Trumpeter Mayflower

I'm not familiar with the Trumpeter kit.  I think I recall reading some comments in this Forum to the effect that it's rather simplified and basic, but I can't speak from personal experience with it.  Maybe some other member can.

I am familiar with three other Mayflower kits:  two from Revell (one slightly larger than the other) and one from Airfix.  I would give the Airfix version a B+; it's a basically sound, nicely executed model, with plenty of detail to satisfy the average modeler and a good basis for anybody who wants to enhance it and go a little further.  The two Revell kits, in my opinion, are among the very finest plastic sailing kits ever released.  They're scale models of the replica vessel Mayflower II, which crossed the Atlantic in 1957 and is currently on public exhibition at Plymouth, Massachusetts.  Her designer, William Baker (longtime Professor of Naval Architecture at MIT), was one of the best in the business.  He made one deliberate compromise with historical accuracy, in the name of practicality:  he added about a foot of headroom on all the decks.  Otherwise, to my knowledge, no one has seriously criticized the scholarship that went into the Mayflower II.

Unfortunately both Revell kits have been out of production for a long time.  They do, however, turn up fairly frequently on e-bay.  If you find one, see if you can also lay hands on a copy of Mr. Baker's book, The Mayflower and Other Colonial Vessels.  It contains a nice set of plans drawn especially for modelers, along with lots of photos and other useful information.

That Revell "Spanish galleon" is indeed not a scale model of a vessel from the Armada era - or a scale model of anything else.  It dates from 1970, when Revell (like most other American plastic kit manufacturers) was having serious financial problems.  I was hanging out in a hobby shop at the time, and I vividly remember the ad for it that appeared in one of the trade journals.  It read something like this:  "We've zeroed in on the market with this one:  young married couples and interior decorators."  To my notion the...thing...looks like nothing that ever floated; I question whether any ship a stern built like that would be capable of supporting itself.   The bible on the subject, Dr. Thomas Graham's Remembering Revell Model Kits, says this about it:  "A robust, twenty-five inch long model....Lloyd Jones researched this model at the reference library of MGM movie studio."  'Nuff said.

I built that kit last  year.And I built it more has a merchantman than the orginal Mayflower.The kit goes together quite well.The desks are snug to the hull no big gaps.I have guns run out mainly because they look very nice 10 total.What I didn't like is the stern and the mast.The stern came prepainted from the factory in these bright colors.I took brake fluid and removed thier colors.The mast have these big cut outs where the woolings are to go kind of wierd I should have replace them.I didn't use the kits blocks and deadeyes I replaced with wood.All and all not a bad kit at all. If you would like to see some pictures shoot me and E mail and I'll send them.

Rod

"To my notion the...thing...looks like nothing that ever floated; I question whether any ship a stern built like that would be capable of supporting itself." 

I have seen photos in some of my reference works of paintings of galleons that are represented by this model...stern, number of cannon and mast placement. I don't understand your criticism of this model.

To begin with, there was a typo in my last post.  It was supposed to read "...any stern built like that...."  Sorry.

  As Jray suggested, the old Revell kit bears little if any resemblance to any reliable reconstruction of a vessel of the sixteenth century.  My contention is that the Revell people were trying - half-heartedly - to reconstruct a ship of the Armada period.  But this was a different sort of Revell than the one that had done such a beautiful job with the Golden Hind and the Mayflower a few years earlier.  These people weren't especially interested in creating a scale model; they were trying to get the company through a financial crisis by meeting the typical interior decorator's perception of what a "Spanish galleon" would look like.  The hull lines, the yard proportions (the upper yards are far too long relative to the lower ones), and that overhanging, cantilevered stern all suggest that the people responsible for designing the kit simply had no idea what they were doing.  Dr. Graham says the "research" was done by Lloyd Jones.  He was (and still is) a deeply respected expert in the field of model aircraft, but apparently didn't know much about sailing ships.

I confess it had never occurred to me to convert the thing into a vessel of the next century.  I agree that it looks slightly more representative of the 1600s than of the 1500s.  I'd have to see the pictures in question to comment intelligently, but I can offer some generalized observations.  I think I've seen a few old engravings that just might be reconciled with a profile view of the kit's hull.  Contemporary illustrations of sixteenth- and early-seventeenth-century ships tend (admittedly with some notable exceptions) to distort proportions; most of them are more stylized caricatures than accurate renditions of the real thing.  Artists in that era were still solving the problems of perspective, for instance, and most of them didn't yet understand  it thoroughly.  And most of them (the Van de Veldes being the most famous exceptions) didn't know much about ships.  In my opinion, the Revell kit falls in the same category as most of those old engravings.  It looks sort of like a ship - but that's about all that can be said for it.

I don't offer any of this with the intent of criticizing any modeler who's made a big investment of time in this kit.  Some years ago I did something similar:  I spent a couple of years slaving over the Heller Soleil Royal before I did enough homework to realize that its hull was out of proportion, the deck furnishings on it were ludicrously inaccurate, and the designers, though they'd done a superb job with the "carved" ornamentation, had thoroughly botched up the structure of the bow and stern.  I wish somebody had warned me off that kit before I bought it.  My beef in all this has always been, not with the modelers who build the models, but with the companies that manufacture and sell them.  A purchaser who's prepared to shell out a considerable amount of money for a kit, and spend hundreds of hours working on it, deserves more respect than companies like Heller and Revell, all too frequently, give him.

The bottom line, though, is that nobody knows with absolute certainty just exactly what a Spanish galleon of that period looked like.  If the modeler is satisfied with the result, that's what matters more than anything else.

