Tuesday, May 20, 2008

HMS Speedy (1828)





















Museum quality scratch built model in 1:48 scale.
Plans from Model Shipwright publisher
Model by Alexander Blokhin.

HMS Speedy was a six gun cutter launched in 1828, converted to a dockyard mooring lighter in 1853 and renamed YC.11 and broken up in 1866.

HMS Fly (1766)













Scale 1:64
Wooden kit by "Amati"
Model by B.Volkhonski (Israel)

HMS Fly was the fifth vessel built of the Swan Class of ship rigged sloop, of which twenty five of the class were built for the Royal Navy from 1766 to 1780.
Fly, as with the entire Swan class, was designed by Williams and her construction was ordered by the Admiralty on 1 August 1775 to be built at Sheerness Dockyard. The keel was laid in January, 1776, and launched on 14 September 1776.
The Swan class of 6th Rate sloops were unusually attractive for the class of vessel, with not only very sleek hull lines but also an unusual amount of decoration for the size of vessel. They were built just before the Admiralty issued orders that all vessels (especially lesser rates) were to have the minimal amount of decoration and carvings to save any unnecessary costs, due to the seemingly ever continuing war with France and other nations.
There is little remaining about H.M.S. Fly's operational career, but from what little evidence there is, Fly was commissioned mainly for convoy escort duty and dispatch duty. She did capture a French privateer, Le Gleneur, off Portland after a long chase.
In 1800 she captured another French privateer, the cutter Trompeur off Le Hague.
Fly continued convoy duties until she foundered and was lost off Newfoundland in 1802.
The Swan Class measured 97' 7" on the gun deck and displaced 300 tons. They carried 125 officers and men and initially carried 14 guns (later 16) and 16 swivel guns.

Text: Wikipedia


HMS Ajax






















Detailed scratch built card model by Igor Cherniak in 1:200 scale.

HMS Ajax, was built by Vickers Armstrong at barrow and launched 1st march 1934 and completed 12th April 1935. HMS Ajax served in the South Atlantic 1939, taking a major role in the battle of the River Plate against the Graf Spee, going to the Mediterranean fleet 1940 - 1942, became part of Force H before going for refit in the United states 1943, returning to the Mediterranean Fleet 1943 till the end of the war. HMS Ajax was finally scrapped at Newport November 1949.

Thursday, May 15, 2008

HMS Hood











Scale 1:200
Model by Igor Cherniak.

HMS Hood
(pennant number 51) was a battlecruiser of the Royal Navy, and considered the pride of the Royal Navy in the interwar period and during the early period of World War Two. She was one of four Admiral-class battlecruisers ordered in mid-1916 under the Emergency War Programme. Although the design was drastically revised after the Battle of Jutland, it was realised that there were serious limitations even to the revised design; for this reason, and because of evidence that the German battlecruisers that they were designed to counter were unlikely to be completed, work on her sister ships was suspended in 1917. As a result, Hood was Britain's last completed battlecruiser. She was named after the 18th century Admiral Samuel Hood. Hood had served in the Royal Navy for over two decades before her sinking at the hands of the German battleship Bismarck on 24 May 1941.
(Wikipedia text).

