GOOD sailing ship kits

Modeling Subjects Ships
1

In another thread recently it was implied that some of us spend more time talking about mistakes in sailing ship kits, and condemning those we consider to be less than good, than we do in identifying and praising the good kits. I have to plead guilty. So here, for what little it’s worth, is a list of plastic sailing ships that, in my opinion, are entirely worth building. I don’t imply that any of them is perfect; virtually all of them can stand improvement by the experienced modeler. (That, after all, can be said about almost all aircraft and armor models too.) But the following kits, in my opinion, definitely deserve to be taken seriously as scale models and probably will provide rewarding experiences to anybody who can get hold of them.

Revell -

Santa Maria

Cutty Sark

U.S.S. Kearsarge

U.S.S. Constitution (1/96)

H.M.S. Victory

Golden Hind

Mayflower (either scale)

Yacht America

Flying Cloud

Great Eastern

Charles W. Morgan

Viking ship

Batavia

Airfix -

Endeavour

Sovereign of the Seas

Revenge

Mayflower

Cutty Sark

Discovery

Great Western

H.M.S. Victory

H.M.S. Prince

Wasa

St. Louis

Heller -

H.M.S. Victory

Chebec

La Reale

Pamir

Passat

Preussen

Amerigo Vespucci

Gorch Foch

Santa Maria

Nina and Pinta (but don’t display them side-by-side; somebody will notice their hulls are identical

Pyro -

Roger B. Taney

Harriet Lane

Gertrude L. Thebaud

Skipjack

Aurora -

Privateer Corsair

Bluenose

Imai -

Cutty Sark

U.S.S. Susquehanna

Napoleon

Spanish galleon

Santa Maria

Mayflower

U.S.C.G.C. Eagle (1/200)

Nitto Maru

Kaiwo Maru

Chebec

Galleass

Chinese junk

1/350 sail training ship series

Lindberg -

Wappen von Hamburg

La Flore

I haven’t made any effort to list all the labels under which these kits have appeared - mainly because I can’t claim to have kept track of all of them. Individual companies have reissued their own kits with different names (e.g., Revell’s “Yankee Clipper,” which is a reboxing of the Flying Cloud). Revell and Heller had a reciprocal arrangement for a while and some Revell kits appeared in Heller boxes. Some Imai kits have turned up under the Academy and, more recently, Aoshima labels. Most of the old Pyro kits have been repackaged recently by Lindberg. At least one old Aurora kit has appeared in a Minicraft box - and so forth. As I understand it, Epinniger’s data base of sailing ship kits (which my out-of-date computer hasn’t been able to open) does a fine job of sorting all this out.

I don’t pretend for an instant that this is a definitive list. I certainly haven’t seen every sailing ship kit on the market; specifically, I think I missed several of the best Imai kits. (They were only around for a few years, during which my museum curator’s income couldn’t handle them.) And these are just personal opinions. I hope other Forum members will make some additions to the list - and if somebody questions some of those I’ve put on it, so much the better.

I have to say I’m pleasantly surprised: the list is quite a bit longer than I expected it to be. As a matter of fact, I think it includes most of each manufacturer’s line (excluding spurious reissues and modifications - like the notorious Revell “Beagle,” “Stag Hound,” and “Thermopylae”). The big exception is Heller. It their last years in the field, the Heller artisans apparently did some genuine research and started learning what real ships look like. But their earlier attempts, with few exceptions, do not, in my personal opinion, deserve the label “scale model.”

The sad aspect of all this is that so few of the kits are currently available. And the total number is tiny compared to the hundreds of outstanding aircraft and armor kits on the market. But there are more than fifty better-than-decent kits here - enough to keep me, and, I suspect, plenty of other sailing enthusiasts, busy for quite a few years.

2

That is an impressive list!

3

John,

How do you feel about Revell’s U.S.S. Kearsarge, which is nearly a sailing ship? Well, sort of, anyway…

Regards,

4

I left the Revell Kearsarge off my original post by accident; I’ve edited the list accordingly. It’s a basically sound kit - provided the builder accepts that it represents the ship (more or less) as she appeared in the 1880s, rather than during the Civil War.