I'd be interested to see how the Trumpeter and Airfix kits compare in appearance to the Revell one in both appearance and size (of the ship, not the model)
The Revell 1/83 kit (which I have), based on the Mayflower II replica, represents a surprisingly small ship, not much bigger than the Santa Maria for example (as represented by the Revell 1/90 kit at least). It's also unarmed, which seems to me to be fairly likely for the Mayflower's trans-Atlantic voyage (guns, shot and powder would have added a lot of weight and taken up a fair amount of space, and there surely couldn't have been much threat from pirates or other hostile shipping in the North Atlantic area?)

On the subject of Spanish galleons, the Imai kit (also re-issued by Aoshima, Lee and ERTL) is definitely the best kit of a ship of this type in this scale range, and only marginally smaller in scale than the Revell one. However, as I mentioned in a previous post, it's a bit limited in terms of small details and fittings compared to most Revell kits and also has all of the gun ports moulded shut (guns are only supplied for the spar deck).

The extant knowledge of the Mayflower is, of course, extremely scanty.  At the moment I'm reading the most recent book on the subject of the Pilgrims and Plymouth:  Mayflower, by Nathanial Philbrick.  I highly recommend the book; it's both thoroughly researched and extremely well-written - a real page-turner.  The title notwithstanding, Philbrick doesn't actually say much about the ship herself.  (The transatlantic voyage is over by the end of chapter 3.)  But the whole book is a solid, thought-provoking discussion of how Plymouth Colony was founded, and, especially, the evolving relationship between the English settlers and the Native Americans.

It seems to be generally accepted that there are two reliable pieces of information about the Mayflower:  her burthen of 180 tons (meaning her hold would accommodate about 180 casks, or tuns, of wine) and the fact that she had topsails.  (William Bradford's book, Of Plimoth Plantation, describes how, in mid-Atlantic a passenger named John Howland fell overboard and saved himself by grabbing the end of a "topsail halyard," which happened to be dragging in the water.)  Professor Baker took all that into consideration when he designed the Mayflower II.  By the standards of early-seventeenth-century (or late-sixteenth-century; Mr. Baker concluded she was probably pretty old by 1620) merchantmen she was actually on the big side.  Mr. Philbrick suggests that she was about three times as large as the other ship the Pilgrims initially chartered, the Speedwell.

I've only been on board the Mayflower II once, and that was a very long time ago.  I have a fairly clear recollection, though, that one of the costumed guides was standing by a carriage gun on the lower deck.  When I expressed surprise at the sight of it, she explained that the researchers were fairly certain that the real ship had carried some sort of armament.  Mr. Philbrick confirms that the Mayflower carried some guns of some sort - at least on the way over.  In February of 1621, before the ship sailed back to England, the Pilgrims built a fort to defend themselves.  The ship's captain, Christopher Jones, "supervised the transportation of the 'great guns' - close to half a dozen iron cannons that ranged between four and eight feet in length and weighed as much as half a ton."  It's possible that some or all of those guns had been carried as cargo in the hold, but maybe some of them had served as the ship's armament.

If I remember correctly, the Airfix Mayflower kit includes some stubs of gun barrels to be plugged into holes in the hull.  Both Revell kits have gunport lids molded in the closed position on the lower deck.

I haven't seen that Imai/Aoshima/AMT-Ertl Spanish Galleon kit in a long time, but on the basis of what I've seen of it I agree with EPinniger:  it's about as close as can be expected, given the paucity of information, to a scale model of a real Spanish galleon from the Armada era.

For all the replies, Millard, your's was the most informative. Thanks.

I do my own research and am well aware of the limitations of dealing with plastic ship kits.

Jray47, that didn’t sound very polite. I sure hope that wasn’t your intention.

 

I thanked Millard for his reply, which was a direct reply to my question; succinct and to the point.

As for the rest, what is not polite? I made a statement: "I do my own research and am well aware of the limitations of dealing with plastic ship kits."

I appreciate the other contributions, but they did not address my initial inquiry nor did they add anything to what I already know.

If this forum is populated by egos, I will gladly withdraw. If this forum is populated with people who want to share ideas about how to build plastic ship kits, I will remain.

This thread seems suddenly to have acquired a somewhat unpleasant tone, for which I fear I may inadvertently have been responsible - at least partially.  If so, I apologize.  I offered a negative comment on a particular manufactured product - not on the individual who built the model based on it.  In the time I've been taking part in this Forum, I've made it a point not to cast aspersions at modelers.  Manufacturers, on the other hand, I consider fair game. 

I certainly hope Jray will peruse some of the other threads in the "Ships" section of the forum.  I don't know of any other source for interesting, and varied, information on plastic sailing ships.  The number of people taking part in that phase of the hobby is, by comparison to those who build aircraft, armor, or even twentieth-century warships, miniscule.  We don't need to be casting aspersions at each other, intentionally or otherwise.

Sorry I couldn't give any help/advice with my reply. I am also interested to know what the Trumpeter Mayflower kit is like - I've never seen inside the box myself, so have absolutely no idea of the kit's quality or accuracy.

Apologies if I may have "sidetracked" the thread a bit - I just took the opportunity to ask a couple of questions I had myself about the Mayflower, as this is the first thread related to this ship I've seen for a while.

does anyone have a set of plans for the mayflower that I can get a copy of , I found the kit for $40.00 but it didn't have the instruction sheet.. building the kit won't be a problem, but the rigging could get a little tricky...Thanks

is  there anyway I could get a copy of the instruction sheet from you ?