Ship model
The most common purposes for boat and ship models include burial votives, house hold articles, art, and toys.
Archaeologists have determined that Ancient Greek ship models were used as burial or votive offerings and as household articles such as lamps or drinking vessels.
[3] The kinds of ships depicted in Ancient Greek models can be classified broadly as small craft, merchant vessels, and warships.
[5] This ship model is made of clay and features a distinctive prow shaped like a boar's head that is described by Herodotus in The History, and depicted on pottery, coins seals and drinking cups.
The vessel has no provenance, save for the reported location of its discovery off the Phoenician coast, but scientists have been able to tentatively confirm the origin and authenticity of this model.
While this technique makes the assumption that artists scaled the models appropriately, it is useful to get some sense of how large these ships and boats may have been in real life.
Ancient Egyptian ship and boat models were most frequently placed in tombs of prominent people as "magical substitutes for the actual objects which the deceased has used in life and which he expected to use again in the next world.
[16] The wide variety of vessels depicted by the models in these two tombs has provided archaeologists new information on the types of boats that were used in Egypt.
Despite some of the limitations of interpreting ancient Mediterranean ship models, archaeologists have been able to glean a great deal of information from these items.
Some of the oldest surviving European ship models have been those of early craft such as galleys, galleons, and possibly carracks, dating from the 12th through the 15th centuries and found occasionally mounted in churches, where they were used in ceremonies to bless ships and those who sailed in them,[19] or as votive offerings for successful voyages or surviving peril at sea, a practice which remained common in Catholic countries until the 19th century.
Until the early 18th century, virtually all European small craft and many larger vessels were built without formal plans being drawn.
Shipwrights would construct models to show prospective customers how the full size ship would appear and to illustrate advanced building techniques.
[20] Although many of these models did not illustrate the actual timbering or framing, they did show the form of the hull and usually had great detail of the deck furnishings, masts, spars, and general configuration.
[citation needed] During the Napoleonic wars French and English seamen who were taken prisoner were confined, sometimes for many years, and in their boredom sought relief by building ship models from scraps of wood and bone.
For the most part, the models had carved wooden hulls with rigging made from human hair, horsehair, silk, or whatever other fine material could be obtained.
[23] In the early part of the 20th century, amateur ship model kits became available from companies such as Bassett-Lowke in Great Britain[24][25] and Boucher's in the United States.
[26] Early 20th century models comprised a combination of wooden hulls and cast lead for anchors, deadeyes, and rigging blocks.
Thin, workable sheets of iron could be coated with tin to prevent rusting, then mass-produced as parts of ship model kits.
The process was pioneered by French ship model manufacturer Radiguet, which produced a line of zinc boats with pressurised steam engines, wooden decking and brass fittings.
[27] The speed of production for tinplate vessels enabled one 1909 manufacturer to produce ship models of speedboats that had competed that year in Monaco.
[29] The world's leading magazine for this hobby, Model Boat,[30] is published from the UK by MyTime Media and has been in print continuously since 1950.
In recent years, widespread internet access has played a major role in promoting ship modelling, offering enthusiasts the opportunity to show off their work and share techniques.
The inexpensive plastic kits were initially targeted to the postwar generation[31] who could glue them together and produce passable replicas in a single afternoon.
A more recent addition has been a variety of kits in cold cure resin marketed by various small companies as part of a cottage industry.
Decals, specialized paints and turned metal replacement gun barrels are available to make plastic models more accurate.
The introduction of flat photoetched metal sets, usually stainless steel or brass, also provide much more realistic lifelines, cranes, and other details than are possible with the injection molded plastic kits.
Model ships have been used for war gaming since antiquity, but the introduction of elaborate rules made the practice more popular in the early 20th century.
Manned models are used for research (e.g. ship behaviour), engineering (e.g. port layout) and for training in shiphandling (e.g. maritime pilots, masters and officers).
The facility uses manned models at a 1:25 scale on a man-made lake designed to simulate natural conditions in harbours, canals, and open seas.
The USS Constitution Museum operates a model shipwright guild from the Charlestown Navy Yard adjacent to the berth for the vessel itself, as does the San Francisco Maritime National Historical Park by sponsoring the Hyde Street Pier Model Shipwrights and providing work and meeting to them aboard space aboard the ferryboat Eureka tied at the Hyde Street Pier where they are considered working museum volunteers.
