Interesting Flea Market Find

What a nice bonus!

- and a valuable one, too.  E. Armitage McCann is often called "the father of modern scale ship modeling."  His magazine articles and books, published back in the twenties and thirties, were responsible for getting thousands of people seriously interested in the hobby.  His subjects ranged from the Santa Maria to a then-high-teck four-stack destroyer.  Admittedly McCann's models didn't, in some ways, come up to the standards modern modelers take for granted.  His first book dealt with a "Barbary pirate galley" and a European "galleon" that were, in terms of historical accuracy, pretty laughable.  But his standards rose considerably over the years.  By the time he got around to the U.S.S. Constitution he was drawing plans that were, even by today's standards, pretty good.

The materials, tools, and techniques Captain McCann described are not, in many ways, the best by the standards of 2010.  But he made an enormous contribution to the world of ship modeling, and his writings offer a fascinating glimpse into how it used to be done. 

     So I wonder where did McCann get his inspiration? About 50 years ago in Berkeley California I visited the hillside mansion home of Eva and Sally Edwards and for the first time saw an authentic wooden sailingship model up close. This model was "museum quality" and enclosed in glass in the front hall of the house. My mom, never a stickler for detail said Eva's husband was captain of the Sea Witch and the name of the model ship I never got. In later years I just decided it must have been built by a sailor on a sailing ship on long voyages back in the days when guys got a sailing ship tattooed across their chest.

     Sally is still alive and about 90, my mom's age and she still has the model. What I'm wondering is how was it built? Were there kits around the turn of the century? Plans? Hobby shops?  Are there many 18th century models around that were built on whaling voyages and such? I would love to fill in this gap in my knowledge.

    Years ago too I read an article about a ship model dealer in San Francisco that was getting $100,000 and more for old ship models. Where did these models come from and what were they? Thanks and "Wondering in Bangkok," Paul/Publius/Preacher/John3/16

Publius

     So I wonder where did McCann get his inspiration? About 50 years ago in Berkeley California I visited the hillside mansion home of Eva and Sally Edwards and for the first time saw an authentic wooden sailingship model up close. This model was "museum quality" and enclosed in glass in the front hall of the house. My mom, never a stickler for detail said Eva's husband was captain of the Sea Witch and the name of the model ship I never got. In later years I just decided it must have been built by a sailor on a sailing ship on long voyages back in the days when guys got a sailing ship tattooed across their chest.

     Sally is still alive and about 90, my mom's age and she still has the model. What I'm wondering is how was it built? Were there kits around the turn of the century? Plans? Hobby shops?  Are there many 18th century models around that were built on whaling voyages and such? I would love to fill in this gap in my knowledge.

    Years ago too I read an article about a ship model dealer in San Francisco that was getting $100,000 and more for old ship models. Where did these models come from and what were they? Thanks and "Wondering in Bangkok," Paul/Publius/Preacher/John3/16

Wow.  Quite a few different questions there - most of them with no definitive answers.

Ship models, in one form or another, have been around since at least the days of the ancient Egyptians.  Sailors (and other people) were building them as decorations and keepsakes long before Captain McCann came on the scene.  And there were, of course the famous "Admiralty," or "Board Room," models that were built in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. 

It's pretty clear that in the beginning of his career McCann drew his own plans, largely on the basis of his own imagination.  (The first two, I think, were a sixteenth-century galleon and a Barbary felucca.  The plans for them bore scarcely any resemblance to reality.)  Over a period of twenty years or thereabouts he evolved as a modeler, and his plans got better.  Those of the clipper ship Sovereign of the Seas clearly were based on the plans of the real ship.  (That book, How to Make a Clipper Ship Model, was in print as recently as 2007:  http://productsearch.barnesandnoble.com/search/results.aspx?store=BOOK&WRD=E%2E+Armitage+McCann .   Nobody would recommend it as a practical guide to ship modeling in 2010, but it's an interesting artifact.)  By the time McCann got to the U.S.S. Constitution he was working from good archival sources.  I don't think I've seen any of his plans of contemporary (i.e., 1920s) warships, but my guess is that they were based on plans from the Navy Department - and from personal observations.  He was a retired sailor and a good draftsman; he knew what he was doing.

