Question to Kapudan Emir re. Gorch Fock-Seeadler conversion

I hope I may be forgiven for poking my nose in hear.  I'd like to see some pictures of Kapudan's conversion too.  On the basis of what he's posted before, it's clear that he knows what he's doing.

I can offer a little information about the Revell kits - with the help of Dr. Graham's fine book, Remembering Revell Model Kits.  The Eagle/Seeadler/Gorch Fock story is interesting and a little complicated.

Back in 1958 Revell issued a 1/254-scale model of the U.S.C.G.C. Eagle.  It was the fifth sailing ship kit the company produced (following the Constitution, Bounty, Santa Maria, and Flying Cloud).  The odd scale was, of course, one of the notorious "fit the box" scales.  (The first in the line, the Constitution, was on a standard scale:  1/192, or 1/16" = 1'.  It looks to me like Revell designed the box to fit that kit - and thereby committed itself to a standard box size for the smaller sailing ship kits it released during the next fifteen years or so.)  It was, by 1958 standards, a nice kit, with some remarkably fine detail.  Unfortunately it was (at least I'm fairly certain of this; I haven't actually measured the kit) based on the widely-distributed plans by Harold Underhill. 

Underhill was a fine draftsman and knew what he was doing.  Those plans originally appeared in his book, Sail Training and Cadet Ships, as representing the whole class of training barques that were built by the German navy in the 1930s.  The text of Underhill's book clearly says that all of those ships were, in fact, different in length, and explains equally clearly that the plans are those of the Gorch Fock.  The Horst Wessel, which became the Eagle, was about twenty feet longer.  Underhill knew that, and the U.S. Coast Guard knew it.  Unfortunately, though, the plans got reproduced and sold through various outlets with the name Eagle on them.  Virtually every Eagle kit has been based on them, and therefore is about twenty scale feet too short.  (The one exception, as we established in a very interesting exchange in the Forum a few months back, is the no-longer-available 1/200 kit from Imai.  That one is based on modern Coast Guard plans, and got the proportions just right.)  On 1/254 scale, twenty feet works out to be about 15/16".  It looks to me like the discrepancy is on the maindeck, between the aft end of the forecastle superstructure and the break of the quarterdeck.  There should be considerably more open space there than the kit indicates.

So the original Revell kit represented a squished version of the Eagle as she looked in the late 1950s (quite a bit different than she looked when she was built - and a whole lot different than she looks now).  I may be mistaken on this next point (maybe somebody who has the old kit can correct me), but I think the Eagle at that time had a pair of small saluting guns mounted on her forecastle deck, and these were included in the kit.

In 1960 the Revell Seeadler appeared.  I'm basing the following on my highly-defective memory; be warned.  I think the changes from the old Eagle were as follows:  1.  The colors of the plastic were changed.  (The Eagle had a white hull; the Seeadler's was grey.)  2.  The mizzenmast was changed and a new set of yards for it was added, to change the rig from barque to full-rigged ship.  3.  The big Coast Guard motor launches, with their fancy canopies, were replaced by open boats. 

The big gap in my memory concerns whether the Seeadler had an engine or not.  If not, the Eagle's propeller and the exhaust stack for the diesel engine must have been deleted - and the hull halves must have been modified to eliminate the provisions for the screw.  I think I remember the Seeadler kit that way, but I'm not sure.

I think (I'm not sure) the only guns in the Seeadler kit were the old Eagle saluting guns, but I may be mistaken about that too.  In any case, the biggest difference between the kits was the change from barque to ship rig.

I think the Gorch Fock in the current Revell Germany catalog is a reissue of the old Eagle.  (I'm not sure about that.  I've seen some photos of it, which certainly give that impression.)  If so, EPinniger is right:  it represents the original, pre-WWII Gorch Fock fairly accurately (more accurately than it represented the Eagle).  Whether the old Gorch Fock ever had canopied boats like those I have no idea; since she was being operated by the Russians in the 1950s, I rather doubt it.  I also don't know whether Revell bothered to to anything about the figurehead.  (The Eagle's figurehead is a - well, never mind.  I think the Gorch Fock's was an albatross.  On 1/254 scale there wouldn't be a lot of difference.)

I haven't seen any of these kits for years; maybe some Forum member has at least one of them in hand and can correct me.  Now, Kapudan - how about some pictures?

I just can post this picture, seen in the 1972-1973 Revell catalogue :

Michel

The picture in Michel's post points out something I missed previously.  The ship in the painting has double topgallants; the Eagle has single ones.  So if the Seeadler kit matched the picture, Revell added one yard each to the fore and main masts.

