- Member since
November 2005
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Posted by Anonymous
on Monday, September 26, 2005 9:22 PM
QUOTE: Originally posted by Celestino
Originally posted by michel.vrtg
Celestino wrote :
"Both are stamped "A.A.M.M." "
A.A.M.M. is the well known "Association des Amis du Musée de la Marine", this is an old French naval modeling association, they edit plans, the base for the two models must be the plans of "Vaisseau percé pour 80 canons". Plans are available here :
http://www.amis-musee-marine.net/pages/Monographies2.htm
Michel
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I believe I have these plansets. I purchased a tattered set off Ebay some years ago. I will confirm against Heller's hull.
I do have these plans. They indicate Phenix and the stern decorations are as with Hellers' kit. There are some B&W photographs included of the museum's model. I will scan and post tomorrow. Well at least the Phenix may be legitimate. There is text in French regarding the history of the vessel.
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- Member since
June 2004
- From: Camas, WA
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Posted by jamnett
on Monday, September 26, 2005 10:27 PM
Last night I was looking at the nautical kits (plastic) inventory at Gasoline Alley Antiques and saw H.M.S. Prince listed. However, it isn't in the Airfix section, it was under MPC and the scale is shown as 1:126 or thereabouts, sixties vintage, about 18" long, and about 350 pieces.
Could this be from Airfix molds? I didn't know MPC did any sailing ship kits, but then I'm not really familiar with the company. Anyway, it says "mint parts" with minor box stains and a tear for $45. I was considering taking a drive up to Seattle, to Gasoline Alley and look at this kit and other sailing ship kits, but then I remembered local gas is about $2.80 a gallon and I drive an old Pontiac Bonneville/oil company's best friend. Does anybody know anything about this kit?
Ron
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- Member since
August 2005
- From: Seattle, WA
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Posted by Surface_Line
on Tuesday, September 27, 2005 12:03 AM
In order, 1) yes and 2) don't.
MPC boxed Airfix kits in the USA, so it would be the same kit that jtilley tells us is good stuff. (I never looked in it because it was pre-Napoleonic, but that doesn't make it bad)
Gasoline Alley doesn't necessarily have their internet stock available for display at their store in Wedgewood. They have a warehouse somewhere else. So if you really want to look at something, I think they recommend you call a few days prior so they can get the kit to the storefront.
Good luck,
Rick
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- Member since
May 2003
- From: Greenville, NC
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Posted by jtilley
on Tuesday, September 27, 2005 12:10 AM
Be careful. If it's indeed MPC it's probably the Airfix kit. If it is in fact UPC - beware. That kit is one of the more amusing hoaxes ever perpetrated on the modeling public.
By remarkable coincidence I remember the UPC H.M.S. Prince. It has nothing to do with the Airfix kit; the UPC one came years earlier.
I found it in the late, much lamented Core's Hobby Shop in Washington, D.C., on a family vacation trip when I was in high school. (That must have been about 1966.) I'd only been interested in ship models for a few years, and when I saw this kit I got rather excited. When I got it back to the hotel and unwrapped the box, though, I was astonished. Except for the hull halves, the parts - including the decks and spars - were virtually identical to those of the Revell H.M.S. Victory.
My initial conclusion was that the kit was defective, so I took it back to the hobby shop. The clerk got another one off the shelf, inspected it, and concluded that the contents were what they were supposed to be. UPC was selling its own Victory at the time; apparently that kit had been pirated from the Revell one, and most of the parts had been recycled to create something that looked sort of like the Prince.
The hull halves looked sort of like a seventeenth-century ship-of-the-line, but that's about the best that could be said for the kit. Those hull halves did have a feature that may have been unique in the plastic kit industry. The model was based (verrrrry generally) on the famous contemporary model of the Prince that's now in the Science Museum, in London. That model, like most "Navy Board" style models of the period, is unplanked below the wales; the framing, in the usual, stylized Navy Board manner, is exposed. The UPC kit represented that exposed framing (sort of) in the form of vertical, indented stripes on the lower part of the hull. Apparently the modeler was supposed to paint the indentations black, so the finished product would look vaguely like a Navy Board model.