I can’t in good conscience include the Revell Alabama, which isn’t quite a recycled Kearsarge but comes uncomfortably close. And though it might just have passed muster when it initially appeared, in 1961, a surprising amount of information about the Alabama has surfaced since then and establishes that the model doesn’t look much like her.

I’ve also added the Airfix H.M.S. Prince, which is one of my favorites; I’m not sure how I managed to forget it initially.

5

jtilley;

I know you think highly of the Imai kits (with certain reservations about the Greek and Roman Galleys perhaps), so I presume you may have overlooked a couple that occur to me, namely the Chebec, Chinese Junk and Galeass, or do you not think these make the grade?

I also wonder what you may think of the two big sail-training ship kits, Nippon Maru and Kaiwo Maru . While these are not the most shapely of vessels they do make impressive subjects, especially in 1:100 scale.

Michael

6

I’ve been told that the Heller HMS Victory is the best Victory kit out there, including the wooden model kits.

Whichever kit you choose, just be careful to remember that the kit model does not represent the ship as she appeared throughout her life. Every vessel undergoes changes and modifications. For instance, I believe that the Revell USS Constitution is the ship as she appeared in the 1850’s. I may be wrong on that, but she isn’t as she was in the War of 1812.

The bottom line is, no matter the subject, make sure you research the era that you want to model.

7

I’ve never seen an Imai ship kit that was anything less than an excellent example of design, detail, and ingenuity. As I mentioned earlier, I wasn’t able to buy many of them during their brief time on the U.S. market, but I was really impressed with the ones I did get - or saw inside the boxes. The Imai Cutty Sark, in my opinion, is the best representation of that great ship in kit form - plastic, wood, or otherwise - that’s come to my attention. I do have reservations about the Imai Greek and Roman galleys, which have identical hulls and share many other parts, but even they show some extremely nice detail and ingenious molding techniques. Imai seems to have been the only company that’s ever figured out how to produce realistic, unstropped blocks and deadeyes in rigid molds.

On the strength of MJH’s recommendation, I’ll add the Imai junk, chebec, galleass, and two Japanese sail training ships to the list.

To my knowledge there are four H.M.S. Victory kits on the market that rise to the definition of the term “scale model”: Skytrex (metal, 1/700), Revell (plastic, about 1/220), Heller (plastic, 1/100), and Calder/Jotika (wood, 1/72). A strong case could indeed be made for the view that the Heller one is the best of the group. It has some problems (e.g., the designers’ failure to understand how yards are fastened to masts), but the basis of a beautiful scale model is certainly there. The little Revell Victory, from 1959, is also a remarkably nice kit. (Take a look at the countersunk planking detail on the hull.) And the tiny Skytrex one is a surprisingly accurate and well-detailed production. (It is, to my knowledge, the only one that shows the forecastle bulwarks in the raised configuration they probably had in 1805.) The old Airfix kit comes mighty close. We’ve discussed it in several other threads; I have some big reservations about the shape of its bow, but I haven’t figured out exactly what the problem there is.

Revell has issued several Constitution kits. The very first one, the 1/192 one that initially appeared in 1956 (and was, in fact, Revell’s first-ever sailing ship kit), didn’t make my initial list; it was a remarkable kit for its day but, with its “blanked-off” main hatch in the spar deck, really doesn’t, in my opinion, come up to current standards. It has the Andrew Jackson figurehead that the ship got in 1834, and such details as the transom carvings and the raised bulwarks date its configuration to sometime in the mid-nineteenth century. The big, 1/96-scale kit, which was originally issued in 1965, is based on the plans drawn by George Campbell for the Smithsonian. It represents Mr. Campbell’s reconstruction of how she looked in 1814. We’ve had several lengthy discussions of that kit here in the Forum; I continue to regard it as one of the best sailing ship kits ever, and, despite the fact that some excellent research into the *Constitution’*s history has been done since 1965, I’m unaware of any really major historical mistakes in it. I hear a new reissue of it, molded in China, is on the way; in another Forum thread there’s a comment to the effect that this new version is much better in terms of flash, warped parts, etc. than the examples that have been coming out of Revell-Monogram and Revell Germany for the past several years. That’s good news.

