Pyro Bomb Ketch

I have one of these kits too (Lindberg boxing) and ran into the same problem-just could not find a real world example of the design.  After searching for a while I gave up and simply assumed that Pyro had taken some liberties in creating the design.  Several of the real world designs I recall had two mortars.  I would be interested too if someone has found better information related to what this kit may actually represent.

 

Bob Fuhrman

Pyro was in business for a long time.  It's pretty clear that a lot of its very first sailing ship kits were indeed copied, in some cases almost literally, from wood kits made by Model Shipways (Roger B. Taney, Harriet Lane, Hildina trawler, Dispatch No. 9 tugboat) and the now long defunct Marine Models (Gertrude L. Thebaud).  (I've probably missed some others.)  

The little bomb ketch, however, is a good deal more recent than those.  The obviously pirated ones initially appeared in the early to middle 1950s, were about 18" long, and sold for about $3.00 - about the same size and price as Revell's "first generation" of sailing ship kits (which, I think, started appearing a year or two later).  That, at least, is my earliest memory of them. 

The bomb ketch was part of a large range of much smaller kits, which sold initially for $1.00 each.  I don't remember exactly when the first kits in that series were released, but I think it was sometime in the 1960s or maybe the 1970s.  (The series included the Charles W. Morgan, the corvette Constellation, H.M.S. Bounty, a remarkably awful "English Galleon," the fishing schooner Elsie, and quite a few others.  They were relatively small kits, with relatively few parts - and all of them, unless I'm mistaken, had those awful injection-molded plastic "sails."  Several of them reappeared later in Life-Like and Lindberg boxes - and maybe those of other companies).

My recollections of the kits in that "$1.00 series" are vague; I bought a few of them, but frankly they were too crude and simplified to interest me much at the time.  I suppose it's possible that the ones I happened to buy weren't the best in the series - which, if I remember right, eventually included at least a dozen kits. 

I think I did buy the bomb ketch kit, as a matter of fact, but I fear I don't remember it well.  I believe it was intended to represent a British bomb ketch of the early to mid-eighteenth century.  I seem to recall giving up on it because the stern was distorted in some way, but my poor old memory may be playing me false.

It sticks in my mind that Marine Models did make a wood bomb ketch kit that looked about like the Pyro one.  (Marine Models definitely made a Charles W. Morgan, and Model Shipways made an Elsie.)  Whether Pyro actually based its kits on those wood ones I don't know.  My recollection of the whole "dollar series" from Pyro isn't particularly favorable.  All of the ones I bought were characterized by simplified, rather crude design, few parts, out-of-scale details (including laughably over-prominent "wood grain"), and, of course, those awful injection-molded "sails."  I got the distinct impression that the ones I bought had been designed without any reference to plans or other genuine historical sources.  I remember looking at a couple of them and concluding that, with sufficient effort, they just might be made into reasonable scale models - but in those days there were enough other, better kits on the market to keep me busy.

The pictures to which Kapudan kindly linked us pretty much confirm my memory.  Notice that not only the sails but the flags are injection-molded - as are the ludicrously out-of-scale "shrouds and ratlines."  The hull halves look reasonable (though the molded-in chain plates would be tough for me to accept), and the detail parts, though obviously simplified, don't look too bad.  The masts do look pretty crude, and there's something decidedly odd about the shape of the one part that makes up all the decks.  I seem to recall that at least one other kit in that Pyro "dollar series," the whaler, had a similar problem:  the whole hull and deck appeared to have been pinched in at the stern.  But for me to form a firm opinion of this kit on the basis of those photos wouldn't be fair.  

If I were trying to build a model of an English bomb vessel, the first place I'd look for information would be The Bomb Ketch Granado, by Peter Goodwin, a volume in the Conway Maritime Press's Anatomy of the Ship series:  http://www.anovabooks.com/book/1844860051 .  There's also a good chapter on bomb vessels in the relevant volume of the Conway's History of the Ship series, The Line of Battle:  The Sailing Warship 1650-1840.  My guess is that examination of those books will reveal that the little Pyro kit looks generally like a mid-eighteenth-century British bomb ketch, but that making it into a genuine scale model would be almost as difficult as building from scratch.  I could, however, well be mistaken.  I haven't seen that kit in many years.

A very nice catch this model. Just out of curiosity a question to John Tilley here: How would the sailing qualities of this type of ship have been? Or would this be comparable to the railroad siege-guns and siege-morters that the Germans built in WW II, difficult to move around but very useful on arrival.

