I can shed a little more light on the Eagle/Gorch Fock/Seeadler connection. It's a rather interesting story.
Back in 1956 (at least I think that's the date of the first edition) the famous sailing ship writer and draftsman Harold A. Underhill published a book called Sail Training and Cadet Ships. Like Underhill's other books, it was illustrated with a series of well-drawn, fold-out plans. Among the ships covered was, of course, the class of German training barques that included the Gorch Fock and Horst Wessel (later U.S.C.G.C. Eagle). The text of the book included a discussion of the similarities and differences between the ships of the class - including the fact that all of them were different in length. The accompanying fold-out plans were of the Gorch Fock - as Underhill clearly stated in the text. (He explained repeatedly that the four ships in the class were near-identical except for length - and provided a table with the accurate dimensions.)
Underhill's publishers, Brown, Son and Ferguson, sold blueprint versions of most of his ship plans separately, and published a widely-distributed catalog of them. This particular set of drawings was listed in the catalog as representing all four ships in the class. A person who bought a copy of the drawings and didn't have a copy of the book wouldn't know that the plans weren't accurate depictions of all four.
I think it's worth noting that Underhill himself never tried to deceive anybody on this point. (Neither, so far as I know, did the U.S. Coast Guard.)
Virtually every model kit, plastic or wood, allegedly representing the Eagle seems to have been based on those Underhill plans. That, I'm pretty sure, includes the Revell kit, which originally appeared in 1958. By then the real Eagle had been modified considerably from her original configuration. (The characteristically German double spanker rig on the mizzen mast had, for instance, been replaced by a single gaff. In the ship's latest major overhaul, back in about 1990, the Coast Guard restored the double spanker.) I think the Revell designers took a careful look at the actual ship and, in effect, superimposed the various pieces of 1950s-vintage Coast Guard equipment on the Underhill plans, thereby producing a kit that looked quite a bit like the Eagle did in 1958 - but was about 20 scale feet too short. (I haven't compared the original Horst Wessel drawings directly with the Underhill ones, but I think most, if not all, of the difference in length falls between the big forward deckhouse and the main mast.)
We discussed this topic at some length here in the Forum a couple of years ago. I think we pretty firmly established that all other Eagle kits are also too short - with one notable exception: the 1/200 version from Imai. A Forum member who'd sailed on board the Eagle got hold of that kit and compared it with some reliable drawings (they're out there, all right); he reports that it's an excellent, well-detailed kit, though it was only available quite briefly and is now extremely hard to find.
Imai also included the Eagle (along with the other three class members) in its series of nice little 1/350 kits. I'm pretty sure all of the four had identical hulls, decks, etc. (I suspect Imai also used most of the same parts for its 1/350 model of the Gorch Fock II, which is in fact quite similar to her predecessor - but not identical.)
Quite a few years later I got hired by the Coast Guard Historian's Office to do a line drawing of the Eagle in her then-current configuration. The Coast Guard Historian, Dr. Bob Browning, had in his office several of the original Blohm & Voss builder's drawings of the ship. (The drawings had the name "Horst Wessel" on them; there's not much doubt about their reliability. It wasn't a full set of drawings by any stretch of the imagination, but it did include a lines plan and longitudinal cross-section.) He also sent me copies of several more recent drawings made by Coast Guard draftsmen on the basis of measurements taken directly from the ship. Again, I think it's worth noting that the Coast Guard has never tried to deceive anybody about the Eagle's dimensions. I caught up with the ship (not without considerable difficulty) at Baltimore and spent quite a bit of time walking around her, taking pictures, and talking with the captain and the bosun; I think I can claim that the drawing I made accurately represents her configuration as of 1994. [Later edit: the Coast Guard Historian's Office recently put most of the drawings it commissioned from me online, including the drawing of the Eagle. Here's the link: http://www.uscg.mil/history/plans/CGCEagle.jpg ]
A year or so ago I bought a biography of Count von Luckner that had just been published. It contained a certain amount of slightly sensationalistic material, but seemed to be generally reliable. Long after World War I the Count spent considerable time in the United States, devoting much effort to charitable causes - including the Boy Scouts of America. (He seems to have been a first-rate gentleman in every respect.) The book tells the story that, in about 1959, he was the guest of honor on the American TV show "This Is Your Life." Olde Phogies like me may remember that show. Every week it presented the biography of a different celebrity, who got surprised when people from his/her past showed up in the TV studio. In this case the last "surprise guest" on the show was an executive from Revell, who announced that the company was about to release a model of the Seeadler - and donate a portion of the proceeds to the Boy Scouts.
The kit was released in 1960 (and, according to Dr. Graham's book, reissued in 1968 with vac-formed "sails" added). I remember buying it about that time - and discovering, immediately upon opening the box, that it was a modified version of the Eagle kit. (Yards had been added to the mizzen mast, the Coast Guard motorboats had been replaced with some other, older looking ones, a couple of guns had replaced the navigation lights on the forecastle, and I imagine a few other changes had been made. But the hull, decks, and most other parts were identical.) The instruction sheet included a message from Count von Luckner "To the youth of America," emphasizing that "the Seeadler never robbed a wife of her husband or a mother of her child" (which was true).
I've often wondered when, if ever, the Count learned what was really inside that box.
For many years Revell's alleged Seeadler was just about the only plastic model of a World War I warship on the market. There still aren't many - and that's a most regrettable state of affairs. But I have to say this is one I hope doesn't get reissued. As an exercise in deceptive marketing it's on almost the same level as the Revell "Beagle."