Manilla Galleons et al

If you are still interested in getting the Imai 4 masted galleon kit one is currently listed on eBay USA.  It is the Ertl/Imai 1/100 scale (oh, how I hate to say this) Pirate Ship.  Having had the original issue Galleon kit I can say that the box art is identical to it. 

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=230476783237&ssPageName=STRK:MEWAX:IT#ht_1336wt_1139

I would suspect those fenders were also practical for beaching ships, which was a pretty routine way of making repairs during a voyage.

This is interesting.  I have no idea what the origins of this kit may be.  I'm wondering if it might be the larger  Airfix Golden Hind, which I've never built (or, for that matter, seen outside the box).  I jumped on the assumption that it was the Revell kit largely on the basis of the fact that it has five crew figures, but I guess the Airfix one might have had five crew figures too.

For it to be an Airfix kit would be consistent; all the other MPC sailing ship kits I can remember originated in Airfix boxes.  I had the general notion that the MPC/Airfix connection ended before the Airfix Golden Hind was realeased, but that may well be my Halfzeimer's-afflicted memory talking. 

I'd better not comment further without seeing some pictures of the actual kit.  The truth of the matter is that I simply don't know what the kit is.

Vertical fenders were not, as far as I can tell, particularly characteristic of any one country. 

      Forum, The MPC Galleon has arrived and it is a LARGE  hull about 16" long without the bow sprit and new tooling to me ie not reworked Revell.  It's similar in purportions (fast galleon?) to the Revell Golden Hind, but all original tooling and differing in details like railings and cannon placement. There is also no vertical external bracing as seen on the IMAI kits. Is that kind of thing exclusively Spanish/Portugese?  I've packed my Revell Santa Maria. The MPC kit  will have to wait  for the next trip. My bags are too full now. Kearsarge here I come. Thanks, Paul

It's hard to generalize about such details - and the terminology referring to them has changed over the years (and, of course, from language to language).  In the English-language vocabulary of a slightly later period the horizontal timbers would be called "wales" and the vertical ones "fenders."  In addition to strengthening the hull structure they serve to protect the relatively thin hull planking from collisions with piers, other ships, etc.  And one sometimes finds a pair of fenders spaced about three feet apart in the waist of the ship, opposite the main hatch.  A barrel could be hoisted up the ship's side, using the two fenders as sort of a track.

So far as I know there's nothing nationalistic about either of these features.  And there's virtually no extant information about the structural details of either the Santa Maria or the Golden Hind.  Any modern reconstruction of any such ship is just that - a reconstruction, relying heavily on the interpretation and taste of the individual designer or modeler.  The Revell Golden Hind does have several external wales, but no fenders.  (And, if I remember correctly, none of the Matthew Baker drawings - which, as we've established, are to all intents and purposes the only contemporary "plans" of English ships from the Tudor period - shows them.)  But that doesn't mean the actual ship didn't have such features.

One of the most irritating and/or satisfying aspects of this sort of model building is that there's so little actual information about the subject matter.  On the one hand, that means the modeler has to fill in the gaps (or work from a set of plans in which somebody else, like Rolf Hoeckel, has already done his best to do so).  On the other hand, it leaves plenty of room for creativity and individuality.

     Forum, Is there a name for the external hull bracing seen on the Revell Santa Maria and the IMAI Golden Hind? but lacking on the Revell Hind? Is this distinctively Spanish/Portugese or just all ships of the period? Why is it lacking on the Revell Hind and present on the IMAI one I wonder?  Was Santa Maria purposely braced extra to cross a great ocean????? Thanks, Paul Signal Hill, Calif.

This is a new one to me.  I think I recognize the box art; beware my notorious memory, but I think it originally appeared on the tiny little Airfix Golden Hind.  That kit was one of the company's earliest releases, back in the early or mid-fifties.  It was about three inches long, and was packed in a plastic bag.  The artwork appeared on the paper "header" that was stapled to the bag.  Airfix enthusiasts (at least those of the ten-year-old variety, like me) learned the hard way to take those staples out carefully; the header had to be unfolded to reveal the instruction sheet.

That old kit, though, obviously isn't what's in the MPC box.  I'm inclined to agree that it's probably a repackaging of the Revell Golden Hind.  (The dimensions and the reference to the crew figures are the clinchers.)  I wasn't aware of any Revell kits having appeared in MPC boxes, but plastic kit molds do get around.