Julian

I don't know how much survives in the way of primary sources about how such vessels handled, but the consensus among people who've studied them seems to be - not very well.  The most persuasive evidence, perhaps, is that the British abandoned the concept of the ketch-rigged bomb vessel pretty quickly.  The first English bomb ketches were built in the late 1690s; in 1758 the Admiralty started abandoning the concept in favor of the ship rig, and by the end of the American Revolution the British bomb ketch was a thing of the past.  (The French and several of the Baltic countries retained the ketch rig a little longer - and the U.S. built a fwe bomb ketches as late as the beginning of the nineteenth century.  The subject is covered in the aforementioned book in the Conway's History of the Ship series.)  Logic suggests that the traditional bomb ketch's enormous, off-center rig, combined with their shallow draft, would have made her extremely difficult to handle.  Grem 56's analogy with the German railroad guns is, I suspect, on target.

Bomb vessels never made up a big part of the Royal Navy.  I just took a look at a couple of books that happened to be within reach; the largest number of "bombs" in any of the ship lists in E.H.H. Archibald's The Wooden Fighting Ship in the Royal Navy is 19 - as of 1805.  Most, if not all, of those presumably were ship-rigged.

C.S. Forester's Commodore Hornblower contains some memorable descriptions of British bomb ketches in action in the Baltic in 1812.  Unfortunately this is a rare example of Forester making a big mistake.  By that time the British Navy had long since abandoned the ketch rig for bomb vessels.

Hello all,

as a modeler from Germany, who also collects old kits, I have read J. Tilley´s comment
on the small Pyro models with interest. I also have some of these small kits, they were
issued around 1966 and 1967, according to the copyright dates on the boxes.
The tools later went via Life Like Hobby kits to Lindberg, who reissued some of the models.
The "durch staten yacht" and the "swedish Gotta le Jon" havent been reiussed yet, as
far as I know, but the "persian gulf trader" and "dhow from zanzibar" were reissued by
Lindberg in the 1980s. Some of the tools were used by Revell of Germany too, amongst them the "British Bomb ketch" and a small scale "Victory". The bigger scale models "Wappen von Hamburg" aka "Captain Kidds pirate ship" (so marketed in the USA) and "Gouda" dutch man o war also were issued in 1984 by Revell of Germany, they even erased the "Lindberg" logo
on the inside of the ships halves. The small ships series includes some well known ships
like "Victory", "Cutty Sark", "Bounty", "Constellation" but also never-before-seen ship types
from overseas, like the "Dhow", "Barbary pirate ship", "Roman merchant ship" and "Fijian
outrigger.

By the way, I am searching for more information about the history of Pyro plastic model Co.,
formerly Union, New Jersey. Their adress "Pyro Park" doesnt exist anymore. Do the factory
buildings still exist and whats the adress ? Any information highly appreciated.
Axel Wolters from Moenchengladbach, Germany    

 

 

 

       

 

Interesting subject!  I just did a "Yahoo search" on the words "Pyro Plastics."  (As I recall, that was the formal name of the company.)  The search didn't yield much.  Most of the results had to do with antique toys (ray guns and things of that nature) that the company apparently made in the 1940s and 1950s.  There's one reference to Union, New Jersey, as the company address.  And there's a link to the New York Times obituary for the company founder:  http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/16/business/16lester.html?ei=5090&en=a3e2aa9846ddc211&ex=1268629200&adxnnl=1&partner=rssuserland&adxnnlx=1211374933-eMkG/u7GSMRqBUku1X4xIQ .

It seems that Pyro was in fact a major innovator in the plastic scale model kit field - though that doesn't seem to be recognized often.  When model enthusiasts think of old plastic kits, they usually, I suspect, think of Revell, Monogram, Aurora, Lindberg, Frog, and Airfix.  But Pyro was among the pioneers as well.  I'd be interested in the actual dates of the first Pyro "big" sailing vessels - the Thebaud, Harriet Lane, and Taney.  I think they may actually have pre-dated the first "big" Revell sailing ship, the 1/192 Constitution of 1956.

My memory is (as usual) having trouble recalling most of the other Pyro kits, but there were quite a few of them.  I seem to recall a small line of relatively large-scale racing aircraft, a few cars, and a few human figures (clearly intended to compete with the Aurora ones).  There was a large range of full-size rifles and pistols - the best of which were extremely well-detailed.  (A few of them have been reissued recently by Lindberg.)  And of course the notorious dinosaurs - complete with cavemen.  And some (not all) of the famous British Eaglewall series of 1/1200 WWII warships appeared in the U.S. under the Pyro label. 

