Portfolio
A GLIMPSE OF SOME OF MY COMPLETED MODELS
Turbinia
In June 1897, in celebration of Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee, the Prince of Wales, foreign dignitaries and Lords of the Admiralty attended the Spithead review of the entire home fleet.
Charles Parsons, the inventor of the steam turbine, gate crashed the event as an audacious publicity stunt in his turbine driven private yacht, Turbinia. She was much faster than any other ship at the time and she raced between the two lines of navy ships. Steaming up and down in front of the crowd and princes and easily evading a navy picket boats that tried to pursue her, almost swamping them in her wake.
HMS Grey Fox S304
S304 was one of the 7 steam gunboats built to the Denny & Sons design, hence the common designation Denny Steam Gunboats. They were intended to counter the S-boot threat in the channel and were the smallest RN vessels equipped with steam turbines. Initially only carrying pennant numbers, the Admiralty later realised that they were large enough to warrant names and so they were all given names beginning with “Grey” . The example I built was HMS Grey Fox.
Vosper 70ft MTB
MTB 34 was one of the first batch of 70ft MTB's built by Vosper's as part of the 1939 contract, completed in August 1940. She was converted to a target tug (CT23) in 1943 and sold in 1945.
British Powerboats MGB75
My photography is equal to my rigging skills, i.e. not great.
Still for this post I've made a little effort to show the boat clearly without distractions.
A class Torpedo Boat Destroyer - HMS Havock 1893
I bought David Lyon's book, "The First Destroyers" 20 years ago and since reading it, I knew I had to make one. The book contains a drawing of HMS Velox from 1904, but interestingly, also contained 3D isometric drawings of HMS Havock, the first of the type commissioned in 1894. Havock and her sister Hornet were Yarrow boats, built at Poplar on the Thames and were shorter by ~20ft than the other A class Torpedo Boat Destroyers. As I build at the relatively large scale of 1/4inch to the foot, length matters, I have to find a place for the finished model..
Type 25 classe Räumboote
In May 2022 I decided to build a companion model for the s-boot I had built in 2021. I like companion models, they make great comparisons. It also fits with my small WW2 coastal forces navy that I've been constructing for a few years.
There were only two problems:
My almost complete lack of knowledge or reference material for the Kriegsmarine; and
A total lack of commercially available plans.