give her the “look”. There’s more to it than that, but it’s a good start.
If it has sails, toss them. You could put together passable interiors for the whale boats. None of the gear for any of them come with the kit. You’d really just need the seats. Of course fitting them out would be a lot of fun, but if I ever were to truly tackle that I’d start with a whaleboat at say 1/24 scale.
But it’s pretty.
One thing for sure. I am positive about this. She never had the white stripe and gun ports paint job that the kit calls for,
during her whaling career. That got added sometime during her movie making days, or when she was put on display.
Others may disagree- i think she looks just swell all black.
I don’t have experience with the Academy model, and I recall the Aurora kit to be their typical umm, highly compromised stuff.
That’s a great book and certainly a motivator.
The Aurora Wanderer had some things going for it - and a lot of things going against it. It was a nice size (about two feet long, as I remember), and the detail wasn’t bad - with some exceptions. The big exceptions were the whaleboats (pretty important components of a whaleship model), which were hideously distorted. They looked like caricatures of the real thing. And it had awful, injection-molded plastic “sails” molded integrally with the yards. In addition to looking horrible they were so heavy that they would have made it difficult to do a reasonable job of rigging.
I think your best choice is the Revell Morgan. Here’s one I found on the web: http://www.oldmodelkits.com/index.php?detail=30288&searchtext=Charles%20W%20Morgan&erl=Revell-1-160-Charles-W-Morgan-Whaling-Ship-with-Sails-H346 . The price isn’t cheap, but I’ve seen a lot worse.
Those Revell whaleboats really bug me, though. The two that are complete don’t have gear, but they do have frames - which, in that scale, are very delicate. Why the company didn’t include the detailed versions for all seven, or at least the five that hang on the davits, is beyond me. Once they’d made the masters, it surely wouldn’t have cost much more to do the job right.
Good luck. Whalers are fascinating vessels, and make fascinating models.
I bet that with the movie about the Essex to be released soon, more people would be interested in whalers.
Below is the link to an official trailer. I can’t wait.
The last I heard, the release date had been pushed back to December. It looks like a terrific movie - as one would expect from Ron Howard. I have to confess, though, that I’ll be rooting for the whale. I know how important whaling was to the American economy and to American progress, but it sure was a savage, cruel occupation.
In the mean time, the old John Huston/Gregory Peck “Moby Dick” is worth watching. (I’ve got Mr. Philbrick’s book Why Read Moby Dick; one of these days I’ll get around to doing that.
Making the frames, seats, thwarts of the whale boats you could certainly do it pretty easily at that scale with a thin sheet of styrene or brown paper and an xacto knife… Bet you could do the whole thing, using the kit parts as a pattern, in am evening. I am puzzled too about why Revell chose to make vacuum formed boat covers rather than leave them open. I guess to keep sea water from staining the fine satin cushions…
Whaling has a PR problem. Deservedly in this age. I think it’s hard to get too excited about such a disgusting, murderous industry when one really understands the down and dirty. It’ll be interesting to see the movie. I’m immediately skeptical as the lead actors seem to be eye candy. And I understand that Herman Melville is a member of the crew?
Anyhow, should be fun.
More people will be interested in becoming vegetarians.
Dr. Tilley I recall a conversation here where the Aurora boats were compared to Azorean shore whaling boats. And that that shape of boat was used in the Gregory Peck movie. Better book, by the way. LOL.
So putting two and two together to get three, maybe one of the movie props made it’s way to Aurora somehow. No doubt there was one in Mystic at some point as well.
At least one relative of mine is portrayed. Owen Coffin. Spoiler alert- I’m not a direct descendant.
Herman Melville was not a member of the Essex. Later, he worked on a whaler and heard about the Essex story from a cousin of Mr. Chase, the 1st mate of the Essex. Melville, then, met with Chase and Pollard (the captain of the Essex). So Moby Dick is basically Melville telling the story about the Essex.
Merciful heavens. The Forum computer program censored the title of The Great American Novel.
Yeah, the *Pequod’*s whaleboats in the Moby Censored movie were borrowed from some whalers in the Azores. But I’m pretty sure the resemblance to the boats in the Aurora kit was coincidental.
The movie was filmed primarily in the Irish Sea and the North Atlantic. Quite a bit has been published about it over the years. The whales, including Richard himself, were inflatable rubber. A memorable moment during production occurred when Richard’s towline broke, and he drifted off in the midst of an Irish Sea fog - with Gregory Peck lashed on top of him.
It’s the fate of that movie to be compared with the book - with which nothing can be compared fairly. As an adventure movie it’s really pretty good, with exciting action sequences, good acting, a good script (by Ray Bradbury, the sci-fi writer), and ship shots that…well, could have been a whole lot worse. Worth seeing.
That’s right Chris. I meant that apparently Herman Melville is onboard the Essex, in the movie.
BTW the Essex disaster in always credited as the “inspiration” for Moby-Dick. Is that out of the mouth of Herman? Research required. It’s curious, because on the face of it while the facts are sort of, to use the term loosely in a fact-versus-fiction way…similar; it would not seem fair to compare Pollard (maybe a relative) to Ahab. And Ahab of course is the center of the story.
Here’s what Wikipedia has to say about that point:
“…Word of the sinking reached a young Herman Melville when, while serving on the whaleship Acushnet, he met the son of Owen Chase, who was serving on another whaleship. Coincidentally, the two ships encountered each other less than 100 mi (160 km) from where Essex sank. Chase lent his father’s account of the ordeal to Melville, who read it at sea and was inspired by the idea that a whale was capable of such violence. Melville later met Captain Pollard, and wrote inside his copy of Chase’s narrative: “Met Captain Pollard on Nantucket. To most islanders a nobody. To me, one of the most extraordinary men I have ever met.” In time, he wrote Moby-Dick: or, The Whale (published in 1851), in which a sperm whale is said to be capable of similar acts. Melville’s book draws its inspiration from the first part of the Essex story, ending with the sinking.”
The last point is a good one: in Melville’s story, only one man survives - and he gets picked up by the Rachel shortly after.
LOL @ Richard! 
As long as this thread is on a slight tangent re Melville and the White Whale…has anyone taken a plastic whaler kit and fashioned it into an interpretation of the Pequod? That would be interesting to see…
Dave
Morrison,
Captain Pollard gave up his whaling career after one more whaling voyage because his ship sank again!
It was 1st Mate Owen Chase who was determined to find the whale that destroyed the Essex. He continued his whaling career and became very successful. Ahab is a reincarnation of Owen Chase.