Ships From Literature

GMorrison

The Winds books and The Caine Mutiny were written by Herman Wouk.

U.S.S. Caine.

Thousands. I think Song of Fire and Ice series has several dozens.

Pequod from Moby Richard.

The Ark.

HMS Compass Rose.

      I’m glad I wasn’t  drinking coffee when I read your Moby Richard line. Lol.      

    

 

It's been a long time since I read that London story and I don't much remember the ship, but scanning images of the movies made based on it, esp. the old ones that were somewhat contemporary, the Model Shipways kit Elsie comes to mind.

It would make a fine library display model.

Hi Ernesbitt;

       Gotta tell you. I haven't seen a good ORCA yet. There are some ( Not Kits) that are overpriced knockoffs of knockoffs! She looked like a blend of three types I can think of. Most likely a Grand Banks derivative!

Hello, 

The book by London was titled The Sea Wolf and the seal hunting schooner was called Ghost. My goal is to find a model of the ship and display it in my library. 

Another model I'd love to find, (but can't find one that pleases me, yet) is the ORCA from the book/movie JAWS. 

GMorrison

if we find where Deliah was involved and the date, it could probably be determined what the possible classes were.

Well, the time frame i nthe book is decidedly vague.   As in sometime between 1915 and 1935 in the Pacific.  Sort of.

The ship is descrbed as having both one and two funnels, and is coal fired, not oil.  She probably ought to be a flush deck ship, as the description does not match any of the turtleback earlier versions.  Mostly.

Dave Poyer at least gives reasonably good details:
The Ships of Daniel V. Lenson, U.S.N.
The Circle:  DD 768 U.S.S. Reynolds Ryan (Gearing Class)
(Soviet Kilo class, carrier JFK?)

The Med:    LPH 8 U.S.S. Guam
(Barnstable Co.; DD698 U.S.S. Ault; LPD-12 USS Spiegel Grove; USS Bowen (knox class); LSD-nnn; LVT-8)

Passage    DDG-998 U.S.S. Barret
SSN-? USS Threadfin; Lexington; Dahlgen; Bronstein; Baird; Canisteo; Voge; Soviet ? Class; Tomahawk    AGM & MGM ???
USS Merril; BB-62 USS New Jersey

The Gulf    FFG-91 U.S.S Turner van Zandt
FF-1099 U.S.S. Louis Strong; MSO-433 U.S.S. Audacity; USS Gallery (Chas Adams class)

China Sea    (Knox class) FF -nnn USS Gaddis IRP Tughril Q-Ship
MV Marcus Goodrich; CG 56 U.S.S. San Juan

Black Storm    L?? USS Tripoli; RH-60; PAVE Low; RECON team

The Command    DDG-nnn USS Thomas Horn
RHIB; SH-60? LAMPS IV; Dhow

The Threat    VH-3D Marine One; AF1; E-2C; 90s Ford Escort; U.S.S. Gallery (ohp class)

Korea Strait    FF-953 ROKN Chung Nan
USS McCain; USS Cushing; USS Vandegriff; SSN-nnn USS Salt Lake City; SSN- USS San Francisco; ROKN Dae Jon (nee DD-818 USS New); PG-  ROKN Kim Chon; PG- ROKN Mak Po; SS-209 ROKN Chang Bo Go; Soviet Juliett-class; USS Torrens; USS Darius

The Weapon   (incomplete)

The Crisis     (incomplete)

I need to get back to readign the cycle again, obviously.

Hi Surfaceline!

    Listen , You just hit on the crux of the H.M.S.Surprise! She did exist at times different from the books and I believe Mr O'Brian blended some details there. I wouldn't be " Surprised " LOL.

Hey Don;

    How many folks know that the vessel's name was " North River ", and not the " Clermont" ?  History was somewhat vague about that for many years.

Scott R.C.; 

    Hello. Listen, I think you could use a U.S.S.Montrose/Randall for that. The Give-away is the hull. To cruise at the speeds talked about she would have to have a fine, though I am sure, modified forefoot. ( The part from the waterline to the distance about 20 foot aft of the stem)

    The stern would be modified below the waterline as well. Not so anyone could discern the changes though. I would imagine the insides tell a lot. There would be more than enough room to pull it off though.

    Now that said ,I feel quite uncomfortable in saying the bridge and wheelhouse area would be interior wise, just as she was in postwar fit. With a monstrous cleaning and redressing once in a while.

