M.S. Calabar/Semiramis

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Hello all, as I said in "Introduce yourself", I´m a reasonably good plastic modeller. In naval affairs I built several years ago two Revell U-boote in 1/72 scale, and even a wood model (rather humble) of Navío Santísima Trinidad.

This time I have in mind the possibility of scratch build a passenger/cargo ship, rather unknown, the M.S. Calabar, later Semiramis.

My interest in this ship is because in 1954, already named "Semiramis", she brought back to Spain almost 300 spanish POW from the USSR.

I´ve made an extensive research in the web looking for some plans of this ship, but with no result. Even the Belfast Museum have nothing at all, at least digitalized.

M.S. Calabar (later Semiramis) was built in Harland & Wolff shipyard in 1935. I´ve found several nice photos of it (including the most known ones in Spain, when he arrived at Barcelona on april 2nd, 1954), and a lot of information about measures, transformations in 1948 and 1953, etc, but not a single drawing of it.

However, somebody built a model of it years ago, I still keep a little photo of the model.

If anybody would have some material that could be useful for this project, it would be very appreciated.

Thanks for your time.

Semiramis.jpg
 
Hello,
Yes, I built the Calabar. I produced a download about it:
The Shelterdeck
Issue two (link of which is given below) contains a sail plan and deck plan of the American brigantine Mary Celeste, and a general arrangement plan of the Elder Dempster passenger ship Calabar, of 1935, plus notes on building models of both vessels. It is 14 pages in length, and is available for the nominal cost of £1.49. By clicking the link, and scrolling down a bit after it opens, you are not commited to purchase, but may read the synopsis. If you then wish to purchase a download, a button for either Paypal or credit cards is provided. There is no naval content, making The Shelterdeck somewhat unique, but possibly less popular than it might be! Download link: http://payhip.com/b/mMQw
If printed out, it will make an A4 sized document. It may be read on computers, or tablets as it is in PDF format (Acrobat Reader) It may be printed in whole or part, once you have the download. The company I worked for chartered the Semiramis in 1978 at the start of the UK - St Helena passenger mail service whilst the RMS St. Helena was being refitted for the run.
Bob

Calabar.JPG
 
Hello,
Yes, I built the Calabar. I produced a download about it:
The Shelterdeck
Issue two (link of which is given below) contains a sail plan and deck plan of the American brigantine Mary Celeste, and a general arrangement plan of the Elder Dempster passenger ship Calabar, of 1935, plus notes on building models of both vessels. It is 14 pages in length, and is available for the nominal cost of £1.49. By clicking the link, and scrolling down a bit after it opens, you are not commited to purchase, but may read the synopsis. If you then wish to purchase a download, a button for either Paypal or credit cards is provided. There is no naval content, making The Shelterdeck somewhat unique, but possibly less popular than it might be! Download link: http://payhip.com/b/mMQw
If printed out, it will make an A4 sized document. It may be read on computers, or tablets as it is in PDF format (Acrobat Reader) It may be printed in whole or part, once you have the download. The company I worked for chartered the Semiramis in 1978 at the start of the UK - St Helena passenger mail service whilst the RMS St. Helena was being refitted for the run.
Bob

View attachment 129032
Thanks a lot, @shipbuilder this is a great help!
 
Maybe this post should be transferred to the subforum "SOS Build Logs from scratch or from Plans"... It would be more appropiate.
 
Hello, and thanks @Uwek for placing this thread in the proper place.

Well, at this moment I´m in the research phase; apart from the excellent plans -thanks, @shipbuilder - is time to collect virtually every photo/video I find in the web. AFAIK, M.S. Calabar was reformed in 1948, when she received a new bridge, a longer funnel and the two smallest lifeboats were placed in the aft over a new platform. It seems also that new portholes were added in the lower deck, and a goniometric antenna in the bridge. Probably this project will not be 100% accurate about the exterior appeareance of the ship in 1954, but I hope (if I have the abilities to keep it on) that it will be very similar to the Semiramis that arrived at Barcelona in 1954. I hope so.

Below you will find some interesting links about the M.S. Calabar/Semiramis. The last one is a 1954 spanish news program with the images of the arrival of "Semíramis" at Barcelona at April 2nd, 1954.




 
You found already very good information about this vessel.
These web-pages are very good - I know some of them from the past - It is getting more and more interesting.
Please do not stop showing the results of your re-search
 
There Is (used to be) a very good website with a lot of photos of every ship. It was called 'photoship' or similar. It was very good for research and I was able to download a tonne of useful photos when I built the Lauro Passenger liner Roma in miniature. I really needed this because the only plans that I was able to find online were the General floor plans from a tourist brochure. I did research it enough to discover that the hull was previously a Liberty ship aircraft carrier during the war. So getting those plans was relatively easy. Robert also provided some help at the time with my research- thanks Robert. The ship turned out better than I could ever have imagined. But the greatest help by far was Roberts book: MINIATURE STEAM & MOTOR SHIP CONSTRUCTION. I've gone on to build a couple more miniatures- currently working on Stella Polaris.
 
Hi John,
Good to hear from you again. I always feel that your Roma model was a fantastic success, and it still gives me great satisfaction to see that you made such a success of it from reading my e-book. So many modellers just decide that they would never be able to build one, and leave it at that!
Best wishes
Robert
 
The Old Ship Photo site was closed down after he had a few complaints about copyright infringements. But it was an exceptional collection of over 300,000 ship images. He wasn't selling them, and probably most were out of copyright, but in the end, it was too much hassle to keep them on.
Bob
 
The Old Ship Photo site was closed down after he had a few complaints about copyright infringements. But it was an exceptional collection of over 300,000 ship images. He wasn't selling them, and probably most were out of copyright, but in the end, it was too much hassle to keep them on.
Bob
Sad, so very sad. I used to peruse that site for hours. So much information and historical materials in one place, now lost.
I suppose the site was a huge labour intensive endeavor not made worth the while by regular external obstacles.
 
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