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Mr. Tilley,

I am very glad that you put together this list. I can copy this list and keep it handy for a reference.

Donnie

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What do you think of the Airfix 1/130 “Cutty Sark”? I have this kit and it looks fairly good to me, though not as detailed as the Revell 1/96 kit. Haven’t checked it for accuracy but it looks OK. (I know Airfix’s Bounty kit has some serious problems, and probably doesn’t belong on this list)

A number of Heller’s 1/150 and 1/200 range seem fairly good (though many of them are awful - Sirene, Corona, Phenix etc.) - for example, the 19th century frigate “La Belle Poule” and the steamship “Porquois Pas?”. They also produced a number of kits of smaller fishing vessels - Sinagot, Thonier, etc. - which are apparently quite good.
I don’t have any of these kits so can’t personally comment - anyone else care to give their opinions?

Hobbycraft’s kit of the schooner “Bluenose” (based on the Aurora kit) is also pretty good, though I’m not sure how accurate it is.

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I have mentioned in another post that I am, because of certain physical reasons, limited to larger scale ships. It’s not that I can’t build a 1/150 or smaller vessel, but that my real interest is rigging, and small scale ships present real problems in scale rigging.

I am curious how others overcome this problem. It certainly would open up a much larger variety of ships than the ones to which I am currently limited.

Jay

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I haven’t seen the Airfix Cutty Sark in quite a few years, but my recollection is that it was an excellent kit. In some ways it surpassed the big Revell one. The paneling on the deckhouses was more realistic, and if I’m not mistaken this was the only plastic Cutty Sark to represent all the “carvings” on the bow and stern in three dimensions. (I believe the Airfix designers even provided “insert” pieces to form the carvings on the stern. Even the big Revell kit used waterslide decals for that purpose, and for the carvings on the trailboards.) It certainly was one of Airfix’s best ship offerings.

I can’t resist recounting (not for the first time) an anecdote involving the Cutty Sark that, I think reveals a number of things about the strange psyches of ship modelers. I was in a hobby shop some years ago discussing the then-new Imai Cutty Sark, of which I had (and still have) an extremely high opinion. The shop proprietor said, “well, if you’re interested in the Cutty Sark, you really need to see THIS.” He reached under the counter and, with a great flourish, produced a hinged, velvet-lined wood box containing a set of parts that purported to represent the bow ornamentation of the Cutty Sark. They were made by one of the HECEPOB companies (Mamoli, I think, but I could be wrong about that). They were cast in something called “bronzed metal” (probably a lead alloy with some sort of plating). The proportions of the things were all distorted; they didn’t really look much like the real thing, though they cost somewhere in the neighborhood of $35.00. I offered the opinion that these objects weren’t particularly accurate reproductions of the real ornaments; that Imai and Revell had done a better job of reproducing the prototype. The proprietor and all the other customers present stared at me as though I’d lost my mind.

The interesting thing about this conversation was the venue: Maritime Models of Greenwich. Everybody present had walked past the real Cutty Sark on the way to the hobby shop.

The Airfix Bounty got left off that list deliberately. It dates from the very late seventies, when Airfix was having one of its close encounters with the bankruptcy courts, and it represented a step backward by comparison with most of the firm’s earlier sailing ship kits. It’s riddled with inaccuracies, some of them downright ridiculous. For starters, the designers sited the hawseholes too low in the bow - and, in order to get them above the maindeck (so the anchor cables could pass through them to the windlass), mounted the whole deck assembly on a pronounced downward, forward slope that makes the whole model look silly. The ancient Revell kit actually looks more like the real ship. (To be fair, the Revell designers had problems with the Bounty’s hawseholes too. Revell omitted them altogether, and advised the modeler to tie the anchors to each other with a piece of thread looped over the knee of the head. That, I must admit, looks just as absurd as Airfix’s solution to that particular problem.)