And the hobby of scale ship modeling caught on.  By the mid-1920s several other authors were publishing books about the subject - most conspicuously, perhaps, Charles G. Davis:  http://store.doverpublications.com/0486255840.html .  Several magazines, including Popular Mechanics and Mechanix Illustrated, were publishing plans and instructions, in serial form.  I believe the first magazine devoted entirely to ship modeling, the British monthly Ships and Ship Models, started its run in the early thirties.  (I've got a reprint edition of its first couple of years around here somewhere; I'll try to remember to look for it.)

How to Make a Clipper Ship Model includes an ad for...well, for a box of stuff that we'd probably call scratchbuilding materials:  some boards, dowels, and a few simple lead fittings (such as anchors).  The promotional slogan is "Everything but the paint on your work table."  That's the earliest "ship model kit" I'm aware of.

I have no idea when the first stores that called themselves "hobby shops" came on the scene - or where.  My guess is that they started turning up in the twenties and thirties, with model railroading and balsa airplanes making up most of their merchandise.

"Sailor-made" models from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries are fairly common in museums and antique stores.  One from earlier than 1840 or thereabouts is a rare find - and there are, of course, lots of fakes knocking around.  Sailor-made models are generally pretty easy to recognize.  Their hulls are usually distorted (the sailor had no access to plans, and he never saw the underwater part), the workmanship is pretty crude (the sailor probably had access to no more tools than a knife, a saw, and some needles), and the materials are basic (pine boards, maybe oak dowels, nails, and maybe - maybe - a few cast lead fittings.  The rigging of a sailor-made model is usually out of scale, but the leads of the lines are impeccably accurate.  (That's something the sailor did know about from personal experience.  A model that's accurately proportioned, and that features neat, professional-looking fittings (blocks, deadeyes, gun barrels, etc.), almost certainly wasn't built by a sailor - unless he was sitting in a well-equipped workshop on dry land.

I don't know who that dealer in San Francisco may have been, but $100,000 is a mighty steep price for any ship model.  (When I was working at the Mariners' Museum we might have considered paying a price like that for a genuine seventeenth-century Board Room model in great condition, or maybe a genuine, rigged, POW bone model from the Napoleonic Wars, but that's about it.)  On the other hand, there is a small group of gullible rich people out there who take pleasure in paying outrageous prices for objects that other people can't afford.  I've heard of at least one modern modeler putting a six-digit price tag on one of his models, but I haven't heard of anybody actually buying such a thing.

The history of ship modeling is a fascinating subject.  It really needs to be the subject of a good, well-researched book.  Several works on the market purport to fill the bill but, to my notion, really don't.  The best is probably Ship Models:  Their Purpose and Development from 1650 to the Present, by Brian Lavery and Simon Stephens (London:  Zwemmer Publishing, 1995).  It's a good book, but doesn't quite live up to its subtitle.  Only the first part of it actually deals with the history of ship models - and does so in a manner that's highly Anglo-centric.  The rest of it consists of a catalogue of the models in the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich - where both of the authors worked.  I have no idea what sort of market ould greet the appearance of a really thorough, well-illustrated history of ship modeling; I suspect most publishers would be reluctant to touch such a thing.  But we can hope. 

This is  from a piece I did several years ago for the monthly newsletter from the (now defunct) Maritime Museum of Monterey.

________________________________________________

"The Maritime Museum displays two models of a Baltimore Schooner Privateer named Swallow. The primary significance of these models is their place in the history of amateur model ship building in America.

The Museum’s two Swallow models depict a fictional vessel representing the salient design features of the Baltimore Clipper, a distinctive American schooner type which evolved during the Napoleanic Wars of the early 19^th century. Although there was a Canadian privateer named Swallow listed in 1797, an American vessel as depicted by the models apparently never existed

Baltimore Clippers (or “Baltimore Flyers” as they were called at the time) were small, cheap to build, had shallow draft and could sail closer to the wind than most naval vessels that pursued them. These features made them popular with privateers, blockade runners and slavers until the advent of steam propulsion negated their advantages. Their gaff rig, low freeboard, raking masts and large headsails made for a distinctive appearance.  

Unfortunately, for modelers, small vessels of the early 19^th century were not typically recorded by their builders in drawn plans. Most data for specific vessels comes from written contracts or records associated with port duties. Visual information on these types of vessels is usually derived from contemporary paintings, illustrations and Royal Navy records. The lines and distinctive hull features of captured vessels which exhibited good performance were often ‘taken off’, either for use in replicating the vessels, or to keep the dockyards honest in charging the government for the expensive copper sheathing used to protect the hulls of Royal Navy vessels from shipworm.