Here's what one American dealer has to offer in the way of Pyro kits at the moment:  http://www.oldmodelkits.com/index.php .

I remember that "Design-a-Plane" kit; my mother gave it to me for my birthday when I was in elementary school.

Fun exercise in nostalgia.  I wish my memory was better.

The Pyro line of small sailing ships ($0.50) originally included the Mayflower, Half Moon, a horrible USS Constitution, and equally horrible Barbary Pirate Ship (Felucca), HMS Victory, Flying Cloud, Brig-of-War (based on the Fair American), Bon Homme Richard, a Spanish Galleon, Golden Hind, and Santa Maria. The Constitution and Barbary Pirate Ship were later replaced by better models. Although they were molded with many of the deck details molded as part of the single piece decks, they were'nt too bad for their very small scales.

The $1.00 series included the ships already mentioned, but there were actually two English galleon type of warships that were very different. these were the Henri Grace a' Dieu and the Revenge. I still have these kits and have modified them significantly.

The Table Top Navy series of 1/1200 scale ships were remolds of some the original Eaglewall ships. Pyro manufactured them in two series, British and German ships, and American and Japanese sets. The detail on these was awful; the Yamato and Musashi were in 1941-42 configuration on the starboard side and late-war configuration on the port side (Shades of Aurora!)

Yes, the moldings were very heavy, especially the wood grain, the plastic molded sails, and the shrouds. Detail was minimal. But, they served me well when I was building my first ships at 6 years of age (1960). But I remember running down to the local drug store every Friday (allowance day) to buy another ship model kit. They did inspire my interests in naval history and they led to both of my careers (U.S. Navy for 24 years and History Teacher). Therefore, I have very fond memories of Pyro.

Bill Morrison

I vividly remember the little 50-cent Pyro sailing ships; my mother bought me several of them at the corner drugstore (Gickler's Pharmacy in Columbus, Ohio) when I was in elementary school.  (I think that "Brig-of-War" is another ripoff of a Model Shipways kit - the Fair American.)  My favorite was the Golden Hind.  Even as a little kid I could figure out that no real ship had a hull shaped like that, but it sure was fun - and the family was quite encouraging of my attempts to paint it (with Testor's glossy paints, of course) and rig it (with thread from Mom's sewing box).

My recollection (not to be trusted entirely) is that there were several distinct groupings in that series.  Some of them (probably the oldest - I think the Santa Maria and Mayflower were in this category) had one-piece, extremely simplified hulls, paper sails, and wood dowels for spars; I think they may have been designed to float.  The Golden Hind, Bonhomme Richard, and "Brig-of-War" were considerably more sophisticated (which isn't saying much), with two-piece hulls, injection-molded sails (cast integrally with the yards), and a handful of quite small detail parts.  Those are the only ones I remember (beware my memory) as being available when my mother was buying them at the drugstore (i.e., in the mid-fifties).  I think the others in that series came along a few years later, after I'd moved on to more sophisticated - and expensive - kits (though I'm not at all sure my modeling skills were much better).

Mr. Gickler also carried quite a few of the ex-Eaglewall warships, and the Japanese and American ones.  The latter, as I remember, included a Yamato-class battleship, a Shokaku-class carrier, a North Carolina-class battleship, and an Essex-class carrier.  They were reissued quite a few times - often with, deliberately or otherwise, spurious names.  (I think that battleship appeared as the South Dakota, and the carrier as the Enterprise.)  They had a completely different character than the British and German ones.  I wonder if the Japanese and American ships actually originated with Eaglewall, or somewhere else.  At any rate, none of them came up to modern standards - but they sure were fun, and cheap.

jtilley wrote:

Mr. Gickler also carried quite a few of the ex-Eaglewall warships, and the Japanese and American ones.  The latter, as I remember, included a Yamato-class battleship, a Shokaku-class carrier, a North Carolina-class battleship, and an Essex-class carrier.  They were reissued quite a few times - often with, deliberately or otherwise, spurious names.  (I think that battleship appeared as the South Dakota, and the carrier as the Enterprise.)  They had a completely different character than the British and German ones.  I wonder if the Japanese and American ships actually originated with Eaglewall, or somewhere else.  At any rate, none of them came up to modern standards - but they sure were fun, and cheap.

