SHIP MODELS

Evening Star, Issue 19002, 25 July 1925, Page 13

SHIP MODELS

Quietly and consistently the Ship Model Society of New York is serving tho cause of the sea by continuing to hold its exhibitions of rare marinulia, and this 1 present show at the Pine Arts Building is the third since the society's inception in 1920. Loc.n devotees of ships and seagoing matters are finally banded together iu a society for tlio. furtherance of maritime interests in these parts, conscious of tho s. r d reflection tnat in this, one of tho world's greatest ports, there is no naval museum or other public home for saby data “H.P.,” in the ‘ Christian Science Monitor ’). Loudon has three such museums, and Paris enjoys in its Musee de Marine in tho Louvre one of tho finest to bo found anywhere; while Ghent, Marseilles, and Venice are among the cities mapped for marine museums, and even such inland centres as Madrid and Berlin are similarly equipped. Yet New York, with its numberless institutions of one sort or another, can boast of no naval member. Elsewhere along the Allan Lie coast, in Philadelphia, Washington, Portsmouth, Salem, and Boston, there are splendid rendezvous for the manually inclined, tho latter port possessing two, in fact. But in New York, the great water gate of tho Western world, there is none.

As is invariably the case in the midst of sea trophies and treasures, a certain echoing of doughty deeds and daring doers hovers about—a sort of ghostly balladry of | wind and wave inextricably compounded i into these tokens of other days that sets j up its faint chanting’ like tho soft sighing I within the twisted passages of a shell. I These little ships so snugly anchored within | their havens of polished glass, these thou- < sand and one labors of patient hours and patient hands—there is in their company a j gentle zest and pungent pleasure that hak ; no exact equal. To examine tho three won- ( dorful models of seventeenth and eighteenth I century English ships lent by Henry H. I Rogers—marvellously factored from mellow pear wood and now' toned to a rare soilness of color and patina—is to feel in some measure the beauty and thrill of ships in their grandest estate. Two of the Rogers vessels are fnjm the famous Cuckfield Park collection, formed by Charles Sergison when he was Clerk of the Acts of the British Navy from 1689 to 1718. One is a miniature English warship of 54 guns, restored and rigged by Henry B. Culver with rigging from another model of the same date, and valued at 20,000d01. The other is a scale construction model of an English brigantine of the same period, ; also rigged and restored by Mr Culver. Junius S, Morgan, jun., exhibits a model of the ampliisdrome, a curious double-ended ship proposed by Admiral Williaumez, of | tho French navy, which had two plows, enabling it to go forward or back without turning. The system of yards and sails. xvas arranged to that end, and it is supposed that this model was made personally by the admiral about 1830. Another French | model, shown by Charles H. Candler, is 1 an interesting three-section hull of a “gali-j ote a bomhes,” which opens ingeniously at j the turn of a lever to show the interior; construction. ... . !

One of the wonders of the exhibition is the working model of the IJ.S.S. North Dakota (length 66in, beam lOiin), which is entirely run by electricity, from being controlled by radio waves from any shore station to tho tiring of its miniature guns. This remarkable ship is the result of five years’ labor on tho part of its exhibitor, Charles A. Moyers, jun. Another rarity is the scale model of the, foremast of H.M.S. Victory of 1756, showing the effect of enemy projectiles during the Battle ol 1 rafalgar. Tho model is made from the wood of the original topmast. Then there is the, model of an ice-yacht, ami for the antiquarians there is a reproduction .of an Egyptian ship of the year 3000 b.c. Elsewhere is a scale model of the s.s. Bnreng-arift, of the Cimard Line, which shows, with tho use of mirrors, n crosssection of her inferior arrangements. There is an interesting :nodel of Hie Britannia. 2,050 tons, (ho earliest steaming vessel which Hie Canard Company sent forth. There are numerous other items of interest, such as clipper ships, ancient. Spanish galleons, Chinese junks, Vancouver canoes, Viking ships, whaling ships, various paddles, photographs, paintings, .prints, sailors' ditty-boxes, fancy beckets, full-ringed ships in bottles—one such even in an electric light, bulb for a. truly modern variation—log hooks, astrolabes of the ’fiflccnth and sixteenth centuries, tide tables, etc.