Marine Models was one of the grand old names in wood ship modeling. I think the company may date back to the 1930s - if not earlier.
I don't think I've actually built an MM kit, but I remember having looked at a lot of them in hobby shops and elsewhere. By the time I got seriously into the hobby they had a mixed reputation - as could be expected in a company that was selling kits that ranged in age from thirty years to the present. I have the impression that the firm started off strong, with some kits that really demonstrated the state of the art. (MM boxwood blocks were especially nice, as I recall.) Sometime or other the quality started going downhill: grungy-looking machine-carved hulls, mediocre plans, crude fittings, etc. Then, as I remember, the quality level actually got better again. I remember in particular (it's strange how memory works) a nice little model of the clipper Swordfish that almost jumped out of the box and said "build me."
Marine Models is long gone, with, ironically, one exception that I'm aware of. The company also manufactured a series of large-scale Civil War artillery pieces and naval guns. They were pretty nice for their day: cast "white metal" components (including wheels) and turned brass barrels. I remember buying the Civil War Napoleon at Gilbert's Hobby Shop in Gettysburg (one of the best hobby shops I've ever seen) and spending a week or so building it. It turned out fine, though the castings took a lot of time to clean up. Those kits, now in britannia metal (including the barrels) now make up most of the "Guns of History" series from Model Expo. It looks to me like they're otherwise unchanged.
So far as I know, all MM kits had cast "white metal" fittings. That means lead alloy. Lead is a weird metal. It's notoriously unstable; it starts deteriorating almost as soon as it's cast. But the rate of deterioration seems to vary wildly (depending, I guess, on what other metals are in the alloy). When I was working in a hobby shop I ran into railroad kits whose lead fittings had started to "flower" before we could sell them. I've also got a handful of old lead castings that have been knocking around my workshop since the seventies, and look good as new. And a year or so ago I acquired a Model Shipways Essex, made in the sixties (I think), whose fittings are in great shape.
My guess is that if you've got a Marine Models kit and the fittings look OK as of now, they probably won't turn to powder very soon. Give them a good coat of primer, and don't put the finished model in direct sunlight (or, worse, a plexiglas case in direct sunlight). I may be wrong about that, though. It's possible, I supposed, for a thirty-year-old casting to look great today and fall apart next week.
I did some reading about the Joe Lane years ago in conjunction with a drawing for the Coast Guard Historian's Office. She was a beautiful ship, and a set of very detailed plans for her exists in the National Archives. The drawings show just about every conceivable detail - but no guns. I wasn't able to find any reference to armament for this ship. The CG Historian and I figured she must have had at least a little pivot gun amidships, but we couldn't be sure. Maybe she just relied on small arms carried by the crew. At any rate, in leaving out the guns Marine Models was just doing what practically everybody else did in reconstructing the ship.