 

I wonder if this is the same 1/1200 kit that Revell Germany has out now?? I've seen it on the shelf at Hobby Lobby. I've shied away from it because of its small size.

I don't think so.  The Pyro one (whatever its origin) was an Essex-class ship.  I haven't seen the Revell one in the flesh, but I'm fairly certain it's a more-or-less accurate representation of the Enterprise.

[Later edit:  Revell Europe is generous in putting its instruction sheets online.  Here's the one for that Enterprise kit:  http://www.revell.de/manual/05801.PDF .  It's pretty clearly the prewar CV-6.  I wonder what the aircraft actually look like.  There appear to be 21 of them - including six that are supposed to be spotted on the hangar deck.  Pretty sophisticated stuff for a kit like that.]

A minute ago I did a little surfing and found this:  http://www.shipmodels.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/pyro.htm .

These Life-Like kits are, of course, the American and Japanese contingent of the old Pyro line.  Note that one of the carriers is labeled "Lexington."  The picture obviously shows either the Enterprise, Hornet, or Yorktown (the pre-war ones).  Inside the box - I'm at least 90% certain of this - was the old Essex-class carrier.  The kit could, therefore, produce a model of the second Lexington, but the contents bore scarcely any resemblance to the picture.

Some months back I found a website that listed all the old Eaglewall kits, but now I can't find it.  Can anybody help?

You are absolutely correct that the boxes of LEXINGTON, HORNET, ESSEX, etc were ESSEX class ships, although the box art showed YORKTOWN class ships.  NORTH CAROLINA and WASHINGTON were also issued as MASSACHUSETTS, SOUTH DAKOTA, and INDIANA. Attention to details was very lacking in those early days. I have collected the entire Pyro Table Top Navy series for their collector interest. They are interesting indeed!

By the way, Pyro also released the ARK ROYAL in the $1.00 sailing ship series. That makes 3 English Galleon-type ships.  This is the model that I believe Dr. Tilley remembers as the horrible English Galleon; its proportions seem wrong, the closed gunports project a good 5 scale feet outboard of the hull, and the details seem cartoonish.  The other two are a good deal better, which isn't saying too much. If I can figure out how to post photographs, I will post all three if anyone is interested.

In reference to Prof Tilley's musings on the Pryo 50 cent sailing ship kits, by the time I got started with them in 1964-ish, the one-piece-hull Constitution with the dowel masts had vacu form sails, I'm pretty sure.  Even as an eleven year old, I was fascinated by the two different schools of engineering present in what appeared to be the same series of models - some had white two piece hulls and injection molded sails (though I didn't know those terms then) and others had black bathtub-looking one piece hulls with dowel masts and blah details.

 And as for the ex-Eaglewall kits, that was where I started.  My first ship model, a couple of years earlier, was the Pyro HMS Dorsetshire (39 cents), followed quicky by Norfolk, Warspite (49 cents, as were all the rest), Victorious, Bismarck, KGV, PoW and Prinz Eugen, and the movie "Sink the Bismarck"  to fuel the whole thing.  Happy days!  (But whatever was that Warspite doing in the mix?)

I've since amassed a nostalgic  collection of Eagle kits, but have not been able to bring myself to paying the prices for the old Pyro copies of the British and German ships.  The US and Japanese ships were fun, but a bit disappointing when I learned there was more difference between the Washington and Indiana than just the omission of one funnel.  In my memory, the Essex class kits looked pretty respectable, but the others were on the nasty side.

Rick Heinbaugh 

I tried to trace back Pyro´s history and found out, that William Lester, the found of Pyro,
is said to be the inventor of injection molding machines. The company was founded
around 1939 and made toys and the famous "pyrotomic rayguns" first. Around 1952
or 1953 they started making kits. In 1972 William Lester sold his company, because
he switched to produce  packaging machines.  The tools were used by "Life Like Hobby kits",
early kit boxes have "produced under license of Pyro Plastics" imprinted. The original
box art was used. Maybe some ex-employees or staff of Pyro ran Life Like initally?
Around 1977 the tools went to Lindberg. Pyro must have had a large factory because
on their 1962 catalog is a drawing which shows the building. And their adress had no
special street name, just "Pyro Park, Union, New Jersey".  This adress doesnt exist
anymore in online maps, so I would like to know, where the factory was situated,
whether the factory building was torn down to make place for new buildings, a parking lot,
shopping mall or so and whats the current name of the area now.
Any information highly appreciated.
Modellers greetings from Germany.

