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When
someone asks me how a ship gets in the bottle, I'm reminded of the old ship's carver who, when asked how he carved the figurehead
he was working on, stared reflectively at his work and drawled: "Wahl... It ain't easy..." And I suppose that is as
good an answer as any.No matter how you look at it, the work is extremely tedious and labor intensive. There are no shortcuts. I must painstakingly craft each separate piece of the model to the correct scale - never mind having to place them through the neck into the bottle afterwards, and working with "mechanical fingers" eight inches (or more) away from my hands. Halfway through each ship, there is a time when I'm tempted to send it through the window out of pure frustration...
Centuries ago, the craftsmen of the European Guilds forged their own tools. Each man forging a set that met the particular needs of his craft. Today, with the advent of mass production, this art has faded into history - except where the tools used by the artisan are not available. Here the craftsman must fall back on the time-honored methods of forge, hammer and anvil and make his own.
Building a ship in a bottle is one such art. It requires, besides patience, a steady hand and the making of numerous long-shanked
tools that cannot be purchased anywhere. Each of these tools I have had to specially hand-forged to meet the task at hand. Someone
once said that my workbench with its array of long-shanked hooks, probes, forceps, and tongs laid out for work, looked more like
a surgeon's operating room than a modelmaker's bench.
As for my bench, that too, is a piece of history: The top is constructed from three pieces of solid 3" (75 mm) maple decking from an old coasting schooner. An unknown schooner was run ashore in the 1930s on the bank of the Saint John River to be stripped and broken up - less than half a mile from where I sit. Someone saved the decking and used it to floor their woodshed.
The first step in building a ship in a bottle is to lay the sea. This is made from tinted putty, which I carefully tool and accent with acrylic paints to represent a wave-washed sea. The disadvantage with the putty is that it takes so long to dry. And while I have experimented with faster drying materials - I haven't yet found one that can provide the "living quality" to the sea that the putty does. As a result, it requires six to eight weeks for the sea to dry before I can build the ship.
I build the Sailing Ships with masts that collapse, umbrella-like, folded back along the deck of the hull. Once the ship has been slid through the neck into the bottle, the masts are raised by hauling on the appropriate stays or downhauls. (In landlubber's terms: the pieces of thread that hold up the sails and masts.)
Motor Ships such as cabin cruisers, destroyers, aircraft carriers, and container ships are more difficult. Because of the broad beam of a motor vessel, the only way I can get the hull through the neck is to slice it into pieces and build it entirely inside the bottle. (For more on this method of building ships in bottles, see the Unfinished Scallop Dragger)
The scale of the model is determined by the size and shape of the bottle. I measure the inside of the bottle and determine the scale from this. Naturally, this results in some very non-standard scales.
When I first began building ships in bottles way back in 1985, some of the modern examples of the art I saw, horrified me: The masts and spars were so over-scale they looked more like pencils rammed into the decks. As one historian wrote: "No master mariner would ever let the masting and rigging on some of these modern examples pass inspection." Well, I was determined to do better. After all, I decided, it wasn't worth the effort if I couldn't.
Once started, I just had to try container ships, destroyers and aircraft carriers. I quickly found that the possibilities were limitless, confined only by the size and shape of the bottle, the design of the ship, the scale, and the time I was willing to spend.
Today, I am constantly experimenting and always try to develop new methods and presentation. Current research spans: dioramic painting within the bottle; diamond engraving on the bottle; hand-carved stands and multiple piece sailing ship hulls.
The examples depicted in the gallery pages give some idea of the possibilities. Which are limited only by the imagination. Building these ships, as I remarked before, is very labor intensive. Each one requires individual hand-crafting and mass production is impossible. The time needed to produce a specific model depends entirely on the size of the bottle, the scale, the ship design and the complexity of the rig. The larger the bottle the more complicated and detailed the model becomes.
In 1988, one project I undertook was the special display, Under the Seawind, developed for presentation at the National Museum of Science and Technology in Ottawa, Canada. This display included 30 ships in bottles with a half dozen watercolor paintings for
contrast. The ships ranged from the 1809 brig of war H.M.S. Grasshopper in a light bulb, to the present day Russian aircraft carrier Kiev in a gin bottle.
In the photograph, I am putting on a demonstration of how the ship gets inside the bottle. The ship was a special - built demonstration version of the schooner Howard D. Troop that allowed me to take it in and out of the bottle. Every time a crowd gathered, I'd lower the masts, slide the ship through the neck, set it in its "bed" and raise the sails. By the end of the day, the ship had been in and out of the bottle so many times that the sails were in tatters!
Comments made during presentations of the Under the Seawind display convinced me that I was on the right track both with regard to the design and the construction of the ships:
One woman remarked: "I've seen ships in bottles before, but these are works of art..."
A fellow model builder said: "I've been building ships in bottles since 1968 and I've never seen ships like these."
While yet another commented: "My husband and I brought one of our relatives, a retired naval officer, here to see the ships. He was very impressed. He kept wandering round and round the display. He'd never seen anything like it."
As always, my aim is to capture more than just an accurate model of a ship in a bottle. Rather I wish to capture the essence and aura of that ship at sea. Something that says that ship is alive: Plowing through the water. Heading out to sea. Captured for a fleeting moment, inside the bottle. For me, having put so much of my life into every single ship, it has to have that feeling. That mood. Or it's not worth building...
Yes, I could cut corners. Stamp the sails out with a die cutter. Cast the hulls of plastic. Mass produce them by the dozen. But then, what use would they be? They would have no life. And all that feeling would be gone. They'd be just a pile of dead sticks and kindling. In a sense, I suppose this is rather like those old impressionist masters, Monet, Renoir, Van Gogh and the rest, who sought after the light. Reached out for it. And chased it all their lives. They could have used a camera, but no, they captured that light on canvas, in brilliant colors that last forever.
For more about me and where I live, see here .
Scale Reproductions Home * Gallery Index: The Navy Page
* Gallery Index: In A Light Bulb
Gallery Index: The Yachtsman's Page * Gallery Index: Motor Ships * Gallery Index: Sailing Ships
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©Copyright 1998 D. S. Smith