After getting the second kit back to the hotel room I took a more careful look at the box top, and got one of the better laughs I've ever had in ship modeling. The box art apparently was painted by a Japanese artist who (a) was working from a photo of that Science Museum model, and (b) knew nothing about English ships. He was a highly-skilled artist; he spent a great deal of time and effort on the rigging and other details. The painting depicted the Prince in all her seventeenth-century glory, sitting at anchor in a harbor surrounded by other warships, with her flags and pennants flying gloriously - and those unplanked frames sticking prominently out of the water, with the blue sky visible between them.
Shortly after I got home at the end of the vacation trip I quietly threw the kit in the trash. I wonder if anybody ever actually built this...thing. I can't recall ever seeing a picture of a finished version.
The Airfix kit is an entirely different kettle of fish. It's a good, accurate representation of the real ship. My only complaint about it concerns the guns, which are rendered in the standard Airfix manner: the gunports are represented as recessed squares, and the "guns" are "dummy" stubs that plug into holes. If I were building the kit I'd either (a) cut out the ports and put guns from the spares box behind them, or (b) glue the portlids closed. Otherwise it's a fine kit.
Sorry for the ramble down Memory Lane. Us Olde Phogey modelers tend to do things like that.
Youth, talent, hard work, and enthusiasm are no match for old age and treachery.
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- Member since
November 2005
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Posted by Anonymous
on Tuesday, September 27, 2005 1:24 PM
I have scanned number of files of the AAMM Phenix and am working on posting them. I will need a bit of time to properly do this. Appears the images are oversized. Well at least I am currently using the correct format, previous in PDF.
Have:
Two sheets of photos of the Musee's model
Sheer line
Bow drawing
Stern drawing
Quarter deck cutaway drawing
Well, unable to post. I can email anyone the above mentioned jpegs if interested. A Sirene did exist with lines approximating the Heller kit. Unless the AAMM information is spurious.
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- Member since
November 2005
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Posted by Anonymous
on Friday, September 30, 2005 5:43 PM
![Wink [;)]](/FSM/CS/emoticons/icon_smile_wink.gif) Celestino, could you please show me or send me a picture of the hulls with the AAMM stamp?
Thank you.
Michel
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- Member since
November 2005
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Posted by Anonymous
on Monday, October 3, 2005 2:04 PM
Michael,
I just emailed you three photos of the Phenix and Sirene with the AAMM stamping. Phenix is white hull and Sirene is black hull. The white hull is indistinct. I tried to highlight it in red, but the image is still blurry.
I sent another email with ten images. Has the Sirene, Phenix and Royal Louis hulls held from different angles.
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- Member since
November 2005
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Posted by Anonymous
on Monday, October 3, 2005 6:40 PM
Thank you Celestino, I've got them.
I ask J.C.Carbonel the same questions. J.C.Carbonel is a specialist about Heller models, he wrote a book about Heller.
Michel
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- Member since
November 2005
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Posted by Anonymous
on Sunday, October 9, 2005 10:26 AM
Hello Michael,
How is your debate at MMA proceeding? Can you make out the AAMM stamping on the black hull? I will have an improved digital camera in a week or so and will send some more detailed photos of both hulls. I also have the scanned images from the AAMM plans indicated above. I can send those as well.
