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I have a question on models.

Yes, the Zeven Provincien is definitely a very interesting ship, as are many others, but only for 'insiders' with interest in nautical construction and/or history.The Victory, Bounty, Endeavour and the others you mentioned, are the ships most present in popular culture, and so in most demand for our kit makers.
 
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The Lost Dutchman said:
The question is why are there so many people doing models like constitution, bounty, Endeavor, Santa Maria, Victory but not Batavia or seven provicien? Is it not an interesting ship?
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Magellan's Victoria (first ship to circumnavigate world) , Vasco da Gama's Sao Gabriel and Cabot's Matthew get little attention.
Their discoveries were far more useful than Santa Maria and Endeavour!:)
 
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Pepite 1/60 said:
Yes, the Zeven Provincien is definitely a very interesting ship, as are many others, but only for 'insiders' with interest in nautical construction and/or history.The Victory, Bounty, Endeavour and the others you mentioned, are the ships most present in popular culture, and so in most demand for our kit makers.
Click to expand...
Thanks
 
Perhaps the most obvious reason that there are so many people building models of "the usual suspects" is because they are readily available in kit form (to varying degrees of accuracy) and there are far more people who want to build a ship model that have the money to buy a kit than the knowledge to build a unique model from scratch based upon their own historical research. It must be noted, as well, that accurate historical resources for earlier period sailing vessels prior to the eighteenth century are extremely limited and often insufficient for use to build a model. For example, we have no historical records of what any of Columbus' ships looked like. Nobody knows what the Nina, Pinta, or Santa Maria, or for that matter, the Mayflower, Golden Hind, and so on, actually looked like. All the models of them are simply educated guesses, if not outright fantasies, of the kit designers. Aspiring kit ship modelers readily recognize the names of such famous vessels, but most have no idea whether, or to what degree, a given kit might yield an historically accurate model. Knowing this, the kit manufacturers flood the market with kits of subjects which sell the best, often at the expense of the quality of the model the kit produces. There is a near-limitless selection of very interesting ships to model, but only the ones that the marketing executives expect to sell well ever end up for sale as boxed kits.

Howard I. Chapelle, the former curator of the Smithsonian Institution's ship model collection and one of the twentieth centuy's foremost authorities on ship models addresed your question long ago:

Nautical Research Guild - Article - Ship Models that Should Not be Built

thenrg.org thenrg.org

Nautical Research Guild - Article - Ship Models that Ought to be Built

thenrg.org thenrg.org
 
POPEYE_DA_SAILOR said:
Perhaps the most obvious reason that there are so many people building models of "the usual suspects" is because they are readily available in kit form (to varying degrees of accuracy) and there are far more people who want to build a ship model that have the money to buy a kit than the knowledge to build a unique model from scratch based upon their own historical research. It must be noted, as well, that accurate historical resources for earlier period sailing vessels prior to the eighteenth century are extremely limited and often insufficient for use to build a model. For example, we have no historical records of what any of Columbus' ships looked like. Nobody knows what the Nina, Pinta, or Santa Maria, or for that matter, the Mayflower, Golden Hind, and so on, actually looked like. All the models of them are simply educated guesses, if not outright fantasies, of the kit designers. Aspiring kit ship modelers readily recognize the names of such famous vessels, but most have no idea whether, or to what degree, a given kit might yield an historically accurate model. Knowing this, the kit manufacturers flood the market with kits of subjects which sell the best, often at the expense of the quality of the model the kit produces. There is a near-limitless selection of very interesting ships to model, but only the ones that the marketing executives expect to sell well ever end up for sale as boxed kits.

Howard I. Chapelle, the former curator of the Smithsonian Institution's ship model collection and one of the twentieth centuy's foremost authorities on ship models addresed your question long ago:

Nautical Research Guild - Article - Ship Models that Should Not be Built

thenrg.org thenrg.org

Nautical Research Guild - Article - Ship Models that Ought to be Built

thenrg.org thenrg.org
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Popeye, thanks so much for these links!
 
I don't mean to hijack the thread, but the title reminds me of my introduction to the internet in 1996. I typed in the search function "Ship Models". Whoops, pretty boats are not what popped up!
 
i think kits have more to do with the more popular ship models. lack of plans available to scratch builders for unpopular models is also a contributing factor.
 
There are plans available to scratch build 1000’s of modes if you know where to look. The Smithsonian can supply virtually all of Chapelle’s drawings plus 100’s of others. Cost? $10 per sheet plus $5 sipping; a bargain. A plan of a New Haven Sharpie rigged for racing arrived on my doorstep today. A beautiful large scale drawing in a tube.

I believe that the problem is that most builders don’t know how to use them to build a model.

Roger
 
Roger Pellett said:
There are plans available to scratch build 1000’s of modes if you know where to look. The Smithsonian can supply virtually all of Chapelle’s drawings plus 100’s of others. Cost? $10 per sheet plus $5 sipping; a bargain. A plan of a New Haven Sharpie rigged for racing arrived on my doorstep today. A beautiful large scale drawing in a tube.

I believe that the problem is that most builders don’t know how to use them to build a model.

Roger
Click to expand...
And that's the problem. I have no idea where to look, and most people also don't as well.
 
Any one of HIC books is a pix of the plans - except - Baltimore Clipper - the plans that are illustrations in the books are available for order @ 1:48 scale.
 
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