| Most viewed - Display Models |
Nobby (detail)595 views
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Shamrock V (J Class)595 viewsShe set off for the Americas Cup after an extremely successful season in British waters. At the time, she had a wooden mast, laminated from about fifty pieces of silver spruce. Many of her lines were rope, where their equivalents in "Enterpise" were wire. She relied heavily on tackles, having few winches. It also seems that her afterguard were less expert than Vanderbilt's team, while at the same time being reluctant to take advice from the professional crew. It is therefore perhaps not surprising that she was badly defeated, never looking likely to win a single race of the series.
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Muirneag.589 viewsHere is something really special. This highly detailed model of the Zulu type fishing vessel "Muirneag" is truly exqusite. There is no other word for it. From one side, she is a fully rigged model. From the other, she is cut away to expose every last tiny detail of the internal structure. Construction methods faithfully follow the original, to the use of wooden treenails in appropriate places. Timber from sustainable sources was used throughout. There is of course absolutely no plastic anywhere in the model.
Such perfection cannot come cheap. The hours and the effort which went into this model were enormous. But if you want something truly unique and beautiful, we can build it for you.
(model by Gordon Williams)
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Muirneag.583 views
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Muirneag.582 views
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Muirneag.578 views
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Sovereign of the Seas.573 viewsShe cost £65,187, at a time when a workman might earn £5 per year. Today's protestors against Trident might reflect cynically that extravagant expenditure on the ultimate weapon of its day is obviously nothing new. However, in those days the British populace was less docile. The Ship Money tax which Charles the First raised to pay for her was a major contributory factor to the Civil War, in which his Government was overthrown, and he was executed
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"Robert Hastie" (research pic)572 viewsAll our models are fully researched. During this project, we took over two hundred photographs of the real boat, which was also building at the time. A couple of pictures are included here out of interest, showing details of the forrard and after hatch structures.
(models by John Davies and Frank Hasted)
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HMS Endeavour571 viewsCaptain James Cook is best known for his discovery of Australia. He has other solid claims to fame. He was a superb seaman. He was almost certainly the best navigator of his era. He was one of the very few men of this period to be commissioned from the lower deck.
His greatest achievement was to virtually eliminate the terrible scourge of scurvy. This disease is a vitamin deficiency, caused by limited understanding of diet. Before Captain Cook, it was accepted that on every long voyage, a large proportion of the crew would die. Cook was not prepared to accept this. He made a scientific study of diet, and used his crew as guinea pigs to test his theories, experimenting with a variety of different diets. He nearly caused a mutiny at one point, by ordering that every man should eat two pounds of raw onions each day for a week, but in a voyage of almost three years, he did not lose a single man to scurvy.
He was also responsible for enormous advances in the science of navigation. While a ship's distance north or south from the equator can be calculated using a simple noon sight, to calculate an accurate position east or west demands a precise knowledge of the time. There is an alternative method involving sights of the moon, but it is complex, and only the finest navigators would be able to use it. Cook took to sea and tested the first really accurate chronometers. It is a sobering reflection to realise that before this important advance in technology, few captains could have been exactly certain of where they were once they sailed out of sight of land.
It was these huge advances in diet and navigation which made long-distance ocean voyages far less reliant on chance. They thus paved the way for the huge expansion in European colonialism in the nineteenth century. This quiet, intelligent son of a Yorkshire farm worker probably did more to change the history of the world than all the fighting admirals put together. To a very great extent, we all of us live in the world he made possible.
This model of Captain Cook's "Endeavour" is thus not only a beautiful display piece in her own right, but she is of the greatest historical interest. She will make a fitting embellishment to any home, to a museum, or to the offices of any shipping company, all of which still owe a debt to Captain Cook's pioneering discoveries.
(model by Frank Hasted)
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Lowestoft trawler.571 views
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"Robert Hastie"567 viewsMost of our commissions are for private clients, but we happily undertake corporate commissions when called upon to do so. Here you can see a pair of cased models of the Milford Haven Port Authority's new pilot-boat "Robert Hastie", photographed in their boardroom.
(models by John Davies and Frank Hasted)
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Endeavour (J Class)565 viewsShe is the most beautiful J class yacht ever built. She was the fastest of the class when she was built. She should have brought the Americas Cup back to Britain.
Like all British J boats, she was designed by Charles Nicholson. Sir Thomas Sopwith was his client. Nicholson's lines were conventional. It seems the design was not even tank tested. However, her lines are fair, and extremely beautiful. She proved very fast indeed.
Sopwith was determined to learn from the humiliation suffered by "Shamrock V" in 1930. The new boat's rig was a technological marvel. Strain guages measured the loads in the shrouds and stays, and enabled the rig to be precisely tuned. Instruments measured wind speed and direction, reading out to guages directly in front of the helmsman. This is commonplace today, but then it was very new. A large number of winches were fitted. A new type of sail, the quadrilateral jib, supplied two tons of extra driving force. She was certainly a faster boat than "Rainbow", the defender. Sopwith was a superb helmsman, especially in the vital pre-start manoevres. As any competitive sailor knows, many match races are won or lost at the start.
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