I put the little old Aurora (later Hobbycraft) Bluenose on my earlier list, on the strength of some photos of it that I saw on the web recently. It looks like a pretty basic kit, but the shapes seem believable; it certainly appears to be a sound basis for a scale model. The only other old Aurora kit I included is the privateer Corsair, to which the same description applies. Most of Aurora’s early sailing vessels were intended more as toys than as scale models. Shortly before the company went out of business it released a series of four good-sized sailing ships: the Sea Witch, Hartford, Bonhomme Richard, and whaler Wanderer. The Sea Witch was a modified reissue of the old ITC/Marx kit; it’s currently available (I think) in a Lindberg box. [Much later edit: I have some doubts about that assertion now. I think the ITC/Marx/Lindberg kit may be completely different from the Aurora one. But I’m not sure by any means.] Some modelers wax enthusiastic over the other three; they did represent subjects that are otherwise unavailable, and the detail on them wasn’t bad. But they featured hideous injection-molded plastic “sails” molded integrally with the yards. That’s just too much for me to live with.

I know the Heller Pourquois Pas? only by reputation; I think I may have bought it about thirty years ago, but I can’t claim to remember it. I suspect in its original form it was a pretty decent kit. Unfortunately Heller recycled its hull in several thoroughly bogus forms (once as a sailing brigantine and once as a sidewheel steamship, if I remember right). I’ve heard good things about the Belle Poule, but I haven’t seen the inside of the box. The same goes for the smaller fishing vessels.

I should perhaps emphasize again: that list is based on personal experience and personal opinions. There are lots of sailing ship kits out there that I haven’t seen.

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Be aware as there’s a lot of crap on the market! Plastic as well as many wooden kits, for example many models of Heller are based on the same hull and many wooden kits are phantasy/ Disneyland products that have nothing to do with accuracy!! At a glance you see the hull shape and the height of the masts are very odd; too often you see a way to small underwater part, the ship would capsize within minutes due to it’s height, exactly as the Wasa in 1628 did!!! But… thanks to that disaster we now have a beautiful conserved ship amidst of us!!! Example: the big Sovereign of the Seas 1637 and Soleil Royal by Sergal; the hull shape is very odd among many other errors, the rigging is a joke! Unknowing people spend their precious time & effort and end up with a nicely built model that’s a caricature; what a waste!! Luckily standards are being improved by brands like Jotika-Caldercraft and modern techniques (CAD, CNC etc.); pearls of new kits are coming on the market and that’s great!

I know the market quite well and a few good brands are: Jotika-Caldercraft/ Blue Jacket/ Model Shipways and a number of models from Mamoli, Euromodel etc can be improved by kit-bashing; one needs the original plans of the ship in such a case. It’s almost inevitable that many fittings are standard for each kit (like the very same guns on the Santa Maria and HMS Victory!) which have to be replaced by custom made fittings. Revell, Heller, Airfix, Imai had/ have good plastic kits as well as bad ones.

Max.

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A year ago I bought a Revell’s Kearsarge and Alabama kit on ebay*,* both in 1:96. I soon discovered that they’re the very same kit but few details are different; Heller did the same trick as they made a first accurate model of a specific ship based on plans (example Le phenix, Royal Louis) and later they use the kit for some phantasy models (La Sirene, l’Indomptable). The big question is: which of the two was the first, most accurate model: the Kearsarge or Alabama??? I intend to sell the second model but need to be sure! The same applies to Revell’s Thermopylae that’s based on their Cutty Sark.

Max.

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The Kearsarge kit was the first of the two and is by far the most accurate. The Alabama has a heavily modified hull which looks more or less like that of the real ship, but recycles most of the fittings and smaller parts from the Kearsarge kit (as you’ve found out).

Similarly, the Cutty Sark was the original 1/96 clipper, subsequently reissued, with a green hull and a few modifications to the rig and the deck fittings, as the “Thermopylae”. Revell did the same thing with their small 1/220 Cutty Sark kit. Another bogus 1/96 Cutty Sark reissue is the “Pedro Nunes”.