Regards,
CC
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- Member since
January 2006
- From: istanbul/Turkey
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Greetings ! This kit is an interesting one that I'd like to comment on a little. The "authentic" kit is what the association of the friends of french naval museum and Heller both named "le Phénix". La Sirene is a pure and hideously kitsch, ugly fantasy created on the hull of Phénix by Heller. The genesis of Phénix is found on an extremely important piece of nautical literature: the Album of Colbert. Monsieur Colbert, that undefeatigable servant of sun king Louis XIV, commissioned a treatise on shipwrightry between 1667-69. Illustrated with breathtakingly precise and detailed engravings, the album of colbert is also one of the first products of scientific revolution; for its purpose was believed to be the education of state sponsored shipwrights. It is recently reprinted by ancre publications (http://www.ancre.fr/) In the album of colbert there is a series of engravings describing how a big warship was constructed. These engravings gave birth to that le Phénix model. This name though, is fictitious, on the album there is no name but "vaisseau percé pour 86 canons". Late Björn Landström in his classical work "The Ship", calculated that this 86 gunner should be on the same dimensions with HMS Prince of same timespan. The big difference is the draught (19,5 feet compared to 22,5 feet of HMS Prince) and Landström comments that this difference comes from a tactical view: Sun king wished that his ships would be also suitable to mediterranean operations (Landström, Björn; "The Ship", pp.166-167) here are those engravings online (though the resolution is bad): http://www.tourville.asso.fr/galerie/album/album.htm Now, for the heller's kit; as Professor said, it is one of the early experiments by that company. However, I will comment rather positively. First, the pros. It is proportionate and its scale apparently matches with that given by Landström. The decorations at the stern are very fine renditions. The individual plank detail is given on the outer sides of the ship and the wood grain detail, altough slightly overscale, is good for giving effect with drybrushing. Now the cons. The lower tier of guns are those unfortunate stub barrels, the decks are flat (though this is not a problem to me at that scale) and the rigging is unacceptably simplified (that horrendous ratline looming machine is present). Maybe a more personal view but, the beakhead rails and the figurehead look too kitsch to me, although they are true to the album of Colbert engravings. The fact that this particular vessel probably does not represent any actual warship also seems like a negative point. But overall, le Phénix by heller is a reasonably detailed yet a not too difficult to build representation of a first rate (1500 ton) SoL from late 17th century and to my personal opinion, a very good entry to the world of complex square rigged ships.
Don't surrender the ship !
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- Member since
February 2009
- From: Klaipeda, Lithuania, Europe
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Posted by Wojszwillo
on Thursday, July 2, 2009 6:02 AM
 jtilley wrote: | | If I remember, the Sirene kit first appeared in the U.S. under the "Minicraft" label; for a while some of the Heller sailing ships were being sold in, of all things, Aurora boxes. This was back in the late sixties or early seventies. I feel old. |
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Yes, You are right - i have in my collection Sirene boxed by "Minicraft", with Minicraft's instruction of assembly etc. I can write today later at home, which year is on the box. On the model kit's hull both parts there are labels "Heller". If You want, I can post pictures of this kit in beginning of next week - my camera "is travelling" together with my spouse at the moment :-).
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- Member since
February 2009
- From: Klaipeda, Lithuania, Europe
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Posted by Wojszwillo
on Thursday, July 2, 2009 4:48 PM
There is'nt any year of produce on the Minicraft box or in the assembly instructions.
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Posted by bad hat
on Thursday, May 6, 2010 5:54 PM
The Heller La Sirene was in a Heller box. I remember seeing at Polk`s Hobbies in NY City in mid `68. It was sold by Minicraft in the early 70s, with the same Heller box art. Aurora"Prestige Series" marketed it in the same Heller box from the late 70s to the early 80s.
This is the same model as the Phenix, the only difference being the large stern cabin on the poop deck and the mermaid figurehead.
The Phenix dated from 1664 and was unique in the fact that there was no raised forecastle deck. There is a picture of it in B Landstrom`s "The Ship" from the Atlas D`Colbert.
The Sirene is also from this timeline. Since she was the admiral`s flagship expains the ornate stern and large mermaid figurehead. The galleries at the bow are another unusual touch, but they do add character to the ship.The ship is typical of the baroque style of the era. This was a powerful ship for its time. It was as large as a British 3 decker and was better in battle because the lower gun deck was higher above the water than the British ships of the era. This meant that she could fire broadsides without the lower gun deck taking on water..
