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River Tagus, Navy Ship Board, circa 1952 NRP Diogo Gomes F331 (former HMS Awe
K526) and NRP Comandante Almeida Carvalho A527 (former HMCS Fort York, former
HMS Mingan).
Both ships are from Seals Models, the River is injection plastic, the Bangor
Class Minesweeper in resin. In these sets, there are two ships per item which is
a very good value for the expensive price, especially the Bangor set.
Seals Models made the kits in WWII configuration, which would be nice if I
pretended to make them under the Royal Navy Management... this is not the case!
I wanted to portray them in Portuguese Navy use and for that I had to make
"some" modifications.
NRP Diogo Gomes F331: For these modifications I used as main reference an
article published by Ricardo Matias in the Revista de Marinha Nº795 (September
1989), where he identifies all the modifications suffered by the two River
Frigates under portuguese service, with line drawings and very interesting
photos and used two books, listed in the end. Also the usual trip to the Navy
Archive was made, making the requisition of several period photos copies. The
fact that the kit includes two ships, make it a nice and latter version project
possibility, and now I have all I need.
With all the points identified, I acquired two sets of the most valuable WEM PE
set to date (at least for me): the V&W Class Destroyer set (Ref: PE 791), Niko
Models Single Bofors guns (more on this later) and also cannibalized a Niko
Models ORP Garland for the main armament.
Portholes positions were corrected in the hull, aft deck part was replaced with
evergreen, since the kit part showed wooden deck and in PN version was steel,
made all new superstructures: Bridge, CIC, Radar house and structure, new aft
gun platform (round instead of angular), Hedgehog housing, Tripod mast and more
little details, that turned the Seals Models River into a Portuguese River
Frigate. Painting was made using WEM Colourcoats Deck Gray and Portuguese Navy
real vertical surfaces gray that was thinned for a previous project, applied the
usual home made decals, rigging was Caennis line. Flags are paper flags from
Tauro Model - with the exception or Portuguese Flag (also homemade decal). When
I was finishing the model to enter ModelTroia contest, just missing gluing all
the armament, I started with the bofors guns (6 of them)... Suddenly I was two
barrels short!!! I search for an hour, but the carpet monster had win another
battle... I gave up, didn't had the spirit even to glue the main armament, so I
took the model and placed it in the GIN (Grupo de Interesse Naval - Naval
Interest Group SIG) as a work in progress! Darn...
NRP Almeida Carvalho A-527 If I had the work cut out for me with the River, with
the Bangor was a completely different case. No articles, no books, very scarce
photo records of this (also) two unit class of Survey ships in the Portuguese
Navy. A curiosity on this particular ship is the fact that when the Colonial War
started in African Portuguese Colonies (mainly Guinea-Bissau, Angola and
Mozambique), the vessel was armed and transformed in the first Corvette of XX
century Portuguese Navy, serving in the Cape Verde archipelago and also at
Guinea-Bissau renamed NRP Cacheu F-470! I bought the only available book that
mentioned the Almeida Carvalho, from the Hydrographic Institute: "The Navy in
the Sea Investigation 1800~1999" which has a chapter with a small file on each
ship used as survey ship in these two centuries... small file for what I
pretended, of course! So, with a different subject in mind, another trip to the
Navy Archives, where the staff helped, as usual, to solve my request to check
and see the photographic registry of these two ships. Another great surprise,
was that they were very distinct, in mast shape and the other vessel, NRP
Almirante Lacerda A-525, retained it's weapons even during Hydrographic service.
01 deck was modified with evergreen, some winches and structures were
repositioned, the weapon locations removed, new mast, radar and part of bridge
were also scratch-built. Again V&W Pe set from WEM provided railings and the
search light structure. The painting scheme here is of usal for survey and
hydrographic ships: white hull and main superstructures, gray deck for metal
areas, wooden decks (teak) and yellow ochre funnel and, in this particular case,
the searchlight platform. For these I used Bianco Sporco Opaco (WEMCC RM07), IJN
Deck Tan (WEMCC IJN09), Modern US Navy Flight Deck Gray (WEMCC M05) and Humbrol
Trainer Yellow (24) which after a wash with artists oils turned out what I
wanted. One of the photos showed the Comandante Almeida Carvalho at
the buoy at the Tagus River with the awning stanchions mounted, and using
stretched sprue using Jim Baumann's technique I tried to replicate it in the
best of my abilities... Not perfect, but I think I managed to make it
convincing. Rigging, Decals and Flags as described for the Diogo Gomes and some
PE sailors were spread in both ships.
Made the buoy from the head of one of those pins with a plastic head, added a
brass fair-lead (?) and a evergreen strip as reinforcement. It was time to
attach the ships to the base... and for the Diogo Gomes I made some waves with
modeling paste. The Tagus River bit was made using watercolor paper, painted
with acrylics, with a coat of dabbed acrylic gel medium and finished with a coat
of gloss varnish
Overall I think I managed to make a well balanced diorama, with two smaller
vessels, with different colors and different motion situations.
Kits: - SealsModels River Class Kit plastic kit (first batch released, without
decals) - SealsModels Bangor Class Minesweeper resin kit
PE and Resin Sets, other materials: - WEM V & W Class Destroyer Set (x2) - Niko
Models single bofors set (x2) - Niko Models ORP Garland (main armament) - Eduard
1/700 sailors - Paints as described above - Plus evergreen and brass rod from
Rui's Dockyard Warehouses ;)
References: - Revista de Marinha Nº795 - 75 Anos no Mar, volume 6 - A
Marinha na Investigação do Mar 1800-1999 - Marinha de Guerra Portuguesa 1962 -
Photos from Arquivo Central da Marinha
Cheers, Rui