To my knowledge there have been two plastic Bluenoses. Aurora did a simple, not-very-big one back in the fifties; I haven’t seen it for years. (I have a vague recollection that its hull was far too skinny, but that may be senility talking again.) And Academy/Minicraft did one far more recently - the late seventies or the early eighties. I’ve never seen the inside of that box. Academy and Minicraft split into two companies a few years ago. I’m not sure which, if either, is still selling the Bluenose.
There may indeed have been a motorized version of the Pyro skipjack - but if so it was, by definition, ludicrously inaccurate. The whole reason for the survival of the skipjack as the last working sailing craft in the U.S. is that it is - and has been for many years - illegal to dredge for oysters with a powered vessel in the waters of the state of Maryland. Skipjacks, by definition, do not have engines.
Nowadays each skipjack (there are only a dozen or so left) carries a “push boat” on stern davits. The push boat is a small, simple wood skiff equipped with a gas engine and a propeller. On certain days of the week the push boat is allowed to push the skipjack over the oyster beds. Nowadays the push boat usually has a set of cables controlling its throttle and rudder that run up to the stern of the skipjack. The captain operates the push boat by remote control with one hand and steers the skipjack with the other. The system looks kind of silly, but it’s been instrumental in keeping the skipjack alive.
The anti-plastic prejudice used to exist in the model airplane fraternity but, as MJHowe suggests, it seems to be just about gone. Plenty of model aircraft enthusiasts (especially the radio-control folks) build wood models, but they don’t seem to turn up their noses at the plastic modelers. Each side acknowledges that the other is involved in a different hobby - but not an inferior one.
For that matter, the model railroaders used to turn up their noses at plastic. Several generations of them thought the only “legitimate” material for a railroad car was wood, and the only “legitimate” material for a locomotive was metal (preferably brass). The plastic manufacturers have, I think, convinced the current generation of model railroaders that plastic is in fact an excellent, versatile material.
The sailing ship fraternity does indeed seem to be the last bastion of puritanism. Admittedly, a preference for wood in sailing ship models isn’t as irrational as it was in the airplane and railroad worlds. Most sailing vessels were, after all, made of wood. (The rationale that says wood is the only legitimate material for modeling a steel ship escapes me completely.) Plastic is, by plenty of reasonable definitions, not a good material for reproducing many parts of a sailing ship. (Styrene is great for hull planking. It’s wretched for masts and yards - except on large scales.) Also, some parts of a sailing ship don’t lend themselves to reproduction by the injection-molding process. (It’s almost impossible, for instance, to make an unstropped block or deadeye in injected-molded plastic. Styrene has to be cast in a rigid mold. A rigid mold, by definition, can’t cast an object with a hole through it and a groove around it.)
On the other hand, if the “purists” would look at the matter objectively they’d realize that the styrene molding process, in conjunction with the pantograph machine, has the potential to reproduce a lot of ship components with a precision that the scratchbuilder simply can’t match. The “carvings” on the best Heller, Revell, and Airfix sailing ship kits can stand comparison with the very finest of the old “Admiralty” models. The plastic molding process has the ability to function at a level of precision considerably beyond the capabilities of the human hand. If you don’t believe it, take a close look at a phonograph record.
I’ve been arguing for years that in terms of historical accuracy, (a) most of the plastic sailing ship kits on the market are garbage, and (b) most of the wood sailing ship kits on the market are worse. The argument is, however, almost completely academic, because the plastic sailing ship kit industry is, to all intents and purposes, dead. The three big manufacturers, Revell, Heller, and Airfix, haven’t released a genuinely new sailing ship kit in more than twenty years. Pyro is gone; Lindberg is selling thirty- and fifty-year-old kits in boxes with silly names on them. (I wonder if anybody in the company’s current management has any idea what those kits actually are.) Imai, which released some of the best sailing ship kits ever back in the seventies and eighties, is out of business.
There are a few small but bright lights on the horizon. Trumpeter and Zvezda have brought out a couple of new kits in the past few years, and some of the old Imai kits are turning up under other labels (at outrageous prices). Another Forum member indicated that one of the manufacturers is doing a medieval cog next year. (That, if it’s done well, would be a great starter kit.) Maybe we’ll see a resurgence of interest in plastic sailing ships. But I doubt it.
On another tangent - this thread turned over another small rock deep in the primordial ooze that is my memory. That Lindberg “North Sea Trawler” is another extremely old Pyro kit that started out as a Model Shipways ripoff. In its original Model Shipways solid-hull form it was named Hildina. I don’t remember whether Pyro ever gave it a name or not.