This is a small "semi-scratchbuilt" model of the 1860 ironclad warship
HMS
Warrior (now preserved at Portsmouth Dockyard), which I've
built over the last week.
For those not familiar with this ship, it was the first ironclad
armoured warship of the Royal Navy (maybe not strictly ironclad, as it
was actually built of iron) and when built in 1860 was the most
powerful warship of its time. It had a broadside armament of both 64pdr
muzzle-loaders and Armstrong breech-loading rifled guns, as well as two
large (110pdr I think) Armstrongs and 4-6 smaller ones on the spar
deck. The ship was propelled by a single two-bladed screw, which could
be lifted out of the water (to reduce drag) when the ship was under
sail.
A while ago I bought a lot of old built ship models on eBay (mainly for
a source of spare parts), which included a number of the Airfix
"Historical Ships" range of small scale (most 1/400-1/600) sailing
ships. Among them was the paddle steamer
Great Western. I've
already built this kit, so wasn't sure what to do with it.
However the other day I noticed that, with the paddles removed, the
hull is a reasonably close match for HMS
Warrior. (Whether the
real Great Western's hull looked anything like the Warrior's I don't
know, but the small Airfix kit's hull does, though it is significantly
wider). It even has massively overscale square "portholes" in the side
at about the same height as the Warrior's gun ports, and a stern
gallery much like the Warrior's false gallery in appearance and
location.
I decided to try and "kitbash" a small model of the
Warrior as a
trial run for the much larger model I intend to build eventually.
Rather than trying to salvage the existing deck, I traced around it
onto textured styrene card and cut a new one. The planking is still
very overscale, but not as much!
The rudder was sawn off and a new rudder + propeller assembly
scratchbuilt. The prop is a 1/600 4-bladed example with two of the
blades cut off.
Deck detailing and armament is scratchbuilt from styrene stock, other
than the funnels (which are actually propeller locating pins left over
from a 1/48 aircraft kit, cut down and drilled out), the boats (1/600
items from the spares box) and the anchors, which are modified ones
from the Great Western kit.
Masts and yards are scratchbuilt from styrene rod (the ones in the GW
kit are overscale) . The spars aren't tapered, but look OK to me
considering how tiny they are.
Finally, I added some minimal "representative" shrouds (I tried to add
rigging but found it looked overscale and unconvincing) and a flag.
The scale is around 1/700, the model measures about 16-17cm long.
Here are 3 photos of the completed model. It's not as detailed as it
could be and the hull shape is inaccurate (too wide + too blunt at both
the bow and stern) but considering its tiny size it captures the
appearance of the real ship fairly well. If nothing else it was an
interesting scratchbuilding exercise!
I intend to build a much larger model of this ship (probably 1/150 or
1/200) in future. (As the real ship is 128m long, a 1/150 model would
be about 3', the same size as the big Revell sailing ships) How exactly
I'm not sure! Possibly I'll have to carve the basic hull shape from
balsa or another wood.