In its original form the Revell Golden Hind is one of my all-time favorite kits.  In earlier Forum threads we've established pretty firmly that it's based on the work of a German modeler named Rolf Hoeckel, who published a number of books and sets of plans back in the forties.  He, in turn, quite obviously worked from the famous Matthew Baker Manuscript in the library of Cambridge University.  The Baker drawings are generally referred to as the earliest surviving plans for English ships.  They're beautiful pieces of draftsmanship; they've served as the basis for just about every reconstruction of an English ship from that period - full-size or model - for the simple reason that there just isn't anything else to work from.

 Just what the ships in the Baker Manuscript are is the subject of considerable discussion among experts.  The manuscript dates from right around the time of the Spanish Armada; Baker himself apparently was a master shipwright in Elizabeth I's navy.   The general assumption is that the drawings depict several up-to-date English galleons of the sort that sailed against the Armada, but nobody's quite sure.

At any rate, those tall structures on the bow and stern of the Revell Golden Hind are entirely consistent with the Baker drawings and virtually every other contemporary source.  In fact they're a little less "swoopy" (I like that term; it really fits) than those of the big ships in most of the Baker drawings.  Futhermore, it's likely (though by no means certain) that the Baker drawings represent what was referred to as "race-built" galleons - which, by the standards of the 1580s, had a considerably lower, "racier" hull form than was standard in previous generations.  And the typical Spanish ship of the period almost certainly was taller for its length than a "race-built" English one. 

There have been a number of efforts to reconstruct the Golden Hind since Herr Hoeckel's day.  (If you do a search on "Golden Hind" here in the Forum you'll find quite a few threads that discuss the subject in some detail.  Example:  /forums/t/72084.aspx?PageIndex=1 . )  My personal opinion is that the Hoeckel/Revell design still holds up pretty well - in view of what meager evidence we have about the actual ship.

There is, however, just NO WAY that the Revell Golden Hind kit represents a Spanish galleon!  (Revell itself reissued the kit with that name attached to it at least once; that was just one more of the company's notorious marketing stunts.)  To begin with, the Golden Hind was far too small to earn the label "galleon."  And the shape of the hull is distinctively English.  The Golden Hind was no more a Spanish galleon than H.M.S. Cossack was a Japanese battleship.  (It's worth noting that the label on the box doesn't include the word "Spanish."  Presumably somebody in MPC's marketing department, though he/she apparently didn't know - or care - what the word "galleon" meant, did notice the English flags and the English royal arms on the sails in the box art.)

I guess it would be possible to use this kit as a basis for a major conversion.  I'd recommend starting out by changing the scale; if those crew figures are in scale with the ship, it's too small to be a galleon (Spanish or otherwise).  Unfortunately we know even less about the appearance of Spanish ships from that period than we do about English ones.  (There are some contemporary Spanish treatises on shipbuilding, but they don't include any drawings that are comparable to the ones in the Baker manuscript.)  In all honesty I've never seen a model of a Spanish galleon that really convinced me - but the big old Imai kit is the most believable reconstruction I've bumped into.  Would that the kit were easier to find!

The flip side of that coin, of course, is that, since so little is known about the real things, nobody can say for certain that a model is "wrong."  If one keeps that point in mind, and does some reading (I recommend starting with the Conway book I mentioned earlier:  Cogs, Caravels and Galleons) , such a project could be really instructive - and great fun.

Good luck.

OOoooofff! Once and again and for some reason the first URL isn't working and the second is. Hope you enjoy this neat kit. Good images of the hull even thought the positions of the gun ports seem implausably tilted. Onward to....... the glue. Thanks, Paul

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=380231830979&ssPageName=STRK:MEWNX:IT

         Forum:      http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dllViewItem&item=380231830979&ssPageName=STRK:MEWNX:IT       

     This is the IMAI Golden Hind I just won and is satisfyingly and finally the kind of vessel I've been looking for. It seems to be a copy of a reproduction full size ship I've seen throught the forum here. I'm wondering now how to make it look more Portugese since they were the first guys that made it to Siam/Thailand where I have my little place and model building stuff. Thanks, Paul

Publius

... to the puny Revell Golden Hind which to me has very way too much of a swoopy and tall stern castle and rediculous banana shaped hull.

I was not aware of the Revell Batavia, but having seen it for sale online, I may pick one up. I haven't built a sailing ship in a very long time.