Axel 

Woxel:

For a transatlantic records search, you could contact the New Jersey Historical Society:

http://www.jerseyhistory.org/index.htm

They should be able to direct you to a more local historical group that could help you out.  My only contact with Pyro-apart from bulding a lot of their models- wasas a kid calling them on the phone circa 1971 trying to set up a factory tour for my Cub Scout troop.  The lady on the other end very quickly said theat they did not do tours.  Let us know what you find out!

Andrew

 

 

jtilley wrote:

I don't know how much survives in the way of primary sources about how such vessels handled, but the consensus among people who've studied them seems to be - not very well.  The most persuasive evidence, perhaps, is that the British abandoned the concept of the ketch-rigged bomb vessel pretty quickly.  The first English bomb ketches were built in the late 1690s; in 1758 the Admiralty started abandoning the concept in favor of the ship rig, and by the end of the American Revolution the British bomb ketch was a thing of the past.  (The French and several of the Baltic countries retained the ketch rig a little longer - and the U.S. built a fwe bomb ketches as late as the beginning of the nineteenth century.  The subject is covered in the aforementioned book in the Conway's History of the Ship series.)  Logic suggests that the traditional bomb ketch's enormous, off-center rig, combined with their shallow draft, would have made her extremely difficult to handle.  Grem 56's analogy with the German railroad guns is, I suspect, on target. Bomb vessels never made up a big part of the Royal Navy.  I just took a look at a couple of books that happened to be within reach; the largest number of "bombs" in any of the ship lists in E.H.H. Archibald's The Wooden Fighting Ship in the Royal Navy is 19 - as of 1805.  Most, if not all, of those presumably were ship-rigged. C.S. Forester's Commodore Hornblower contains some memorable descriptions of British bomb ketches in action in the Baltic in 1812.  Unfortunately this is a rare example of Forester making a big mistake.  By that time the British Navy had long since abandoned the ketch rig for bomb vessels.

One thing worth noting is that the bomb ketch was a French invention in the late 17th century, but was quickly adopted by other nations, including Great Britain.  The original French design (and it appears the Pyro model follows this as its design original) was a really bad sailer, in that the main and mizzen masts were pushed so close together and so far aft that all attempts at sailing balance were pretty much futile.  The weather helm on these things must have been atrocious!  The English quickly figured this out, and modified the design so that instead of two fixed mortars firing forward on either side of the centerline (so as to avoid all the forestays, etc) in a single 'firing well,' there were two mortars each in a separate 'firing well' one forward, and the other aft of the main mast.  This allowed the main mast to be placed much closer to the center of the vessel, and allowed much better sailing characteristics as a result.  In addition, each of these mortars was placed on a revolving turntable, so as to fire to the side of the ship, which allowed much better accuracy as well (the French version required the whole ship to be moved to adjust fire).  As Prof. Tilley quite rightly notes, it wasn't too long after this that a foremast was installed as well, making the bomb a full-rigged ship.  'Bomb's' were often used as small cruisers when they weren't actively employed in siege operations, and were often converted from small merchant ships as well.  Those built as 'bombs' from the beginning were constructed very heavily indeed, and were often used in Arctic expeditions during peacetime because of their ability to resist ice (i.e. Nelson had an adventure as a young Midshipman in Arctic waters aboard the bomb 'Carcass,' named not for a dead body, but for a type of mortar shell called a 'carcass!').

Harking back to the Pyro kit, I have always thought it might be very suitable for conversion to a 17th century small cruiser or merchantman with the addition of a foremast and covering over the mortar well, but I leave that to others to comment......

I spent the first four years of my life in Union, New Jersey and the next 12 just "down the road" which was and is U.S. Rt. 22. We use to go back and forth quite a bit and the turn off from Rt. 22 we took to my grandfather's house took us right past the Pyro factory. Not very large, as I remember, but being a modeler even back then, I remembered the Pyro name. I haven't been by there in over 40 years or so, so I have no knowledge of it's present state. The Pyro Park mentioned was probably the access road that led up to the factory off the main road. That's why it no longer exists. Its not a real road.

Can't help more than that, unless someone who lives near there can go investigate. I can tell him where it was, anyway.

If I remember correctly, Colby wrote and illustrated a few books, around the 1950s or later, on historical technology, one of which included some bomb ketch drawings. Might that have been one of the sources?