A beautiful representation of a beautiful ship! Thanks for sharing your pics. Your paint job is fantastic. I’ve always been curious about the Revell acrylics, but have not seen them for sale in the US…how did you like them?
great build. this is on my wish list now if i can only find one…
Greetings! I am new to this forum and have been building ship models for almost 50 years. I thoroughly enjoyed the pictures and have one further recommendation. You should rig the block and tackle for the guns. Unrigged guns would run loose on deck.
Just to let my fellow sailing ship enthusiasts know; I recently sent Hornby Hobbies, the current owner of Airfix, recommendations to expand the Airfix line of sailing warships. I focused my recommendations on the Royal Navy of the Napoleonic Wars. I also cited the several lines of articles in this forum to their attention. Please everyone, do the same! We must let the manufacturers know of our interests.
Thank you!
Warshipguy - welcome to the Forum! You’ve raised an important subject that certainly deserves our attention.
Several threads here in the Forum have been devoted to “wish lists” of new kit releases. In the five years or so that I’ve been taking part, a handful (not many) of the ideas for new twentieth-century warship kits have actually materialized as new plastic kits. I wish I could be optimistic about the possibilities for new plastic sailing ship kits; that’s my personal favorite field of modeling.
Unfortunately, though, the truth of the matter is that it’s also one of the least popular ones - among the manufacturers, if not among hobbyists. I have no idea how the number of plastic sailing ship enthusiasts compares to our friends who build aircraft, armor, car, and railroad models, but the manufacturers seem to think our numbers are negligible.
Neither Revell, Airfix, or Heller (who used to be the three leaders in the field) has issued a genuinely new sailing ship kit in almost thirty years. The last new Revell sailing ship kit (according to Dr. Thomas Graham’s fine book, Remembering Revell Model Kits) was the excellent little Viking ship, initially released in 1977 - and, fortunately, reintroduced into the Revell Europe catalog a few months ago.
The Revell USA picture could hardly get any worse for ship modelers. (Please note: I’m referring here strictly to the American Revell operation - the only one that’s covered in Dr. Graham’s book. Revell Germany has introduced a handful of new sailing ship kits, and reissued several from other manufacturers, since Revell USA dropped out of the market.) The company’s website currently shows a total of eight ship kits. One, the big *Gato-*class submarine, is a relatively new release; the youngest of the others is the 1/570 Titanic, originally released in 1976. There are two sailing ships: the old 1/192 Constitution from 1956 and a “Caribbean Pirate Ship” that in fact represents an amusement park prop that used to sit at Disneyland. It’s based on the “ship” that appeared in the 1953 Disney cartoon “Peter Pan.” I’m a huge admirer of Disney animation, but…
I think the last new Airfix sailing ship was H.M.S. Bounty (one of the company’s weaker efforts, in my personal opinion), which, if I remember correctly, appeared in about 1979. (I may be a little off about that one, but I’m pretty sure there have been no new Airfix sailing ships since 1980 at the latest.) I can’t identify or date the very last of the new Heller sailing ships, but I’m fairly certain it appeared around 1980. As I understand it, Heller was for a time planning on a number of major sailing ship projects as follow-ups to its 1/100 Victory. But the corporate management, under pressure from severe money problems, made the conscious decision to abandon that phase of the hobby.
Those dates are especially depressing when one considers that the era of the plastic scale ship model kit only began in (depending on how one counts) about 1952. (That’s when a little company called Gowland started selling its tiny plastic “ships in bottles,” several of which later were issued by Revell. A model railroad manufacturer, Varney, was, if I remember right, selling an extremely basic American submarine kit molded in some early form of plastic a couple of years before that; the Varney sub - which, in modified form, is still being sold under the Lindberg label - may have claim on the title “first plastic ship model kit.” Maybe somebody can think of an earlier one.) Revell, Airfix, and Heller have, in other words, been out of the sailing ship business longer than they were ever in it.
There are other reasons to be depressed about the subject. Imai, which many modelers (including me) regard as one of the best producers of plastic sailing ship kits - if not the best - had a brief heyday in the 1970s and early '80s before going out of business. (Some of its sailing ship kits are available nowadays under the Academy and Aoshima labels.) I was optimistic about the relatively new Russian firm Zvezda for a while, but after producing a nice medieval cog (in two different boxes) and a couple of somewhat dubious-looking ancient galleys, its sailing ship efforts seem to have ground to a halt.