Whether the real Seeadler had double or single topgallants I don't know.  (In a Forum discussion some months back we found a few pictures of her on the web; I seem to recall that they weren't consistent on that point.  But I'm not sure.)  The picture also seems to have no spanker boom.  It seems highly unlikely that the real ship didn't have one.  The spanker gaff also seems to be mounted improbably high on the mizzen mast.

Does anybody out there actually have a Revell Seeadler?  Or, for that matter, an original, U.S. Revell Eagle - as opposed to the Gorch Fock reissue?

Salute you gentlemen,

Thank you for showing your interest to my work. But I can not help you for Seeadler I'm afraid because I've built the Gorch Fock as the Kriegsmarine training barque Gorch Fock and I still did not installed the rigging yet (masts are lightly glued to be displaced later, the ship now waits in dad's buffet for the summer holiday) I obtained the original Seeadler's plans (a.k.a Pass of Balmaha) via our modeler's association. It's hull shape is very very different from Gorch Fock (more slender hull and almost rectangular bottom, open forecastle, totally different superstructures) You may try to do a conversion but I'm sure scratchbuilding shall be much much easier and better.

The Seeadler had double t'gallants as shown in Lowell Thomas' "Count Luckner, The Sea Devil". There is a painting and photograph (retouched, unfortunately)

From the same source, the Germans added two 500 HP engines. No details of number of props, etc.

I have the Seeadler kit. Two small guns on the foc'sl is all. Lots of rivets were added to the hull. The deck was made to look more nautical with haphazard coils of rope on the deck.

I'm pretty sure the rivets on the hull are carried over from the original Eagle kit.  They are, of course, oversized - but oversized rivets were taken for granted in those days.  (Take a look at the typical airplane kit of the period.)  The coils of rope also were on the Eagle kit.  (Somebody among the Revell designers apparently thought they were a good idea.  The Flying Cloud, Victory, and Santa Maria had them too.  Lots of modelers find those rope coils hokey, but in a sense they demonstrate what genuine artisans worked for Revell in those days.  Little coils of rope couldn't possibly have made the kits sell significantly better.  The designers clearly were trying their best to make the parts as accurate and characterful as possible.  Bless 'em.)

I wish I could remember whether those guns on the forecastle were in the Eagle kit.  It may be that the holes in the deck, and gaps in the railings, were originally for navigation lights.  But I think I remember the guns in both kits.

Schoonerbumm - does the Seeadler kit have a propeller, and a cutout in the sternpost for it?  If so, that's also a holdover from the Eagle kit.  (If the Seeadler had two engines, she probably - though not absolutely necessarily - had twin screws.)  In raking through my senile memory I seem to recall that Revell did remove the eagle figurehead when the Eagle hull became the Seeadler's.  (I think the Seeadler kit had a fairly simple billet had, with rather elaborate scrollwork on the trailboards.)  Apparently Revell cut a new mold for the Seeadler hull, using the one for the Eagle as its basis.  According to Dr. Graham's book, the Eagle got reissued several times after the Seeadler appeared.

EDIT:  In Eppininger's post a couple of steps down the thread from this one, he kindly links us to a couple of photos of the Revell Seeadler.  The photos establish that the kit did retain the Eagle's screw arrangement.  (At least I think I can see the shaft gland - barely - in the first photo.)  And the designers did change the figurehead; it seems to be a female figure, at least vaguely resembling real figurehead (an illustration of which Kapudan kindly shows us  in his next post).  But the diesel exhaust is gone.  The second photo clearly shows the new, un-canopied boats, and the new rig, with double topgallants on both masts, is clear.  I have my doubts about the height of the gaff on the mizzen mast.  Some latter-day German merchant sailing ships did set spankers that were quite tall by the standards of other nationalities - and some set triangular spankers, using the gaff just to provide for signal halyards.  But to my eye the gaff on that model just doesn't look right.

The bottom line seems to be that the Seeadler kit is a marketing hoax on almost, if not quite, the same exaltedly low level as the Revell "H.M.S. Beagle."    That probably means it's high on the list of old Revell sailing ships waiting to be reissued in the near future.  Oh, well....

I looked in my Time-life seafarers series book, and found the following written by Oliver E. Allen

The original name of the Windjammer was Pass of Balmaha, until siezed by the German Imperial Navy (GIN) Was rigged a 3 mast full rigger, in the Bremerhaven shipyard she was converted with 2 - 4.2" cannons in her bow, Her keel was rebuilt to hold a 1,000 hp diesel engine.

Jake

jtilley wrote:

(I think the Seeadler kit had a fairly simple billet had, with rather elaborate scrollwork on the trailboards.)