This is a great build.It is nowhere as difficult as some would have you believe. What does scare American builders is the Heller loom for making the shrouds and ratlines. Deal with it!
What really makes this model is the ornate stern and "Madeleine" -the mermaid figurehead. She looks good if you paint her upper body a flesh color and the lower part gold.The kit also comes with vac-form sails and flags.
I built it in the late 70s and still have itv in my bcollection. A beautiful ship no matter how you look at it. Definately worth your time and effort.
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- Member since
May 2003
- From: Greenville, NC
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Posted by jtilley
on Tuesday, May 11, 2010 10:09 PM
I can't argue about the Phenix kit. It apparently was based on a reliable set of plans, and can reasonably be called a scale model - with allowances for the technical limitations that go along with its age.
The "Sirene" is another matter. We've established pretty firmly in other threads that no such ship ever existed - and I question whether it could have. The structure of the stern is ridiculously top-heavy; I'm not at all sure a real ship that looked like that would float. And imagine what that figurehead would actually look like, full-size. (For that matter - imagine the chunk of wood that it would have to have been carved from. A California redwood, maybe?) There's just no way that kit qualifies as a scale model.
The big problem with Heller's sailing ship line was always that the people responsible for designing the kits were superb artisans whose knowledge of the prototypes was less than thorough. The "carved" detail on the best Heller kits is superb; it can stand comparison with the carvings on all but the very best of the seventeenth- and eighteenth-century English "board room" models. (That's the highest compliment I know how to pay to such things.) But in terms of historical accuracy, Heller sailing ship kits range from ok to hideous. We've gone over several of the worst offenders (the "Drakkar Oseberg" and the Soleil Royal, for instance) elsewhere in this Forum; there's no point in bringing them up again. In general the company got better as the years went by, and by the late 1970s its products certainly deserved to be taken seriously as scale models. But almost all of them continued to suffer from irritating, if repairable, non-nautical characteristics. (The 1/100 Victory, which I, like many other modelers, regard as one of the finest plastic kits ever, offers no means of fastening the yards to the masts. And some of its belaying pins have sharp points, and its boats are undetailed, hollow shells. The 1/150 74-gun ships have flat decks, and the "wood grain" detail on their hulls imply that each of them was hacked bodily from a single tree. The big German steel barques, Pamir and Passat, have "jackstay eyebolts" on the fronts of their yards instead of the tops. And so forth.)
Another of my gripes with Heller is that it unwittingly perpetuated the myth of the Great Ratline Problem. Some of the jigs, looms, and other gadgets that the Heller engineers concocted are downright diabolical - and I have yet to see any evidence that they can be made to work effectively. We've discussed several times in this Forum a couple of ways to make ratlines look decent. On scales from 1/100 up, rigging ratlines to scale (i.e., with clove hitches) isn't nearly as difficult as many people seem to think. On scales smaller than that, the old-fashioned "needle-through-the-shroud" trick, which modelers have been using for at least a hundred years, is virtually guaranteed to produce better-looking results than any of the jigs (or plastic-coated-thread, or injection-molded plastic abominations) that the kit manufacturers have inflicted on consumers. There's no legitimate reason for the humble ratline to be the big stumbling block for modelers that it seems to be.
It's reliably reported that, in the late seventies or early eighties, Heller had a number of ambitious, large-scale ship projects in the planning stages: H.M.S. Prince, the Mary Rose, the Henri Grace a Dieu, and several others that I've forgotten. If those kits had appeared - and if the company's steady improvement in accuracy had continued - they probably would have changed the face of plastic sailing ship modeling. Unfortunately, at that point Heller was having serious financial problems, and all the sailing ship projects got shelved for good.