Which by the way since I don't post often here, the T2 is almost finished.

Forum, The first URL doesn't work for some reason. The second one posted looks identical to me but because I "copy and pasted" it in it is working? Thanks, Paul

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=370377577416&ssPageName=STRK:MEWNX:IT

Try this. Friend just showed me a new way to copy.

I'm working on this.

     Forum, The kit is Ebay item #370377577416. The URL is http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=370377577416&ssPageName=STRK:MEWNX:IT     Hopefully I got this right. I'll check it after post. Thanks, Paul

      Forum, The kit is titled as "16th century Galleon." It is sickeningly similar, according to the box art, to the puny Revell Golden Hind which to me has very way too much of a swoopy and tall stern castle and rediculous banana shaped hull. I'm thinking of cutting down a Revell Golden Hind/Spanish Galleon to look like a junked out freighter at the end of her life with all colors faded to near brown/black and modified/missing railings (burned for fuel)  and sealed gun ports. (They sold all but 2 of the guns.) I'll see if I can get the Ebay pictures to the forum here, but there is no view inside the box and the pictures are rather faded.

      With respect to the term "galleon," I think for me it just means "TREEEASUUUUURE!!!" ( think of your eyes bugging out) as in holds ballasted with tons and tons and tons of silver, bars and bars and bags and chests of  gold and bejeweled trunks full of  jewels, and mother of pearl inlaid furnitures and mounds and mounds of priceless ceramics and miles of incredible silks, many even fit for a king. I read that over the  250 years that they sailed at least 100 of the Manila Galleons sank en route and they were loaded to the hilt in both directions with totally maximized commercial packings and tons of juicy contraband hidden and stashed everywhere. They probably even smuggled around some teen age girls from time to time. This was East meets West at its richest and lustiest and it lasted for centuries. Galleons,2000 tons of  sickeningly fat and fantastic. Thanks, Paul

MPC did indeed distribute several of the "Airfix Classic" line of sailing ships for a while (in the seventies, I think).  I have to confess, though, that I'm thoroughly mystified by what this "Spanish galleon" kit may be. 

I don't have a comprehensive list of all Airfix's sailing ships, but I'm pretty certain the company never issued a ship that it called a "Spanish galleon."  And - as we noted in another Forum thread recently - Airfix may have been the only plastic sailing ship kit manufacturer that didn't reisssue any such kits under spurious names (e.g., as "Spanish galleons," "Elizabethan men-of-war," or "pirate ships").  

That term "galleon" is, in terms of actual historical usage, an extremely vague one - and novelists and kit manufacturers have made it more so.  My general approach when trying to sort out such things is to consult the relevant volume of Conway's History of the Ship, which is the most comprehensive scholarly study of the subject I know - and contains good glossaries.  Here's the definition of "galleon" from the relevant volume, Cogs, Caravels and Galleons:  The Sailing Ship 1000-1650:

"galleon.  Sea-going full rigged ship of the sixteenth century and later, characterised by a relativel high length-to-beam ratio, a long beak under the bowsprit and a crescent profile rising somewhat higher at the stern than at the forecastle.  Compared with carracks...the lines of the galleon were finer, the superstructures lower, and under sail both speed and handling were superior.  Galleons were usually heavily armed, although they were not necessarily specialist warships.  The term came to be closely associated with the Iberian powers, and in particular Spain, so that by the seventeenth century almost any large Spanish ship could be described as a galleon."

I have the impression that the word was still being used to describe the Spanish ships carrying cargoes across the Pacific as late as the end of the eighteenth century.  In other words, the term "Spanish galleon" in itself is almost meaningless in establishing what a particular ship looked like. 

My Halfzeimer's afflicted memory can recall five kits in the Airfix range that seem like the sort of thing a kit manufacturer might try to pass off as a "Spanish galleon":  the Sovereign of the Seas, Revenge, Golden Hind, Mayflower, and St. Louis.  All of them are basically sound kits in terms of representing what they originally claimed to represent.  The first four are, in the eyes of anybody who's done much reading on the subject, quite distinctively English in shape; the St. Louis, which was built by the Dutch for the French crown, was also pretty unmistakable.  The only one on the list that could really be labeled a "galleon" in contemporary usage is the Revenge - which is quite obviously English in outline.  I personally wouldn't want to try to pass any of those kits off as a "Spanish galleon," but kit manufacturers are, of course notoriously unscrupulous about such things.  (But if Airfix actually did it, I'll be disappointed.  I really thought Airfix was above such behavior.) 