Hope






Yahct "Hope" 1905
Scale 1:48

Monday, May 12, 2008

Flying Cloud





The Flying Cloud of 1851 was the most famous of the extreme clippers built by Donald McKay in East Boston, Massachusetts, intended for Enoch Train of Boston, who paid $50,000 for her construction.
The Flying Cloud was purchased at launching by Grinnel, Minturn & Co., of New York, for $90,000, which represented a huge profit for Train & Co. Within six weeks she sailed from New York and made San Francisco 'round Cape Horn in 89 days, 21 hours under the command of Captain Josiah Perkins Creesy. On July 31, during the trip, she made 374 miles in 24 hours. In 1853 she beat her own record by 13 hours, a record that stood until 1989 when the breakthrough-designed sailboat Thursday's Child completed the passage in 80 days, 20 hours. The record was once again broken 2008 by the French racing yacht Gitana with a time of 43 days and 38 minutes.
In the early days of the California Gold Rush, it took more than 200 days for a ship to travel from New York to San Francisco, a voyage of more than 16,000 miles. The Flying Cloud's more-than-halving that time (only 89 days) was a headline-grabbing world record that the ship itself beat three years later, setting a record that lasted for 136 years.
The Flying Cloud's achievement was remarkable under any terms. But, writes David W. Shaw,[1] it was all the more unusual because its navigator was a woman, Eleanor Creesy, who had been studying oceanic currents, weather phenomena, and astronomy since her girlhood in Marblehead, Massachusetts. She was one of the first navigators to exploit the insights of Matthew Fontaine Maury, most notably the course recommended in his Sailing Directions. With her husband, ship captain Josiah Perkins Creesy, she logged many thousands of miles on the ocean, traveling around the world carrying passengers and goods. In the wake of their record-setting transit from New York to California, Eleanor and Josiah became instant celebrities. But their fame was short-lived and their story quickly forgotten. Josiah died in 1871 and Eleanor lived far from the sea until her death in 1900.
On June 19, 1874 the Flying Cloud went ashore on the Beacon Island bar, St. John's, Newfoundland, and was condemned and sold. The following June she was burned for the scrap metal value of her copper and metal fastenings.
A reporter for the Boston Daily Atlas of April 25, 1851 wrote, "If great length [235 ft.], sharpness of ends, with proportionate breadth [41 ft.] and depth, conduce to speed, the Flying Cloud must be uncommonly swift, for in all these she is great. Her length on the keel is 208 feet, on deck 225, and over all, from the knight heads to the taffrail, 235 — extreme breadth of beam 41 feet, depth of hold 21½, including 7 feet 8 inches height of between-decks, sea-rise at half floor 20 inches, rounding of sides 6 inches, and sheer about 3 feet."
(c)Wikipedia
Model in 1:48 scale
Alexander Blokhin

Sunday, May 11, 2008

Cargo ship "Ampal"



Scale 1:100
Model by Alexander Blokhin

Paintings






Naval British 24-poud Gun



Scale 1:12

Model by Alexander Blokhin

Wasa



Wasa.
Scale 1:96
Coral wooden kit

"Wasa" was a warship that was built for King Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden from 1626 to 1628. The ship sank after sailing less than a nautical mile (ca 2 km) into her maiden voyage on August 10, 1628. Vasa fell into obscurity after initial attempts at recovering her valuable cannons in the 17th century but was located again in the late 1950s, in a busy shipping lane just outside the Stockholm harbour. She was salvaged with a largely intact hull on April 24, 1961. She was housed in a temporary museum called Wasavarvet ("The Wasa Shipyard") until 1987, and was then moved to the Vasa Museum in Stockholm. The ship is one of Sweden's most popular tourist attractions and, as of 2007, has attracted more than 25 million visitors.

Magdalene Vinnen




Four-mast bark "Magdalene Vinnen". (1921–1936)
Scale 1:48

Model by Alexander Blokhin

Magdalene Vinnen II
The "Sedov", originally named the "Magdalene Vinnen", was launched in Kiel in 1921 at the Friedrich Krupp Germaniawerft at Kiel, Germany, for the shipping company F. A. Vinnen & Co. of Bremen, one of the largest German shipping companies at the beginning of the 20th century. The shipping company initially objected to have an engine installed in the ship, but the ship yard (with backing from a Government committee) successfully argued for an engine, making the ship the first sailing ship with auxiliary engine designed to modern principles.
The "Magdalene Vinnen" was at the time the world’s largest auxiliary barque and exclusively used as a cargo ship with a crew that was partially made up of cadets. She sailed on her maiden voyage on September 1, 1921. Her voyage took her from Bremen via Cardiff, where she took on coal, to Buenos Aires. Despite bad weather, the journey from England to Argentina with holds full of coal took just 30 days. The "Magdale Vinnen" carried all sorts of cargo: apart from coal, she took timber from Finland, wheat from Australia, pyrite from Italy and unit load from Belgium. The four-masted barque made two voyages around Cape Horn to Chile. Until her last voyage under the Vinnen flag in 1936, the ship sailed to Argentina, South Africa, Australia, Reunion and the Seychelles.