The United States Shipping Board was founded in 1916; its purpose was the buildup of  a large merchant navy for the Unites States to be prepared in the case of war with Germany. Its first task was to close contracts with companys and yards. One of these companys, the American International Corp., cooperated with the New York Shipbuilding Company of Camden, New Jersey. To produce more ships the yard needed to be expanded. A building site for the new yard was found on swampy Island Hog Island, near Philadelphia at the banks of the River Delaware. At the same time the New York Shipbuilding Company´s engineers designed a new type of freighter – the Hog Islander. Demands of mass production resulted in a simple and boxy design. The Hog Islander was the world´s first ship type developed and produced in sectional construction for mass production – long years before the famous Liberty ship.
 
The Hog Islander Typ A was a standard freighter 380 feet long, with 54 feet of beam and a displacement of nearly 5.000 ts. A Typ B was produced in limited numbers as a troop transporter. The first ship, SS Quistonck, was built in 1918. 121 more followed until 1921. Most of the vessels were sold to shipping companys around the world. Only a few served in the USN. Most of the ships took part in the Second World War. 58 of them were lost in the hard battle fought on all oceans. The remaining vessels served in different shipping lines until 1967, when the last ship was broken up in Argentina.
 
Battlefleet Models offers a really nice model kit of this interesting type of ship. The box contains nearly 100 resin parts, some brass rod for the masts and a small photo etch set. Building the model was pure fun. Cleaning all the fine small parts was a little bit labour-intensive and needed some extra attention.  Beside the kit parts I used various photo etch sets from Lion Roar and GMM. The davits were scratchbuilt from fine silver wire. I placed an enclosed scratchbuilt deck house on top of the bridge just as some scratchbuilt winches next to the davits. Before painting, the model was assembled completely save the bridge and some small parts. The model was painted WEM´s 5-O Ocean grey overall. Weathering was done using artist´s oil paints and acrylics. For the rigging, stretched sprue was used.
 
I choose to build the Hog Islander as SS Shikshinny because the model was built as part of our Liverpool Langton and Brocklebank Dock diorama. This diorama tells the story of the arriving of convoy SC.123 on April 4th 1943. SS Shickshinny sailed with this convoy as the only Hog Islander.
 
Because of the diorama´s size we only display it on model shows. In the meantime my ships are kept on small display bases in my glass cabinet.
 
Christian Bruer