Just what this MPC "Spanish Galleon" kit is I frankly have no idea.  It's entirely possible that the company was importing kits from some other manufacturer, and that this one isn't an Airfix product at all.  If I were to see a picture of the box art my poor old brain might make a connection - but that's by no means certain. 

I'm really getting curious about this.  Publius, a picture or two would be deeply appreciated.

MPC did have a relationship with Airfix for re-issuing their ship kits under MPC labels.  Perhaps this is an Airfix kit like the Golden Hind.  GH was supposedly done in a late 1570s fit and in 1/72 scale.  WS

        Forum, I got this wrong before. The company is MPC, whoever that is. The model is 18" long. The box art looks a lot like the Revell Golden Hind. It boggles my mind to think how huge these galleons became over time. At 2000 tons they were 2 times the size of the Revell Kearsarge and about 15 times the size of the Golden Hind. I would like to get that book you mentioned to see what info they have on how many built and what style and size etc. I wonder how many tons the IMAI 4 masted model is supposed to be, 4-500? Time frame for this kit's design? It' looks to me like late 1500's or so. It's the only one that has the big treasure galleon look to me. I got an old copy of a National Geographic article on the Manila Galleons that has paintings of the galleons. I wonder how accurate they are? All this makes me think of the Atocha too. How big was she? Which model would be the closest to her? Funny, with all the fame of Atocha, no one has modeled her. Later maybe. If the MPC galleon gets here in time I'll take her to Bangkok and maybe after a while I can post some pictures, but it will be a project. Thanks, Paul

I have checked the Rajens Kit List and can find no mention of this kit.  Perhaps, if you check the sprues for another manufacturer's name you might find that it was made under license or some such arrangement and it could be found under someone else's list.  A couple of good photos of the box top and sprues might help also.  WS

The "bible" on the Manila Galleon trade is William Lytle Schurz's 1939 work.... mysteriously titled... "The Manila Galleon".  It was reprinted as a paperback in 1959, selling then for $1.75. It can sometimes be found on "ADDALL.COM" in their used and out of print section for a couple of hundred dollars (US). I've seen t;hem go for as much as $435.00!! for a $1.75 paperback. I paid $65.00 for mine about ten years ago.

The "manila galleon", or "Philippine Ship" or "China nao" trade lasted from 1565 to 1815, so there is a wide range of vessel types that could be used. The really early vessels could be smaller, like your kit is likely to be... but by the seventeenth century the vessels were becoming huge. 1000 or even 2000 tonners were not unusual. For an 18th century vessel, think HMS Victory, pierced for 60 guns, but mounting ten... Santisima Trinidad, captured by Panther and Argo in 1762 was taken back to England, measured...  1900 to 2200 tons, depending on which formula used, and sold. A Victory or Superbe kit could be used with some modifications for a mid to late 18th century galleon.  It took the 60 gun Panther and 28 gun Argo some 8 to 12 hours to subdue the 13 gun Santisima Trinidad, while losing 72 men to the Spaniard's 28 dead. 

Check out the following link for Galleon history (in Spanish) and some nice visuals:

http://www.todoababor.es/articulos/vje_trnd.htm

I'm afraid I can't help with this one.  I have no idea what the kit is.

IMC was the name of a now-long-defunct company that manufactured a relatively small (but pretty decent) range of cars and aircraft back in the sixties (and maybe a little later).  I checked on the biggest kit collectors' site I know, www.oldmodelkits.com ; I couldn't find any reference to any ship models from IMC.

There's a modern Czech firm called ICM; it's known to ship modelers primarily for its 1/350 WWI German battleships.  But I haven't found any reference to any sailing ships from that company.

It looks like Publius's kit must be one that's escaped my notice.  (That happens with considerable frequency.)  Publius - can you tell us a little more about it?  Or maybe show us a picture of it?

If you're looking for a Dutch East Indiaman, the kit to hunt down is the Batavia, from Revell Germany.  It doesn't seem to be on the company's website at the moment, and so far as I know Revell of California never released it, but it shouldn't be too difficult to track down.  I've never built it, but on the basis of photos and comments on the web I have the impression that it's a good, sound kit - based on the full-sized replica that was built in Holland back in the 1980s.

Sorry I can't be of more help.