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This schooner, was Hull Number 1 - my first humble attempt at building a ship in a bottle way back in the "stone age" and it's a little rough around the edges.
I didn't like the idea of putty which all the books suggested as I wanted a fast setting sea, so I used tinted, two-part acrylic. What a mistake that turned out to be! The sea set so fast that I finally had to mix it - inside the bottle! And to make matters worse the curing acrylic gave off a water-like compound that condensed all over the inside of the bottle streaking the glass... To say it was a mess is an understatement! I had to scrub the bottle out with detergent before I could install the ship. Even today, years later, it's still coming out and staining the sails... Then, when the ship was finished, there was such an unsightly "gap" at the stern of the schooner that I had to add the pilot boat to balance the scene. I must say that it sure wasn't easy getting it past the fully rigged ship...
From 1890-1902 a vast number of these schooners with four, five, or six masts were built in
North American shipyards. Their greatest advantage was the simplicity of their rig and their large cargo capacity which made them ideal for commerce.
The simple schooner rig required a smaller crew than was needed for the large
ocean-going square-riggers. And naturally the smaller crews increased the
owners' profits. At the time, the rule of thumb for determining the crew size
was: "Count the masts and multiply by 2" - although one wonders how a crew of only
12 could handle some of those big six-masters...
Photo from Picture Australia
Many of these schooners were built for the East and West coast timber trade, carrying cargoes of lumber stuffed into every nook and cranny of their holds and stacked high above their decks. Others served in the South Pacific copra trade or hauled endless cargoes from the Cape Breton coal mines or the Nova Scotian gypsum mines. As a result of their economy, these schooners were among the last of the tall ships to sail the seas. During the First World War, whole fleets of new schooners were hastily laid down to alleviate the drastic shortage in shipping tonnage that resulted from the U-boat war. The government of France alone ordered some 40 schooners from North American yards. All with auxiliary power steam engines and twin funnels. Most of which were not delivered until the war was nearly over.
Scale : 1 in 745 Length of Model : 5.5"(140mm)
Model ship photos & text © D.S. Smith 2003
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