And now the plastic sailing ship is almost an extinct species. Revell's last one, the beautiful little Viking ship, was originally released in 1977. (The company's first sailing ship, the 1/192 Constitution, had appeared in 1956. Revell has now been out of the sailing ship business for considerably longer than it was in it.) Airfix hasn't released a new sailing ship in at least 25 years; neither has Heller. One of the bright lights in the hobby, Imai, made a brief appearance on the scene in the seventies and eighties, and then went broke. There are faint signs of life from Zvezda and another Russian company whose name I've forgotten (the original source of the "new" French frigate "Acheron" - actually a reissue of a Portuguese warship whose name also slips my senile memory); maybe we'll see something more from that direction. Otherwise, it seems, plastic sailing ship enthusiasts will have to make do with kits that are three, four, and five decades old.
Youth, talent, hard work, and enthusiasm are no match for old age and treachery.
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Posted by bad hat
on Tuesday, May 11, 2010 11:34 PM
Re the Heller Sirene. This ship actually existed. Go to Model Warships.com. Go to home page, then Gallery. Click on "small ships" then go to year 2008. Run the category until you see the model, made by Mario Grima. According to Mr. Grima, this ship took part in the batle of La Hogue in 1692, but was destroyed with some other French ships.
To criticize Heller and other makes is a moot point. Yes, their models do run hot and cold. This may be off, that might not be off, etc, etc, etc. What really matters here is the fact that these models actually do exist. Ship modelers-especially those of us who build sailing ships are considered "minority modelers". The kit manufacturers know the market, thats why planes, armor and fantasy and science fiction subjects are so popular. It takes time to build a ship model right.
I think the last sailing ship model Airfix released was the Vasa., but this was in the early 70s. Since the ship does exist, Airfix was able to produce it by studying it in the Stockholm Museum where it now resides. I think it is an excellent kit , but when I built it, I eschewed the vac-form sails and made furled sails out of tissue paper. Wish I knew how to upload photos to this sight so you can see it.
Wooden ship models in kit form have been around since the early 1920s, but these were crude by anybodys standards. Some model kits of this ere did not even have roughly shaped hulls-you got a piece of balsa wood and you were on your own.
The hobby has come a long wa since then. Maybe what is out there is not perfect, but we, as modelers should not be put off by this. I find the most pleasurable aspect of the hobby is the enjoyment of building. When I build a model, I don't care if it wins a prize or not. If people like my work, all the better. One of my clubs used to hav e a show at South St. Seaport in NYC. It was the first Saturday and Sunday in August.The part I enjoyed most was when visitors would ask me about my work and compliment my craftsmanship. They always wanted to take photos of my display and I would oblige them. This is what modeling is all about. Take care.
I
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- Member since
May 2003
- From: Greenville, NC
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Posted by jtilley
on Wednesday, May 12, 2010 9:03 AM
There's an old saying among academics that "the absence of proof is not the same as the proof of absence - and the proof of absence is difficult to establish." I can't prove that no French sailing warship named "La Sirene" ever existed.
I did, however, look up the Battle of La Hogue on several websites. (Example: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Action_at_La_Hogue_(1692) Later edit: for some reason the "copy" function on my computer has trouble with the parentheses in that web address. If you click on the link you're liable to get a message from Wikipedia telling you that no such article exists, and asking you "did you mean Action at La Hogue (1692). Click on that and the article will come up). It's pretty clear that no French ship of the line named "Sirene" was present at that action. And a few minutes' surfing on "La Sirene (ship)" produced nothing. (Searching on "Sirene" did make me aware of some nice, unbelievably expensive restaurants, though.)
The baroque period in warship design was indeed characterized - especially in France - by extravagantly ornate decorative carvings. But another characteristic of the period was a concern for proportion and scale (in the aesthetic sense). Naval architects did not simply slap additional piles of decks onto the sterns of existing designs - as it certainly looks like the Heller people did when they designed that kit. And there's just no way that a figurehead like that existed - or could have existed.
