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Reference Photos/Drawings of Merchant Ships?


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Hello everybody,

I was just wondering if anybody knew where I could find visual references of 20th century merchant ships? Usually, for making ships in bottles I like to find what's called a general arrangement plan or drawing, which shows the exterior of the ship in question from the side and from the top down (helpful in translating the 2-D images into a 3D model to put into the bottle), or barring that, photographs or line drawings which show the same or similar angles if the plans for the ship are not available.

I don't know if this would exist, but would there be a book, website, whatever, which just has the profile views of a lot of different ships all in one place? I'll admit that my favorite ships to do are passenger liners, but I'd also like to do things like freighters, tankers, and other steam and diesel merchantmen from the pre-container era, from all over the world. Sort of an under-appreciated genre of ship modelling, I suppose since those ships were pretty well taken for granted at the time?

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Have a look at some of the Models Shipbuilder shows on the site. I'm sure he has mentioned some books etc, plus his own website and publications have a wealth of information in them.

John Bowen's books Miniature Merchant Ships (ISBN 0-85177-659-0) and More Miniature Merchant Ships ((ISBN 0-85177-936-0) have a lot of plans in them, plus details and techniques for building them.

Alan

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20 hours ago, IgorSky said:

Hi Shipwright1912!

Which type of ships of the 20th century are you interested in? I'm not a very big fan of modern ships, but in my collection there are some drawings of steamboats, icebreakers, tugboats, etc.

Best Regards!
Igor.

Hello Igor,

Really I'm into all types, so any plans/drawings I could get to work off of would be great! I confess my absolute favorites to make are liners, but in general I find it's very much a "all Titanic, all the time" sort of market. Nothing wrong with that, per se, the Titanic is one of my favorites, and I've done several SIBs of her, but it gets a little boring doing the same ship over and over again, and I'd like to have a diverse selection of ships available to choose from to put up in my shop on Etsy.com, and I find that the humble steam or diesel merchantmen just don't seem to get a lot of love in regards to making SIB's. That's why I've shied away from doing sailing ships to a degree, it's not that I can't do them, it's just that's what everyone else who makes SIB's seems to primarily be doing, and I'd just like to do something different.

As I mentioned above, I'm open to anything from the dawn of the steam era right up until containerization started coming into play and the ships started getting to looking like big identical breadboxes, for I'd like to shine a bit of a light onto the "working joes" of the sea-lanes and the rivers who did the lions' share of the work back in the 20th century before jet aircraft came into the picture, with special attention going to "oddballs" like the lightships and the N.S. Savannah . Big ships, little ships, work-boats, river craft, it doesn't matter. If there's  a plan or some good profile views, I'd like to take a crack at making it.

Cheers,

Brendan O.

P.S.

I'd also like to say thank-you to everybody who's answered this posting so far, you guys are awesome! Keep 'em coming!

 

Edited by Shipwright1912
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The question has been answered in full!    There is a bottomless pit of plans of merchant ships out there.     The books by John Bowen, Waine Research Publications, P N Thomas etc are stuffed full of plans.  Numerous other books and journals as well!    They can be obtained by searching  http://www.bookfinder.com or even Ebay.    Here is Politician, buit from a plan from a John Bowen book!    Here is a Utube presentation of how I built the model:   https://youtu.be/dbKlh_aa9r4

 

Bob

 

Politician.JPG

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4 hours ago, Shipwright1912 said:

Big ships, little ships, work-boats, river craft, it doesn't matter. If there's  a plan or some good profile views, I'd like to take a crack at making it.

OK, Brendan!
I will try to find in my archives something helpful.

P.S. There is the book "The Brendan woyage" in my home library. :)

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2 minutes ago, IgorSky said:

OK, Brendan!
I will try to find in my archives something helpful.

P.S. There is the book "The Brendan woyage" in my home library. :)

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17 hours ago, Sapper said:

Google Solid Model Memories and scroll down to Marine Miniatures, also Modelcraft.  There are some merchants on those files.

Regards

 

Sapper

Thanks ever so much for the link, Sapper, pretty well exactly what I was looking for and then some, even found a nifty little article from Popular Mechanics on how to do a submerged submarine in bottle! I've done a sub already, but it was on the surface as I was still puzzling out how to make it look like it was underwater at the time, which the article handily provided.

Another resource I've come across on my own is Shipbucket. It's technically a site about making color profile drawings of ships using computer programs like Paint to a set scale and format. Mostly about military ships, but there is a large collection of merchant ships from many nations, and the list keeps getting bigger all the time. On the downside, there's only the side view for most of them,  but for most ships I think that'll do, can always supplement the profile with photos and other reference material if I can find it to see what the ship looks like from the top down and from the other angles.

I'll be looking into acquiring some of the books that have been mentioned as the ol' budget and time allows, for they sound great and they'd be neat books to have even if I don't get around to making all the ships in them. Thanks again, lads!

---

Igor,

The Brendan Voyage huh? :lol: I suppose that would be about Brendan the Navigator (no relation, more's the pity!) then? Brought a smile to my face all the same, and I certainly appreciate you going to the trouble of looking through your archives, thanks very much!

 

Brendan O.

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