On the other hand, Airfix’s new owners, Hornby, have a good reputation for genuinely understanding and appreciating the essence of serious scale modeling. (I’m not clear about Heller’s current situation. The two companies were operating under the same management for a while, but as I understand it they parted under bitter circumstances. Does Hornby actually have possession of Heller’s molds?) And Revell seems to be undergoing some corporate changes that may - may - portend positive developments for serious, adult scale modelers. By all means, let’s continue to let the manufacturers know we’re out here and anxious to spend money on high-quality products. Maybe they’ll listen. And maybe one or more of the current East Asian giants in the field - say Tamiya, Dragon, Hasegawa, or Trumpeter - can be pursuaded to stick a corporate toe in the water. (Dragon - how about a series of British ships of the line, to go along with those beautiful *Essex-*class carriers?)
One of the many pleasant things I’ve learned from this forum is that there are more plastic sailing ship enthusiasts - and, for that matter, more plastic ship modeling enthusiasts in general - out there than I thought. I certainly would like to believe that the concept of the plastic sailing ship kit may be reborn. But at the moment it sure looks like, if it’s not dead, it’s on artificial life support.
Thats a beautiful job, congratulations. I especially like the fine dimensions of the rigging, which look very much in scale with the model.
You are right on target for using black on the upperworks. Its not only based on paintings of the time, but also a contemporary description of the ship when she was new. It specifically says:
" . . . all which workes [molding and sculptures] are gilded quite over, and no other but gold and blacke to bee seene about her . . . "
And that is exactly what you have shown so well. Keep up the good work,
Jim
JTilley,
I agree with you about the deplorable state of our hobby. Like you, I am a sailing ship enthusiast who laments the fact that the major manufacturers have ignored our needs for decades. However, I firmly believe that the time seems ripe to begin letting the manufacturers know of our concerns and our desires for new products.
For example, I remember the spurt of growth throughout the 1970’s when the new 1/700 and 1/350 scale ships were released, only to slow throughout the 1980’s and '90’s. Then, Trumpeter and Dragon began their runs to revive warship modeling. ICM, Zvesda, Alan, et. al. certainly have made their contributions to the hobby but there has been no progress towards improving the selection of available sailing ships. I wonder whether those hobbyists sharing our interests have effectively communicated their desires and interests to the manufacturers.
Afterall, it appears that there is a market for sailing ship models at whatever the cost. We have only to look at the proliferation of the hugely expensive plank-on-bulkhead kits from Europe. Given the popularity of those kits, it seems that there might be a commensurate interest in the expansion of the plastic sailing ship hobby. I therefore wrote to Hornby Hobbies to try and encourage them. I would love to see others do the same; I would also love to see us flood them with recommendations to let them know we exist!
I have enjoyed reading your comments throughout the forum!
EP,
First of all, let me say great job giving this old kit some dignity. It looks great.
I’ve had both the Airfix and Pyro versions of this kit a long time ago, and couldn’t remember which one I preferred (I ended up never building either). So, this evening, whilst I should have been doing serious work, I looked for images and lucked into someone selling the old Pyro kit on eBay, and had photos of the kit (it was started). I also crossed referenced your photos and images of the sadly labelled Lindberg kit from their site.
I have to be honest here, I think that the Lindberg kit has potential. The bulwarks have inside detail and the carvings look somewhat “right” (I hesitate to use “correct”). The sails, of course, have to go into the bin, perhaps the masts as well (with me that’s a certainty), but the hull and its fittings look good.
Years ago, my friend ran a specialized hobby shop out of his business. They carried OOP and hard to find stuff, all plastic. He had the Aurora kit. I managed to look at the hull and remember that it looked so exquisite, but the rest of the components were wrapped in tissue, so I was unable to look at anything else. Not sure how it would compare, but it looked nice enough.
As an aside, I can’t help but notice that Pyro turned out a large number of sailing ship kits that seem to have reflected those found in Landstrom’s "The Ship, though not all of them. I’m fairly certain that the Pyro Sovereign was very similar to his interpretation.
Rob
Beautiful work… One day I’ll attempt a sailng ship! 
Thanks for sharing…