Other ones to watch out for are the “HMS Beagle” (a slightly modified Bounty) , and the “Seeadler” and “USCG Eagle”, both modified Gorch Fock kits (the latter isn’t so bad as the Eagle was a sister ship, though not totally identical)

I’m not sure about the 1/96 United States. I know this is a modification of the Constitution kit, but weren’t the two ships very similar anyway? I know the United States had a larger “roundhouse” at the stern, which is represented in the Revell 1/96 kit - but were there any other changes?

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There is a good article comparing the two kits at the Steel Navy website that you can read here:

http://www.steelnavy.com/Alabama&Kearsarge.htm

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On the basis of my own observations and reference to Dr. Graham’s Remembering Revell Model Kits, I can confirm that EPinniger has the story straight. The Revell Kearsarge and Alabama appeared initially in the same year, 1961 - presumably to capitalize on the Civil War centennial that was sweeping the U.S. at the time. The Alabama kit, however, quite clearly was a modification of the Kearsarge. The latter kit represents the real ship reasonably well - as she appeared in the 1880s. (That article on the Steel Navy website is indeed excellent.) The Revell version of the Alabama actually looked fairly reasonable in the context of what was known about the ship in 1961. Since then, however, quite a bit of additionaly information about her has turned up - including two contemporary models and a couple of photographs that weren’t known at the time. Those sources make it clear that the Revell kit doesn’t look much like the real ship.

I left the Revell U.S.C.G.C. Eagle off my initial list. The story of that one is a little more complicated than EPinniger indicated - though he got the gist of it right. The kit made its initial appearance under the name Eagle in 1958. By the standards of that era it was a remarkably detailed kit. Unfortunately, though, it’s pretty clear that the Revell designers made a mistake that several other kit manufacturers made. They based the kit on the set of plans drawn by Harold Underhill. Mr. Underhill was a fine draftsman and modeler; he included those plans in his book Sail Training and Cadet Ships. The Eagle, under her original name Horst Wessel, was one of four near-sister ships built in Germany during the late thirties as training ships for the Kriegsmarine. They were extremely similar, but all four of them were of different lengths. Underhill was completely up front about that; the text of the book clearly explains that the drawings are based on the plans of the Gorch Fock, which was about twenty feet shorter than the Horst Wessel. Unfortunately various dealers sold the plans with the name “Eagle” on them. The Revell kit is a reasonably accurate model of the Gorch Fock (later renamed Tovaritsch, when she was taken over by the Soviet Union), with the addition of some 1950s-vintage U.S. Coast Guard gear (small boats and so forth); apparently the Revell designers also worked from some recent photos of the real Eagle. Much later, Revell Germany re-released the kit with the name Gorch Fock.

To my knowledge, the only Eagle kit that has the right hull proportions is the 1/200 one from Imai (which I did put on the list). All the others - plastic and wood - that I’ve seen appear to have been based on the Underhill drawings. That’s a shame. Neither Underhill nor the Coast Guard was trying to deceive anybody - and I don’t think Revell was either. The same can’t be said about the next chapter in the story.

The Revell “Seeadler” was initially released in 1960. It’s a modified Eagle kit with additional yards (to turn it from a barque to a ship), a couple of deck guns, and different boats. That kit is nothing more or less than one of Revell’s marketing ploys; it bears little if any resemblance to the real Seeadler.

The U.S.S. United States was a sister ship of the Constitution. So far as I know, all extant evidence indicates that the two ships were built to the same plans - with one big exception. The United States, apparently with the idea that she would serve as the fleet flagship, had a “roundhouse,” which amounted to a raised poop, aft. As I understand it, no contemporary plans showing that feature in detail have survived (though Howard I. Chapelle included a reconstruction of it in the plans in his classic book, The History of the American Sailing Navy.) The 1/96 Revell United States kit, released (according to Dr. Graham) in 1977, did include extra pieces to make the raised poop; I guess the transom also was changed. I never had any inclination to buy it, but since the extant information on the differences between the ships is so scanty I guess it can’t be said definitively that there’s anything wrong with it. Revell also reissued its little 1/192 Constitution (which originated in 1956 - the company’s very first sailing ship) with the United States name. As I understand it Revell didn’t bother to add the raised poop to that one; the Andrew Jackson figurehead got replaced with a billethead and the name got taken off the transom, but otherwise the original kit was unchanged.

