I introduced myself to the list by mentioning my first experience with ship modeling. This was the Gowland & Gowland (soon to be Revell) “Shipyard Ships in Miniature” series of the early 1950s. I was in seventh grade, living in a small southern New Jersey seacoast town. Other than Saturday movie matinees, where one might indulge his fantasies about pirate treasure and great naval battles, there wasn’t much in the way of amusement for a pre-adolescent.

A local combination hobby shop and magazine store displayed a small series of boxes in the window on which were portrayed colorful sailing ships in all their glorious regalia. I was awestruck. I went into the store and counted the sparse change I had accumulated from my newspaper route. I had a quarter, enough for one model. I bought the one that most fascinated me – Sir Francis Drake’s Golden Hind.

Up until that moment, I had been rather frustrated in my model-making efforts. I had badly botched a Cleveland’s balsa wood kit of a Fletcher class destroyer, necessitating a trip to the emergency room to stitch a deep Exacto knife cut to the first finger joint. In contrast, the Gowland box top promised a “quick construction kit”. Much to my delight, the opened box revealed a medley of meticulously formed components, all molded in “high-impact polystyrene”, a translucent soapy off-white substance that immediately captured the essence of Drake’s jaunty English galleon.

Gowland & Gowland, (alternately “Gowland Creations”) of Santa Barbara, California, was a trailblazer in the newborn plastic modeling industry. In 1952 the inaugural entry in the field was Gowland’s Ships in Miniature series and their companion Highway Pioneers series of model cars. These items were distributed by a firm called Revell, soon to take over both production and distribution of the Gowland line. I was more beguiled by the ships than the cars – though I did build the 1915 model T sedan. This appeal has to do with the allure of the model ship as an icon evoking the whole world of maritime adventure and commerce.

I lived on the seashore and would often scan the horizon with 20-power Navy surplus binoculars in search of the odd fishing trawler or tramp steamer – and once in a great while a sumptuous transatlantic liner. I had purchased a used copy of Talbot-Boothe’s ship recognition manual so that I could identify the vessels I discovered. With the advent of easily assembled plastic replicas, I could connect the dots between the glorious realm of maritime adventure and my little bedroom. This was a GOOD THING. Today I might have been diagnosed with Attention Deficit Disorder. Then, I was just a kid who couldn’t sit still long enough to skim tedious pages about the doings of kings, queens and their armies and fleets. Ship modeling remedied my unscholarly behavior.

Coast Guard cutters regularly plied the numerous bays, inlets, rivers and oceans permeating our island vacation spot. I was rescued at sea once when my little “Jersey Sneak Box” skiff was borne away out through the Absecon Bay inlet at riptide and cast upon the high seas during a nor'easter. So ships were the thing as far as I was concerned. I was hooked on nautical lore and literature. Collecting the little Gowland fleet imparted my enchantment with the watery world beyond the horizon with a sharper focus.

Getting back to the model, I discovered that I needed special glue to bond the polystyrene, sending me back to the hobby shop. Further, the instructions specified an enamel or oil-based paint as lacquer might wrinkle the surface of the plastic. Having procured the necessary finishing touches, I found that assembling the model was every bit as easy as promised. The most difficult part, aside from the painting, was affixing the thin flexible sheet “ratlines” to the mast and hull. Even with tweezers, it was difficult to get the springy little strips to line up and adhere to the hull and masts. I recall that the painting was particularly challenging, with all those intricate triangle patterns on the quarterdeck bulwarks and the transom. Even with ultra-fine brushes, the task required a very steady hand and infinite patience. The finished model was a gem. And it beckoned me back to the books.

Within a few months the Golden Hind was joined by all nine remaining ships in the series, including Bon Homme Richard, Constitution, a Treasury department revenue cutter, the Savannah, Flying Cloud, the latest entry being the Grand Banks fishing schooner Gertrude L. Thebaud of 1929. As the collection grew, so did my little bookshelf of nautical references – Morison’s series on the great seafaring explorers, Potter and Nimitz’s marvelous Naval Academy text on Sea Power, Mahan’s reference works and more. I had ample material for book reports and all manner of class projects entailing “show and tell” sessions with my model ships. While no “teacher’s pet”, I was definitely on track towards higher education, which had been seriously in doubt up to that point.

I later moved on from the Gowland classics to Revell and Monogram’s Forrestal Class CV’s, Fletcher class destroyers (enticing me to examine Roscoe’s lively book on the tin cans), someone’s replica of the Mighty Mo, and a whole armada more. Bedroom clutter, in my mother’s view, was more than compensated by my newfound interest in books and research. I hardly need to counsel members of this list about the indispensability of solid academic inquiry if one is to paint and configure his or her maritime facsimile accurately.

I had little room in my college dorm berth to amass nautical mock-ups – until a trip to New York led me to a shop ( I forget the name and exact location) that specialized in 1:1200 and 1:1250 scale metal Lilliputian warships produced by firms such as Trident, Superior, Mercator, Wiking, and Navis. I constructed a 15-inch square showcase for my collection, which could be sheltered on the dozen or so shelves and protected from dust and prying hands with a glass cover.

Much to my chagrin, I found that a career in naval history did not put one on the fast-track to monetary compensation. I eventually settled for a career in tax law consulting, which occupied my waking hours, allowing only the odd moment to pursue my side interest in modeling and military/naval history. In 1971, my tax work in the Washington, DC area brought me to the offices of an organization known as the Historical Evaluation and Research Organization (HERO). While interviewing the director, the distinguished miltiary historian Trevor Dupuy, I revealed my abiding interest in the history of warfare. This led to a consulting contract on a weapons lethality database he was compiling for the Department of Defense. From that time forward, I was able to get my work published on an eclectic range of military and naval subjects for publications such as Sea Classics, Strategy & Tactics, and Command as well as several encyclopedias of warfare. Since retiring four years ago, my productivity in the field has expanded greatly and I had my first book, The Roman-Judaeo War, published in September 2002. My current projects involve a book on seapower in antiquity as well as articles on ancient exploration.

My collection of meticulous reproductions of warships and merchantmen, great and small, continues to inspire my writing career. Unfortunately, the onset of arthritis in my fingers has terminated my model-making career, but I continue to collect built nautical facsimiles offered on E-bay and a variety of commercial suppliers of ready-made replicas. Without exaggeration, I think I can safely say that ship modeling turned me on to naval history and equipped me to cope with the uncertainties and lethargy of approaching old age.

Copyright © SMML 2003