      The upper cabins could fall prey to the same special effects as well. Getting to the engines. Now the inlets and outlets would be flush to the hull, Probably behind a very effiecient gridding system( to keep fishes and stuff outta there.)

 The system has been developed for Water-jet propulsion. He takes it to the next logical engineering level with the Magneto-Hydrodyne system though. (A  Rail-Gun for water.) Hasn't been studied well, but is in the realm of future developement. One point well made, and a sound one is the terrific amount of heat generated. Some short What if testing has been done. In a 12 foot mockup they generated enough heat in two five minute firings to generate over the amount steam that is required for the Union - Pacific " Big -Boy" " Wasatch Class engine.

     The trick is stabilized cooling of some type. Ain't happened yet! You can bet if it ever happens Cruise lines will fight over it!

I have several books on steamboat history (like Steamboats Come True) that mention the North River of Clermont.  About a year ago I was visiting a friend who had recently bought the Lindberg Clermont, and was able to find the kit and bought it.  Finished it this past spring.

Tanker - Builder

Hi, Surface_Line;

      I gotta tell you this. I contacted Mr Cussler through the publisher. Got permission to do a N.U.M.A. vessel.( It's a real Business, By the way) I am using a converted Lindbergh Minesweeper to represent one of the N.U.M.A. Vessels. Send Him a picture of your completed project. He will enjoy it !

 

I have been wondering what the Oregon would actually look like and do a model, the ship of Cussler's hero Juan Cabrillo, that is part tramp steamer part futuristic spy supership.  This could be a fun project.  

Rick

I remember those greased  wire ropes above the deck well. The resulting grease marks on your pants legs were known as "gator hash marks".

TB,
Yes, there were real frigates named surprise.  But they were before and after the era of the ship in O'Brian's books, and they didn't match the descriptions that he used.  HMS Surprise in the books was an entirely fictional critter.

G,
Yes, I was using metal wargaming 1/1200 sailing ships.  In the USA we had the handful of lovely GHQ miniatures with clunky ones from Valiant, and the UK produced fairly clunky Trident/Navwar minuatures, and many, many nice Langton Miniatures from rodlangton.com.  The world has sure shrunk since the internet.

Some books I liked - 

Six Frigates - The epic History of the founding of the U S Navy, by Ian W. Toll,

WWII - LST 529, as seen by Lt Commander Gordon L. Moore, Captain, 1942-1945

The boat that won the war - an illustrated history of the Higgins LCVP, Charles C. Roberts.

EJ

Actually:

 I do believe the Surprise TYPE did exist. They were a smaller French derived Frigate of which the Frigate U.S.S.Constitution towered over.

Surface_Line

Also, TB,
When I was building 1/1200 sailing ships my subjects were all from the pens of Forester, Kent, O'Brian, Pope, Woodman and Lambdin. 
I always figured that HMS Lydia, HMS Surprise, HMS Trident or the rest didn't exist in real life, so there is no "exactly right".  The pictures that the writers drew in my imagination were right, whatever they were.

 

Where  did you find the kit, or was it scratchbuilt?  I have only built one sailing ship in that scale- found it in a wargaming store I went to with a buddy. I'd build more if I knew where to get kits.  That kit was a metal one.

Also, TB,
When I was building 1/1200 sailing ships my subjects were all from the pens of Forester, Kent, O'Brian, Pope, Woodman and Lambdin. 
I always figured that HMS Lydia, HMS Surprise, HMS Trident or the rest didn't exist in real life, so there is no "exactly right".  The pictures that the writers drew in my imagination were right, whatever they were.

TB - thanks for the word about Mr Cussler.

As for "Away All Boats" - I agree that the Battling Belinda is a great model to build, starting from the Revell Randall/ Montrose, or the Renwal Sarasota, if you still have one squirreled away.  Not much to change, other than putting a sailboat with red sails on top of hatch #3.
For another note about that class, the father of our friend, the late John Tilley, served on a member of that class.  Any time the topic of an APA came up, Prof Tilley would chime in with a new story about his dad.  When I build Navarro for an old crewman, I remembered the story abut the rigging for the boat davits being a trip hazard and leaving a line of grease above the cuff of one's trousers.  I made a point to include that rigging on my model.

Rick

CapnMac82

 

There's the ship from Away All Boats to consider.  There is the USN destoyer n Deliah, whch would be a puzzle to work out which class she is meant to be .