In another thread recently we talked at some length about such marketing tactics. Some people take a relatively benevolent view of the matter, arguing that Revell’s target market was made up primarily of youngsters who didn’t know - or care about - the difference. (The initial release of the “Seeadler” contained a “Message to the youth of America” from the Seeadler’s captain, Count von Luckner. I wonder if, when he wrote it, he had any idea that his message was going in a box containing a modified Horst Wessel - or Gorch Fock, depending on how you look at it.) Maybe so. I continue to maintain, though, that such tactics are deceptive and fraudulent - and there’s even less excuse for them nowadays, when the plastic kit market consists entirely of adults.

When I was working in a hobby shop (more years ago than I like to remember) I was in the habit of telling customers that “most plastic sailing ship kits are junk, and most wood sailing ship kits are worse.” I agree completely with Papillon; I’ve gotten into the habit of referring to Mantua, Mamoli, Amati, Artesania Latina and their ilk as the HECEPOB manufacturers. (That’s Hideously Expensive Continental European Plank-On-Bulkhead.) Believe me, Forum members, you don’t want to hear what I think about those people.

17

Over the years I have seen or built most of the Heller kits, and I must say IMO they deserve a better “ranking” than they usually get. I admit that they have produced some VERY odd animals, especially when they based new models on existing kits of different subjects, the worst that comes to my mind being the “Belle Etoile” 4 masted barque in 1/250 that shares its hull with the -excellently rendered-1/150 schooner “Amphitrite” - hull lines, details and especially the mix of scales are downright ridiculous! Still, those “multi-hull concepts” usually have one well-researched subject as a base, and those “original” kits are not bad at all.

The “Phenix” is quite faithfully reproduced to the plans you can get at the Musee de la Marine in Paris (“La Sirene” is the fantastic looking but less believable clone).

“Royal Louis” is a good model of the actual ship as far as I know, while the “Indomptable” or “Glaidateur” are fancy clones.

“Couronne” and “Saint Louis” have identical hulls up to the main gun deck, but both were of similar design. Both are very “down to earth” constructions with shallower lines than the usual interpretations - they look far more believable than those wooden “Couronne” models with their far too high afterdecks you usually see.

“Superbe” and “Glorieux” are more or less the most accurate and detailed sailing ship kits I have ever seen, and, afaik, were built to the same plans anyway, so both should be OK.

“Belle Poule” is absolutely excellent, and the hull has never been re-used for any other “cloned” ship.

ALL of the smaller vessels that came out in the late 70s/early 80s are great. I have found NO inaccuracies when I compared the Dundee type tuna vessel “Armor” to an actual surviving example. The “Sinagot” is excellent, the “Tartane” and “Capricorne” are very close to available plans. The details and wood grain on these small kits are the most convincing I have ever seen, only the rigging instructions are way too simplified - as always with the Heller kits.

“Pourquoi Pas” is an excellent model, but it has a complicated parts breakdown due to the “multi-use” of the hull and deck pieces, still nothing that can´t be solved with putty and sandpaper.

As for the “clones”, I wouldn´t simply condemn them for their very existence, La Sirene e.g. seems to be based on an old engraving. I really don´t mind the use of an existing hull in this case as long as it fits the type of ship, it is more that I find the rendering of that massive stern castle too overdone. I love the steamer “Occident” as long as I can accept the fact that it is a generic model of a steamer and NOT the “Sirius” as Zvezda claims it! That rounded stern makes me scratch my head, though…

All in all I´d say that many Heller kits are quite fine, some even range among the best ever made, some have unfortunate errors such as the aforementioned wrong hull shape of the Soleil Royal- what a pity! Still, the Soleil Royal is not worse in shape errors than Trumpeter´s U.S.S Hornet in 1/350 (and there ARE plans available, you just have to get them and read them!), so I don´t find it justified to blame Heller for something that they did 30 years ago while other Manufacturers keep producing even bigger crap today and even get nothing but praise in many reviews!

Just my 2 cents on the Heller-related part of this thread.

18

Thanks for posting this information on the Heller kits! I’ll add this info to my sailing ship kit database later.