Actually there is a reasonably sound plastic *Morris-*class revenue cutter kit: the one Lindberg is currently selling under the name “Independence War Schooner.”
That kit has an odd, convoluted history. One of the first kits Model Shipways produced, in the late forties, was the revenue cutter Roger B. Taney. (Taney was Secretary of the Treasury during the Jackson administration; hence his having a revenue cutter named after him. He later earned a prominent, if not exactly pleasant, place in U.S. history as the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court who issued the notorious Dred Scott Decision.) They based it (I think) on the plans for the Morris class in Howard I. Chapelle’s classic History of American Sailing Ships. Chapelle was, at that very time (I think), working on his next book, the equally important History of the American Sailing Navy. While digging through the National Archives in pursuit of material for that work, he found another original drawing labeled specifically Roger B. Taney. While quite similar in overall shape, the ship shown in that drawing is different from Chapelle’s earlier one - and the Model Shipways kit - in quite a few details. I’m a little surprised that MS, which in those days was noted for its integrity when it came to such things, didn’t either revise the kit or stick the name of one of the other class members on it.
At any rate, a few years later Pyro (affectionately known around the tiny Model Shipways “factory” as Pirate Plastics) brought out a Roger B. Taney that quite obviously was based on the MS kit. (Pyro stole the Harriet Lane, a tugboat, and a couple of modern fishing boats at the same time - and ripped off the Gertrude L. Thebaud from a Marine Models kit.) Some years later Pyro reissued the Taney kit with that bizarre label “Independence War Schooner.” (If I remember right, one member of the Morris class - I don’t remember which one - did end up in the short-lived Texas State Navy, so it could be argued that the label wasn’t exactly wrong.) That’s the kit that turns up in the hobby shops nowadays under the Lindberg logo.
It’s not a bad kit - especially in view of its extreme age. The detail on it is extremely basic; it is, after all, the plastic equivalent of a solid-hull wood kit. One freakish feature of it is that some of the gunports are molded shut, with their edges indicated as raised lines on the inside and outside of the hull halves. Unfortunately the lines on the inside and outside don’t line up. If one is willing to correct, or overlook, a few items like that, the kit has the potential to be the basis for a fine scale model. It would be an excellent project for a newcomer who wants to start with a warship. But I suspect the new Cottage Industries resin kit is more detailed and accurate in every respect.
I don’t know whether Lindberg is actually in business stamping out new kits now or not. I’ve heard, via another thread in the Forum, that its molds have been bought by another firm that has an interest in adult modelers, so maybe we’ll see some of those old ex-Pyro kits again - preferably under their original names. (I gag whenever I see the Sovereign of the Seas being marketed as a “pirate ship.”) Better yet, call this one the Hamilton, which it actually represents more accurately than the Taney.