I'm certainly sympathetic to the view that, since the number of plastic sailing ship kits on the market is so small, modelers ought to be grateful for what they've got - and prepared to make the best of it. But that doesn't excuse the manufacturers from producing kits that are...well, far inferior in terms of accuracy to the aircraft, car, armor, and modern warship kits they were making at the same time.
I'll say again what I've said many times in this Forum. I don't suggest that anybody refrain from buying or building a kit because I don't like it. This is (for most of us) a hobby, and what matters most is what we enjoy. But I do take exception to manufacturers' promoting as scale models kits that, by any reasonable definition, are no such thing. That's deceptive advertising, and purchasers are entitled to know up front that what they're buying is...well, something other than a scale model kit.
In other phases of plastic modeling, modelers routinely expect certain standards of accuracy. Revell's notorious H.M.S. Beagle kit (which is in fact a modified version of the firm's H.M.S. Bounty - which, in reality, resembled the Beagle only in having a hull, a deck, and three masts) is the equivalent of making a few modifications to a decent model of a B-17 and calling it a B-52. How would the model aircraft community react to such a stunt?
Don't tar all wood ship model kits with the same brush. Some of them are junk - and that's always been the case. When I was working my way through grad school in a hobby shop I used to tell customers, "most plastic sailing ship kits are junk, and most wood kits are worse - and more expensive." And I've ranted at length in this forum about the products of the HECEPOB manufacturers. (That's Hideously Expensive Continental European Plank-On-Bulkhead.) But there are dozens - maybe hundreds - of exceptions. Companies like ITC, Model Shipways, and Boucher (later renamed Bluejacket) were making fine scale ship models long before styrene came on the scene. And the modeler looking for state-of-the-art sailing ship kits today won't find them in plastic (almost all the plastic sailing ship kits on the market are, after all, at least thirty years old), but in the catalogs of firms like Bluejacket and Calder/Jotika.
The Airfix Wasa is one of my favorite kits. Fortunately is wasn't the last one from that stable. I don't have a chronological listing of all Airfix's kits. (The only such sources I have are Dr. Thomas Graham's fine books on Revell and Monogram; the recently-published Boy's Book of Airfix is on my wish list.) But I'm fairly certain that Airfix released at least four sailing ships after the Wasa: the St. Louis, Golden Hind, Mayflower, and H.M.S. Bounty. The first three of those are pretty good; the Mayflower makes an interesting comparison with the two excellent kits from Revell, which are based on a different set of reconstructed plans. The Bounty, unfortunately, is a bit of a dud, suffering from all sorts of silly inaccuracies (starting with the fact that the maindeck is mounted on a pronounced slope). The ancient Revell version is actually a good deal more accurate.
Airfix seems to have come back to life, with some quite adventurous projects (e.g., the 1/24 Mosquito and the 1/350 H.M.S. Illustrious). If that company were to get back into the sailing ship field nobody would be happier than I would. But I'm not holding my breath.
Youth, talent, hard work, and enthusiasm are no match for old age and treachery.
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Posted by bad hat
on Wednesday, May 12, 2010 11:15 PM
Very true about the Revell "Beagle". It obviously was based on their HMS Bounty. I`ve got it in my collection, but it is not very high on my must build list.
Getting more than one model from a single kit is nothing new. It goes way back to the Marx Sea Witch when the Swordfish, released one year later was the identical model with a different cutwater , figurehead and display base.
Revell got three[!] models from the Cutty Sark. The Thermopylae and the Pedro Nunes, a Portugese training ship. They also got two models from the Alabama-that and the Union Sloop Kearsage. The Eagle was the same model as the Seadler, the Golden Hind was marketed as a Spanish Galleon and the Mayflower was marketed as an English Galleon from the battle of the Spanish Armada. Also, their large scale English Galleon became a Spanish Galleon with the addition of a few new parts.
Heller pulled the same stunt. They also got three models from the Corona Galleon-the Galion-an oared galleon of the year 1600 and the Stella Del Norte, a four masted galleon of the Spanish ArmadaThe Sirene and Phenix have been mentioned as well as the Royal Louis and the Gladiateur, late 18th century ships. Their Oseburg and Rhein Matilda viking ships share the same basic hull components, but are different on deck
There are probably more examples that escape me right now.