In fact, Seeadler had a very nice bust figurehead of a woman, professor. It's in an austrailian museum now (if I remember correctly). I have found a photo of it in the smmlonline. here I attach it.

http://smmlonline.com/reference/misc_ship/seeadlersfigurehead01.jpg

Kapudan - Very interesting indeed!  I can't remember what the figurehead on the Revell "Seeadler" looked like - but I don't think it looked much like that!

I just took a look at the photo of the box art in Dr. Graham's book.  It's a different painting from the one Michel posted.  The one in the book is by John Steel, a fine marine artist (though he was more at home with modern steam-powered warships than with sailing vessels).  Steel's painting shows a spanker boom and a considerably longer gaff - though the height of the gaff looks improbable.

Jwintjes - I have to agree, with one small caveat.  I think the original confusion of the Eagle and Gorch Fock plans probably was an honest mistake.  The Underhill plans were being marketed with the name Eagle on them, and Revell wasn't alone in failing to notice the error in length.  But re-releasing the thing with the name Seeadler on it was indeed a merchandising stunt on the same level as the Bounty/Beagle hoax. 

My recollection (highly unreliable as usual) is that the first issue of the Seeadler kit included, on its instruction sheet, a letter to "the youth of America" from Count von Luckner himself (who must have been quite an old man at the time).  I wouldn't mind having a copy of that document.  I remember one phrase, which read something like "the Seeadler never robbed a wife of her husband or a mother of her child."  (Literally true.  He was absolutely punctilious about the treatment of the crews and passengers of his prizes.)  I wonder if, when the Count agreed to write that promotional piece, he had any idea of what Revell was going to put in the box with it.

Perhaps the saddest aspect of all this is that Revell's stunt has diverted so much attention from the real ship.  I can't recall ever having seen a genuine scale model of the Seeadler.  She was an interesting, historically significant vessel, and a good model of her would be a thing of great beauty.  But the chances of our ever seeing a scale model of her in the form of a plastic kit are, I'm afraid, just about zero.

Hmmm, we talk here about the Revell Gorch Fock model, but, weren't there three "Gorch Fock" models sold by Revell?

- The 1/150 scale (ex-Heller)

- the 1/232 scale

- the 1/350 scale (not identified).

Michel

I believe Michel has it right.  The 1/150 reboxing of the Heller kit is a very nice representation of the 1950s Gorch Fock (sometimes referred to informally as the Gorch Fock II).  The 1/232 kit, of course, is a reissue (maybe with some minor changes; I haven't seen the box contents) of the dear old Revell Eagle.  I'm 99 percent certain that the 1/350 kit is a reissue of the Imai kit, which was released originally in about 1976.  (Imai did a large series of sail training ships on that scale at that time, in conjunction with the much-hyped "Parade of the Tall Ships" that was part of the U.S. Bicentennial celebration.  Gawd I hate that term "tall ship.")  Several of them have turned up under other companies' labels recently.  The originals were waterline models, but some of the reissues (e.g., the Academy Eagle) have had parts for the underwater hulls added; I don't know whether the current Revell kit is one of those or not.  In any case, I'm fairly certain it uses the same hull - and probably most of the other components - of the Imai 1/350 Eagle and Sagres, which were released at the same time.  If so, it's probably a fairly accurate representation of the original Gorch Fock (the 1930s near-sister of the Horst Wessel, which later became the Eagle).

My memory, as usual, is unreliable about all this, but it seems to me that the large line of Imai 1/350 sail training ships may have included both the 1930s and 1950s Gorch Focks.  If so, I have no idea how much the kits differed - if at all.  My understanding is that the two are just about the same size, and look quite similar from a distance - though I'm sure they're quite different in many important respects.

jtilley wrote:

I wish I could remember whether those guns on the forecastle were in the Eagle kit.  It may be that the holes in the deck, and gaps in the railings, were originally for navigation lights.  But I think I remember the guns in both kits.

Interesting.  Well, at least that time I had my own doubts about the ol' memory.  It's getting less reliable by the day.

It seems to me that those guns on the "Seeadler"'s forecastle replaced a couple of parts in the original kit - either running lights or some other deck fitting.  I may be wrong about that too, though.  Maybe Revell actually modified the forecastle deck to accommodate the guns.

A study of the Eagle's armament would be interesting.  In her original German guise she was fitted with a few light anti-aircraft guns - at least one of which, if memory serves, actually got fired in anger once or twice against Allied aircraft.  I imagine those weapons were removed before her first trip to the U.S.  Somehow it sticks in my mind (beware!) that she was fitted for a while in CG service with some sort of light guns, for either firing salutes or gunnery training (or both).  But that may be completely mistaken.