About ten days ago I ordered the new 1/400 Mary Rose from the Airfix website. (Price: $13.00 - including four pots of Humbrol acrylic paint, a tube of Humbrol glue, and a decent synthetic brush.) The package arrived yesterday. (The postmark was somewhere in Washington State. I gather Airfix/Humbrol/Hornby has a big facility there.)
I'm impressed. I think the kit was designed primarily to be sold in the Mary Rose's gift shop, and it's quite simple (28 pieces). But it's a lot better than it probably had to be for that market. And, to the extent that it's possible to reconstruct the real ship on the basis of what's left (i.e., slightly more than a quarter of the hull), it's about as accurate as can be expected.
The design is ingenious. The two hull halves are nice, well-detailed castings, though I could do without the molded-in anchors. The lower gundeck is molded with the guns in place, so they can stick out the tiny gunports. That deck casting has several "frames" molded on the bottom that go all the way to the "keel," making it easy to line everything up.
I have mixed feelings about the weather decks. The real ship apparently had a series of wood gratings running from bulwark to bulwark the full length of the ship. The "upper deck" consists of a representation of those gratings in relief on a solid piece of plastic. Should look pretty good with careful painting, though.
The masts are quite simplified, but they have the correct round platforms at their heads (and the topmast head of the mainmast). The sails, unfortunately, are injection-molded integrally with the yards - but better than most such things. The "billowing" shapes of the sails are believable, and they seem to be thinned at their edges. Paper would look better, but I'm sure the kit versions will be satisfactory to the average purchaser. The lower yards have the little grappling irons on their ends.
One of the kit's nicest features is the decal sheet. It contains a couple of dozen colored panels to decorate the outside of the hull. Those things would be a nightmare to paint. There's also a pair of flags, nicely printed on a sheet of extremely thin, pressure-sensitive material of some sort.
There's no mention of rigging. Forget about rigging the ratlines. But some very fine lines, carefully applied, would be an impressive finishing touch.
I of course am having trouble deciding just how much I want to put into this kit. One could junk the "gratings," scratchbuild (with some guesswork) a new set of weather decks, and replace the gratings with brass mesh. One could add tremendous amounts of rigging, and enjoy the result from the bed in the insane asylum where one would end up as a result. And replace the masts and sails. But I'm thinking in terms of spending a weekend or a little more on it, giving it a nice paint job, and putting it in the curio cabinet. (My life likes it - partly because of the visit we made to the real ship on our honeymoon 24 years ago.)
Recommended - especially to those who remember the rest of the small-scale Airfix sailing ships. This one is light years removed from the old ones.
An amusing (I hope) P.S. When I was browsing the Airfix website, I came upon a forthcoming release: a "Battle of Waterloo Gift Set." It includes, among other things, nine sets of those nice old 1/76 Airfix figures - including "British Calvary Hussars" and "French Calvary." There was a space on the order form for comments, so I mentioned that I'd spent more than thirty years trying to convince military history students: "The section of an army that rides around on horses is the CAVALRY. CALVARY is the hill where Jesus was crucified." (Other Tilley pet peeves: naval vs. navel, guerilla vs. gorilla, corps vs. corp. vs. core vs. corpse, and seaman vs. - well, never mind.) I also mentioned how much I would like to see the larger Airfix Classic Ships series come back.
When I checked the website last night, the Calvary had become Cavalry. So at least sometimes somebody reads those comments.
Anyway, if you like tiny sailing ships, track down an Airfix Mary Rose.