Using bits and pieces of information from a variety of sources, and by necessity, a certain amount of educated conjecture, the Baltimore Clipper’s features were captured in Swallow by author, artist, marine consultant and avid ship modeler E. Armitage McCann.

The plans for the Swallow appeared as the 13^th in a series of 17 ship modeling projects created by Mr. McCann and published between 1926 and 1938 by Popular Science magazine.

In an era before hobby shops, pre-designed and packaged kits, a hobby reference industry or the internet, amateur marine enthusiasts had little access to information needed to research full size vessels or develop model construction techniques.  McCann attempted to fill these voids through the pages of Popular Science and his own monthly magazine, The Ship Modeler, which was published from 1926 through 1933. McCann’s articles appeared in over 90 issues of Popular Science, the last being on construction of a model of the Confederate raider Alabama, in August of 1938.

McCann also wrote several books, one of which, How to Make a Clipper Ship Model, is still in print, 80 years after its first publication!

Like local artist Hans Skaalgaard, McCann spent much of his life on square riggers and steamships, which provided him with insight into their form and workings.  Born in 1875, McCann went to sea at age 14, and became the Captain of a trading bark at age 19. At the end of his seagoing career Captain McCann held both American and British licenses.

McCann retired from seafaring shortly after the end of the First World War, He settled in Brooklyn to work as a marine consultant and pursue his writing, art and model building. Capt. McCann’s health began to fail in the early 1930’s, and as a result, The Ship Modeler ceased publication in 1933.  He continued to write for other publications until his death in October, 1937 at age 62.

Mr. McCann is recognized today as the Father of American model ship building."

             _____________________

     I have been to the San Francisco Maritime Museum and seen the stunning ship models there, but it was long ago. I'll bet each one has a story and I wonder what they cost? I think that dealer I mentioned was from the Bay Area.  Many years before that I went to a museum in Massachussets I think where they had fantastic mineature steam engines and maybe also some ship models. Ipswitch? And lastly one day probably back in the 1950's my dad took me to a private storage room with huge gray navy warship models and I think it was near Annapolis, but not sure. Fantastic stuff for a kid. I guess the models were prototypes for WW2 stuff? Don't know but they were huge.

      Any comments anyone? My dad's ship among others was the WW2 USS Indianapolis. "44 months in the Pacific." Is there an original navy model of her around I wonder? What happened to all those I saw too I wonder? Firewood? Thanks a ton, Paul PS I'm trying to get the name of that ship model I mentioned. Must have been custom or shop built because it was very accurate. It is in Hawaii now and may go to Pepperdine University. Paul

Thanks to Schoonerbum for the additional material on Captain McCann.  I vaguely remember having heard about his magazine before, but I don't think I've ever seen a copy of it.  I'm a little surprised at the brevity of his career as a ship modeler.  He's such a fixture in the early history of the hobby that it's hard to believe he was only active in ship modeling for about a dozen years.  (He must have been active indeed!)

The prices of ship models vary so wildly that it's almost useless to speculate about them.  The San Francisco Maritime Museum probably has records of the models in its collection - but such records vary greatly in detail.  At the place where I used to work we had excellent records - names of builders, dates of construction, resources consulted, etc. - for some models, and virtually no information about others.  Generally speaking, the museum had gotten more professional, and its record-keeping practices had gotten better, over the years; the more recently a model had been acquired, the better information about it was likely to be in the files.  (And then there were the Crabtree models.  August Crabtree was notoriously tight-lipped about them; he - and his wife - apparently thought the "mystique" surrounding those models was enhanced by keeping the techniques, materials, and research sources a big secret.  I guess they were right.)

The Navy used to commission models of its major warship classes along with the contracts for the ships.  The warship models built by the model shop at Gibbs and Cox are particularly outstanding.  The best place to see them used to be the Armed Forces exhibition at the Smithsonian.  For better or worse, when that gallery got redesigned a few years ago almost all the ship models got removed.  I don't know where they are now.  One big repository for Navy-owned ship models is (or at least used to be) the David Taylor Model Basin at the Washington Navy Yard:   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Taylor_Model_Basin .  I'm not sure whether the collection of builders' models is still there or not.

