Greetings! Time to share some photos of the finished SMS Emden, 1/1500 scale. The model is completely built from scratch and depicts the ship as she appeared early on during her raiding cruise in the Pacific and Indian Oceans. The hull is made from boxwood, the balance of the detail is brass, and the rigging is a mix of copper and Nitinol wire. The sea base is carved from Nootka Cyprus and painted. As usual no resins or anything there, just paint. The base for the case is made from olive. The scale is 1/1500 or 125’ to the inch.
You can see more of my work in my gallery. www.josephlavender.com
A quick history of you’re unfamiliar with the story:
SMS Emden was the second and final member of the Dresden class of light cruisers built for the Imperial German Navy. Named for the town of Emden, she was laid down at the Kaiserliche Werft in Danzig in 1906. The hull was launched in May 1908, and completed in July 1909. She had one sister ship, Dresden. Emden was armed with ten 10.5 cm (4.1 in) guns and two torpedo tubes.
Emden spent the majority of her career overseas in the German East Asia Squadron, based in Tsingtao, in the Kiautschou Bay concession in China. In 1913, Karl von Müller took command of the ship. At the outbreak of World War I, Emden captured a Russian steamer and converted her into the commerce raider Cormoran. Emden rejoined the East Asia Squadron, then was detached for independent raiding in the Indian Ocean. The cruiser spent nearly two months operating in the region, and captured nearly two dozen ships. On 28 October 1914, Emdenlaunched a surprise attack on Penang; in the resulting Battle of Penang, she sank the Russian cruiser Zhemchug and the French destroyer Mousquet.
Müller then took Emden to raid the Cocos Islands, where he landed a contingent of sailors to destroy British facilities. There, Emden was attacked by the Australian cruiser HMAS Sydney on 9 November 1914. The more powerful Australian ship quickly inflicted serious damage and forced Müller to run his ship aground to avoid sinking. Out of a crew of 376, 133 were killed in the battle. Most of the survivors were taken prisoner; the landing party, led by Hellmuth von Mücke, commandeered an old schooner and eventually returned to Germany. Emden's wreck was quickly destroyed by wave action, and was broken up for scrap in the 1950s.