Maybe the Sirene is more "Hollywood" than history, but Heller has released it again. The advertising blurbs call it a ship from the year 1772 that was part of a French fleet that was based in Canada. Go figure.
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- Member since
May 2003
- From: Greenville, NC
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Posted by jtilley
on Wednesday, May 12, 2010 11:55 PM
We've discussed this phenomenon many times in this Forum. Here, for instance, is a link to a thread in which we listed (I think) all the Revell sailing ships in their various permutations: /forums/p/42281/444078.aspx#444078 . (I started that thread; some other members caught some omissions in my initial post, and I went back and corrected it.)
The "Beagle" scam gets my vote for the title of most obnoxious in the batch. It's particularly galling to note that the alleged Beagle-Bounty connection infected the world of the HECEPOBS. Quite a few years later, the Italian firm Mamoli unleashed a "Beagle" on an unsuspecting world: http://www.modelexpo-online.com/product.asp?ITEMNO=MV20W . This just can't be a coincidence. There's no way two brains could conceive such a thing independently. The inescapable conclusion is that Mamoli's "research" consisted of buying a Revell kit and taking measurements from it.
Maybe the most interesting story in there is that of the U.S.C.G.C. Eagle and "S.M.S. Seeadler." The kit doesn't come close to being a scale model of the real Seeadler - but it doesn't accurately represent the Eagle either. In this case I'm pretty sure the error started out as an honest mistake. We've discussed that kit several times as well - most recently here: /forums/p/123717/1240430.aspx#1240430 .
By my count, Revell produced a total of twenty genuinely different sailing ship kits during the years 1956-1977. (Caveat: that figure doesn't include several genuinely original kits from Revell Germany, such as the Alexander Humbolt, Pamir, and Batavia. My basic source is Dr. Graham's book, which only covers the U.S. branch of the company - and stops its coverage in 1979.) The company managed to turn those twenty sets of molds into about thirty-five allegedly different products.
I couldn't begin to make a similar list of Heller kits. That company, in terms of reusing its molds, was considerably more creative (or unethical, depending on one's viewpoint) than Revell. I suspect the number of Heller sailing ship kits - or, more properly, the number of names attached to them - is close to a hundred. As I understand it, Heller got its start in the sailing ship world by selling old Aurora and Pyro ships - with completely fictitious French-sounding names, to make them more palatable to the French market.
And, of course, Pyro did some of the same sort of thing (in addition to stealing many of its designs in the first place). Even Imai, which in some respects deserves the label "best of them all," recycled some of its kits. (Compare the Greek and Roman galleys - and the various little 1/350 sail training ships.) The only major manufacturer that hasn't pulled such stunts (at least to my knowledge) is Airfix. Bless the people of Airfix. May they get back into the sailing ship game some day.
[Later edit: I think the first instance of a plastic ship model being reissued under a different name may have been the Revell U.S.S. New Jersey, in 1955. It was, of course, virtually identical to the company's Missouri, which had first seen the light of day in 1953. (The dates are from Dr. Graham's book.) The New Jersey kit was different in two respects: it had helicopters instead of catapults and seaplanes on its fantail, and the instructions showed a dazzle camoflage scheme rather than overall grey. (The color scheme was, in fact, the one the Missouri had worn on her trials; it was completely inaccurate for the New Jersey.) Dr. Graham's appendix would, I guess, make it possible to figure out just how many times Revell recycled its modern warship molds, but I don't have much inclination to do it.]