At the moment I think the first museum on my personal list of recommendations for people who want to admire ship models is the Naval Academy Museum at Annapolis.  The exhibition on the history of the U.S. Navy on the main floor contains lots of excellent models of U.S. warships.  And on the third floor reposes most of the models of the great Henry Huddleston Rogers Collection, a magnificent collection of seventeenth- through nineteenth-century models (mainly British, but with a few from France and elsewhere).  The Naval Academy Museum has always been a great one, but the renovations of the past few years have made it downright spectacular.  I'll stick my neck out and assert that it's the best, and most important, exhibition of ship models in the U.S.  An absolute "must see" for any ship model enthusiast who has the means to get there.

My interest in ship modeling and marine art was spurred by my visits to the Indianaplois Children's Muesum and the Indianapolis Museum of art, as a six year old back in the early sixties. One of these museums had a large scale model of the Indianapolis. There is a new one, though less impressive, at the USS Indianapolis Museum at the Indy World War Memorial. The older model was probably the best. Suggest that you start there. 

On your lists of great places to see ship models put the Mariners Museum at Newport News VA and the Mystic Seaport at Mystic CT. Both have extensive collections of models.

Wow. Thanks very much. Paul

Hello proff. I need to interject here. When I was in the NAVY , I had the unique opportunity to go to the yard headquarters building for something and boy what a bunch of mouth watering models I saw there.This was in BREMERTON,WASHINGTON NAVAL SHIPYARD.I do hope that the models still exist. There was an occassion where I went to a non-descript museum of "STUFF" and they had three shipmodels from the war years.They were in such bad shape I offered to do the restorations for free!! They denied the priviledge and I think they,(all three) were relegated to the trash bin!! I also must comment on MR.MCANN. I believe the old mags that my foster father had with some of those articles spurred my lifelong love af ANY model that was of a floating object..I remember getting in hot water for building wood models when DAD was away.He eventually relented as I always cleaned up the shop and put the tools away.     tankerbuilder

Another Museum that is seldom mentioned is the US Merchant Marine Academy Museum at King's Point, New York. They have a large collection of Merchant Ship models like the NS Savannah, SS United States, Lakers, SL-7 container ships, C-2, C-3 and more plus they house a 20 plus foot model of the US Lines SS Washington.

 With a location only 15 miles east of Manhatten and easy access from JFK airport. It is a must see

 And across the bridge at SUNY Martime collage there is another large collection of ship models. Merchant ships and Liners.

You kidding me? I have been a drilling Navy reservist mostly out of Ft Schuyler (now NOSC NYC) for 10+ years...  400 yards from SUNY Maritime College.. never heard of their collection of ship models, nor of the King's Point location (yep, been there too on official business!) Thanks for the heads up on that one...

Other places of naval interest in the area, besides the obvious NYC Intrepid and Seaport:

In Hackensack NJ you have the NJ Naval Museum with some good stuff, including some midget subs, a PIBBER and a Balao class sub: http://www.njnm.com/

2.5 hrs north of NYC is the New London Sub Base, and the Sub Museum, with the Nautilus and a few midget subs. A few miles south, Mystic CT is the home of the Mystic Seaport, including the Charles Morgan and a myriad of maritime activities.

I've also heard that  Webb Institute has ship models, they are east of King's Point in Glen Cove. Haven't stopped by yet but intend to.

 Suspect that the Coast Guard Academy in New London, Conneticut has models as well.

Jerome

My daughter is a graduate of Webb. As I recall they have a very extensive collection of half hull models although I do not remember very many if any full ship models. By all means stop by, the campus is awesome and the half hulls are worth the trip.

Amphib

So Amphib,  Does you daughter work as an Architect now?

 I had dreams of going there but math was not a strong point, so now i repair and build models...Next best thing I think.

My daughter is a Naval Architect working for JMS Naval Architects and Salvage Engineers. Before that she has had a varied career to say the least. Working for EXXON drilling for oil in the north sea, worked for a design firm in California designing container ships, building minesweepers in Wisconsin, and now the stability expert at JMS.

Sorry to hear you didn't try to go to Webb. I think you would have enjoyed it.

Amphib

Up there in Maine is the excellent Maine Maritime Museum in Bath, ME.I was there this past Feb, and spent a full day of enjoyment. Many wonderful models and a decent research library.