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HP Models British Promise, 1:700, by Mike McCabe
I have always liked tankers and had wanted to do one for a while when I came
across the HP resin kit of a ‘British Armed tanker 1940’. When it arrived
I assumed it would be based on a particular ship so started to do some research,
not knowing much about merchant ships of WW2. The main difficulty of
carrying out any reseach on merchant ships of the period is that the vast
numbers that were built means that so many of the ships don’t appear to have
been photographed, and what photos do exist tend to be mainly from a waterline
level and don’t show a lot of detail. So picking out a particular ship, at
a particular time, which is part and parcel of warship modelling of that period,
starts to fall apart when modelling merchant ships.
After searching through a number of books and many internet sites, I could not
find a photograph and information on what particular ship the kit was based on.
Length wise, this is quite a small ship for a tanker, the only ships that
matched this were two tankers built in 1943 by Cammell Lairds yards in
Birkenhead, British Promise and British Tradition. These generally fitted
the layout of the kit, most tankers of the period did, but these ships had two
masts were the kit had only one, and they had an extended rear superstructure,
also they were unarmed, but this was close enough for me.
The kit is generally well cast but bare on detail, tankers are complicated ships
with much piping, access catwalks etc, these were included in the kit but in
solid resin so would have to be replaced. As the only real change would be
the extension of the rear superstructure I did this first, using plastic card.
There are a number of deck levels on the bridge and above the rear
superstructure, the kit provides these on a layer of resin which is easy to
remove but does create problems. I always find it difficult to get these
deck parts both thin enough and flat, and I hate sanding. My solution was
to use these parts once removed as a template and to make new decks from brass
sheet. A quick score around the kit parts, cut out with scissors then
flattened and a new deck was made in minutes. Where the deck parts were
wooden decked, I used a scalpel to score the lines into the brass. Quick
and easy, I will use this method in future.
Once the main superstructures were in place, the task of detailing started.
A number of deck supports were needed, I added these with a combination of
scavenged etched parts, brass and plastic rod and stretched sprue. Cutting
a long story short details added to the model include pipes (brass rod),
catwalks (White Ensign), winches (Battlefleet), railing (GMM), davits, life
belts, open hatches, doors, valves, finishing off with the awning supports which
are always prominent on photos of these ships, made from coloured copper wire
(Little Cars). A great deal of the enjoyment of building this model came
from the research into getting if not the exactly accurate detailing of this
particular ship, then at least a right look for all the deck equipment.
Most of this came from what photos I could find, but a trip to the Williamson
Museum in Birkenhead where there are a number of superb large scale merchant
models, including some tankers, helped me at least start to understand how these
ships worked.
The colour scheme is again a matter of opinion rather than fact, the scheme is
correct for a British Tanker Company ship of the 1940’s, though I cannot be
certain that the scheme was worn in wartime although I did come across photos of
ships in wartime fit with these civilian colour schemes. The model can be
either seen as wartime or shortly post-war, depending on your choice, personally
I don’t mind as I think it looks extremely smart!
All in all this was one of the most fun ship models I had built in a long time
and I am very pleased with the results. I’m sure I will build more
tankers, I just like them, it is nice to see a few new releases on this subject,
I hope it will encourage others to try and build something a little different
for a change and show that a ship doesn’t have to have guns to be interesting.
The model formed part of the Atlantic Convoy group build at the IPMS UK
Nationals show in Telford 2007.