I've been troubled - and puzzled - for a long time about the different standard that seems to be applied to sailing ship kits by comparison with other phases of the plastic model business. Repackaging the Golden Hind as a "Spanish galleon" is roughly the equivalent of selling H.M.S. Cossack in the markings of a Japanese battleship. Or a Spitfire as a JU-88. Or, for that matter, a Chevrolet as a Mercedes. If a manufacturer of airplane, car, or modern warships tried such a scam, the modeling press would go berserk. But sailing ship modelers, it seems, are supposed to accept that such behavior is just part of the game. I repeat: I'm not trying to tell anybody what kits to buy or build. This is a hobby; to each his/her own. But I do think potential purchasers are entitled to know what's going on.
Youth, talent, hard work, and enthusiasm are no match for old age and treachery.
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Posted by bad hat
on Wednesday, May 19, 2010 12:34 AM
Hi-I`m now building the Minicraft "Stella Del Norte" for a friend. The Old Heller kit of a galleon from 1600. To further confuse the subject, I have the Aurora Prestige Heller "Stella" and it is a fictional four masted galleon from the year 1450. THey really got their dates confused with this one. In 1450 ships were just beginning to appear with more than one mast. Obviously a late 16th century design, how could they have dropped the ball on the year? Even if this ship DID exist at this timeline, it would have been more than a hundred years ahead of its time.
The Minicraft Stella is a decent kit, but, like others, it is probably pure fiction. It appears to be too wide in proportion to its lenght, and the oars appear to be an afterthought. Another "more Hollywood than History" model, but it is kinda nice in its own right. It does resemble the Spanish galleon in the Errol Flynn classic movie "The Sea Hawk" from 1939.
Since this will be a display model, I`m giving it a colorful paint job. I`ve got some crosses left over from a forgotten ship model that I`ll put on the sails, I`m painting the oars white with red blades, and the stern castles and galleries white with red , green and gold trim. The upper works are a light blue color, the mid hull section tan and off white below the waterline.I won`t even bother to use the loom. I`ll just use some injection molded ratlines and shrouds from another model.
At best, this will be a representitive model from the time that Spain was a major Catholic power in Europe. It even has a cross with a Christ figure to grace the stern along with the three figures that support the lanterns. Since my friend knows next to nothing about the history and development of sailing ships, it really should please him. If I were building it for myself, it would be somewhat different.
Until next time....
r
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- Member since
May 2003
- From: Greenville, NC
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Posted by jtilley
on Friday, May 21, 2010 1:50 PM
Squadron mail order is now advertising the old Heller Sirene (for a ridiculous price - though I admit I've seen worse). Apparently Heller has risen from the ashes of bankruptcy and is in genuine production again.
Here's the link to the ad: http://www.squadron.com/ItemDetails.asp?item=HR52907 .
One very interesting thing about that Squadron ad. It includes a copy of what I presume to be the box art. There's also a button labeled "additional view." Click on that button and you get a photograph of the model - which looks nothing like the box art. (Compare the stern ornamentation, the figureheads, and the overall sheer of the hull. In the painting, the sterncastle structure rises naturally out of the shape of the hull - and the figurehead is of such a size that it could have been carved from a real log.) It looks like the artist who painted the picture (in contrast to the people who designed the kit) knew what a seventeenth-century French warship actually looked like.
Equally interestingly, the verbal description of the (supposed) actual ship is different from what Heller's said about it in the kit's earlier incarnations. (The one in the Minicraft box that I bought thirty or forty years ago had a blurb on the side of the box relating some utter nonsense about the ship having been sunk in a West Indies hurricane. And the "ship" seems to have acquired a new "history" every time the kit's been reissued.) This time the description is so generalized that it's hard to argue with.
On the one hand, it's good to see that somebody in the Heller stable has, it seems, learned what sailing ships look like. On the other, this new packaging appears to be even more deceptive than the old.
That Heller has come back to life is certainly good news. (The same "new release" page on the Squadron website announces the return of the big galley Reale, which is on my personal shortlist of "best sailing ship kits ever.") But I continue to think that stunts of the "Sirene" type do no good for the hobby - and constitute consumer fraud.
Youth, talent, hard work, and enthusiasm are no match for old age and treachery.
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