Dodson served on APA-50 USS Pierce, an Ormsby class transport. That ship saw action from late 1943 at Makin all the way through the end of conflict, struck in 1946.

The movie used APA-193 USS Sanborn, which was in combat from December 1944 at Iwo Jima on through the duration. She was Haskell class. That class was based on the VC-2 Victory ship design; Revell has kitted this kit forever. Many have reversed the kit to the original, or post war, Victory ships. One exists at Richmond, CA. The Red Oak Victory.

Pierce was a C-2 class freighter conversion. Kits of C-2's are pretty non existant.

I had started a list, long ago, of all the ships of the fictional characher Danel V. Lenson, USN, as penned by Capt David Poyer, USN (ret).  made for an interesting list, too, as, if we follow the vwhicles  nthe books, we need a Ford LTD sedan , a Tomahawk TLAM, and a 10 speed bicycle

It's a reasonably impressive list.

There's the ship from Away All Boats to consider.  There is the USN destoyer n Deliah, whch would be a puzzle to work out which class she is meant to be .

martn Caiden's books feature a number of vessels that would be spiffy to model up.

Hi, Surface_Line;

      I gotta tell you this. I contacted Mr Cussler through the publisher. Got permission to do a N.U.M.A. vessel.( It's a real Business, By the way) I am using a converted Lindbergh Minesweeper to represent one of the N.U.M.A. Vessels. Send Him a picture of your completed project. He will enjoy it !

Ambrose.

 I just started the Bolitho series from the Library. Kent did a good job.

Yes, and those three have all selected to be interred elsewhere (though that is subject to change). So, Lauren Bruner will probably be the last interred aboard ARIZONA.

Oh, and yes, I do know the author personally. Nice guy, real modest.

Know the author?

In that vein, the last survivor of the sinking of BB-39 who has chosen to be buried there was, today. I think only three others are still with us.

You want to read a good book, try IN REPOSE, by Brian O'Connor. It's a non fiction piece about a U.S. Navy diver, working on the wreck of the USS ARIZONA in Pearl Harbor with the National Park Service. Comfortable read with lots of info about the ship and her demise, without being overly technical. Even has a glossary in the back for the non-nautical types. Check it out at http://www.bootinanniepublishing.com 

With hats off to our departed friend, Dr. Tilley was a great fan of the Glencannon series of books.

That ship was the Inchcliffe Castle, the Chief Engineer was Mr. Glencannon.

Run Silent, Run Deep, by Capt Edward L. Beach Jr

USS Walrus, Japanese destroyer Akikaze

Harm's Way, by James E. Bassett Jr

USS Salt Lake City (CA-25)

At Dawn We Slept: The Untold Story Of Pearl Harbor (ToraT Tora! Tora!) by Gordon Prange

Japanese Fleet, US Fleet

sharkbait

https://youtu.be/Y1OA10AHQ_w

 

Hi,

Looking at a couple stills from the video that you posted the ship looks close enought to the old Lindberg Q Ship, that you may be able to use that model as a base for building this tramp steamer, if you wanted. 

The American whaler ESSEX

The American whaler ESSEX, was launched at Nantucket, Massachusetts in 1799. While on a whaling voyage in the South Pacific. she was rammed and sunk by a sperm whale on November 20, 1820. Twenty members of her crew made for South America in whale boats over a thousand miles. Suffering dehydration, starvation and exposure, they were forced to eat those who had died. Only eight survived the ordeal. This story became the basis of Herman Melville's novel, Moby ***

Happy modeling    

Funny you should mention ships from (not Great American Classic) literature.
I'm working now on a NUMA ship from Clive Cussler's novels.  May even add my first-ever 1/700 figure, seeing as how Dirk Pitt must be aboard.  I don't know which ship it will be yet, but it will have a helo deck and a few submersibles on the after deck by some big cranes.  The superstructure will probably have square windows instead of portholes.  And it will certainly be turquoise.

Also, I became interested in wartime tug operations many years ago while reading Jan de Hartog's "The Captain", about Dutch tugs in service on the English Channel.  I don't remember the names of the tugs; will have to read it again, I guess.

And with G's mention above of Farley Mowat's "Grey Seas Under", I am reminded of another of his books - "The Serpent's Coil", seeing Foundation Josephine and Foundation Lilian as the tugs in the rescue/salvage of a worn out Liberty Ship named Leicester.