HMS Manxman, Airfix 1:600 modelled by Chris Smithers
 
It’s 1960. My dad has taken me to the Navy Day at Chatham Dockyard, Kent, in the UK. It’s not a good period for the Royal Navy. Nearly all the impressive and legendary WW2 cruisers (with the notable exceptions of the Sheffield and Belfast) have gone to the breakers. And the navy’s latest ships are minesweepers and a handful of Blackwood class anti-submarine frigates armed with two depth-charge mortars and just a single 40mm gun. Pathetic. Yes, we still have the Ark Royal and Victorious (equipped with very modern aircraft such as the Sea Vixen and Scimitar), and are looking forward to the commissioning of the first of the County class guided-missile destroyers. Whether they were destroyers in the ship classification sense or destroyers of guided-missiles wasn’t helpfully resolved by their cruiser dimensions.
 
Yep, bending the language to suit political purposes was going on even when George W and Tony Blur were still in short trousers. Surely the ultimate nonsense was the British Government’s theming of the 1970s Illustrious class carriers as ‘through-deck cruisers’. Moral: you want a carrier, call it a cruiser; you want a cruiser, call it a destroyer; you want a patrol boat, call it a recreational sailing dinghy. You want a war, call it military action. You want to secure oil supplies, call it regime change. Wow.
 
Highlight of the day for me was going on board the (very) fast minelayer HMS Manxman, about to undergo conversion to, paradoxically, a minesweeper support ship. Poacher turned gamekeeper. Now here was a REAL warship. Three funnels, three twin 4-inch gun mounts – a proper navy ship with size, speed and teeth. Reputedly one of the fastest in the navy, designed for 40 knots (can you imagine a ship that size doing 45mph – as fast as a motor torpedo boat and 30 percent faster that the fastest trans-Atlantic liners!). Nineteen years old and still in her prime. She was a very modern ship when she was born in 1941 – twin-shaft cruiser propulsion in a super-destroyer sized hull, all the latest electronic gizmos and kept bang up to date throughout her career*. Gorgeous.
 
I’ve never forgotten her. A few years  ago I did an audit of my un-built collection of model kits. And joy-of-joys I turned up a half-started Airfix 1:600 model of the old girl. Can’t remember when I bought it or when I started it, but the hull and main superstructure assemblies had been put together.
 
Great! A quick win. Wrong. Took me 27-hours spread over three weeks. But I enjoyed every single minute of it. Didn’t want to stop. Went on, and on and on adding detail. Was ordering stuff from White Ensign Models (WEM) as I went along. Need a better quad pom-pom. Need better 0.5-in mgs. Need better 4-inch mounts. Need radar, railings and ladders. Need some Carley floats. Heaven! Wife was convinced I would never finish it. I was convinced I didn’t want to.
 
It was blood and sweat. But no tears. I cut my fingers twice on scalpel blades. If what I did didn’t look right, I tore it off with pliers like a dentist pulling teeth and tried a different approach. I just learnt so much. Like, it’s never as difficult as you think it will be. Think about it overnight, what your options are, the materials, how you might do it. Is there something intended for some purpose I could use in a completely different way?
 
I quickly discovered that this Airfix kit does the manufacturer’s reputation no good at all. The inaccuracies in dimensions and details are quite extraordinary, even for an Airfix 1:600 ship kit. But I didn’t, couldn’t, know this until I assembled large chunks and then thought: “Hey, this doesn’t look right”. By great good fortune I had to hand a copy of Warship Profile 38 ‘Abdiel Class Fast Minelayers’. It contains a superb bi-fold 1:200 plan of the Abdiel, lead-ship in the class, plus a large number of, admittedly rather small and poor quality, photographs of all members of the class at different stages in their both very short and very long lives.
 
Aside from the super-detailing which will be obvious and follows conventional methods, the most important work in getting the model to look right involved: moving centre funnel and deck house behind the forward funnel 2mm (scale 4ft) forward; removing ‘streamlined’ curvature to funnel tops and moulded-on stay-band; restoring funnel height by wrapping them in 0.500 plastic card; moving foremast aft 2mm; rebuilding from scratch the ‘A’ gun shielding; scratch-built upper-bridge structure. I discarded the mainmast in the kit and scratch built a new one entirely from steel wire. The same for the foremast, including bracing between the tripod legs, except for the central main strut, which I slimmed down considerably. The WEM photo-etch set was great for things it wasn’t originally intended for – 3-bar rails for search radar and z-sections clipped out to create sirens on the fore funnel.
 
My biggest regret was that I didn’t discover the WEM ‘ultimate WW2 cruiser photo-etch set’ until I was three-quarters of the way through the project. All those bits I scratch built from wire and stretched-sprue (including Carley float outriggers) I could have snipped off their photo-etch set.
 
This is truly the first model I have ever been sorry to have to say: “Finished.” HMS Manxman – I loved you in life and I loved you in model form. Marry me. Have my babies - a flotilla of 13ft. wooden sailing dinghies to amuse myself and my friends at summer weekends would do nicely. Yes, I do know babies’ bottoms need constant attention – mine cost me £170 this year and a friend’s is up for even more. But you can’t beat ‘em. Boats.
 
*The loss of her sister ship HMS Welshman in 1943 anticipated by 50 years the circumstances surrounding the tragic capsizing and foundering of the cross-channel ferry Herald of Free Enterprise in 1987 and the Baltic car-ferry Estonia in 1994.
 
In the case of the Welshman the mining deck was in effect the upper deck for purposes of stability. In the case of the passenger ferries the same held true for the vehicle deck Every case involved a free-flooding area not partitioned by watertight bulkheads. HMS Welshman was struck by a torpedo at the aft end which caused extensive flooding. In a flat calm sea there was no motion on the ship to give warning of approaching instability and, despite slowly settling aft, all were caught by surprise when, two hours later, Welshman took a sudden heavy list and sank by the stern in three minutes. It would seem that the confidence of the ship’s officers in the safety of their ship following the initial damage was misplaced and that she was always in a dangerous state. 144 crew lost their lives.
 
Loss of life on the car ferries was much heavier, largely due to the rapid flooding and instability following the breaching of their vehicle loading doors. At about 6.00 p.m. on 6 March, 1987 the English cross-channel car ferry Herald of Free Enterprise capsized and sank (http://www.safetyline.wa.gov.au/institute/level1/course13/lecture40/l40_05.asp) just after leaving Zeebrugge harbour. Of the 459 or more people on board 189 died. The ferry had sailed with her bow doors open and as she passed the Outer Mole and increased speed, water came over the bow sill and flooded the lower car deck. The inrush of water destabilised her causing her to capsize. She sank in two minutes. Had she not come to rest on a sandbank, the resulting loss of life would probably have been greater.
 
The foundering of the Estonia (http://www.multi.fi/~stigb/Estonia/index.html) on September 28, 1994 saw the loss of 852 lives. She had encountered exceptionally heavy weather, and examination of the wreck provided conclusive evidence of structural failure of the bow doors.
 
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Additional text 17/03/11

It's now five years since I first completed this model and since then my skills have improved a lot. It still had potential for improvement, now being able to do what I didn't know how to do then. So it's had the full works of weathering, funnel guys, rigging and wireless aerials added and put on a proper sea.

I opened out the stern mine laying doors and - plop plop - you'll see the ship laying her eggs.  There are a couple of dozen crewmen at work around the ship, and officers in brown duffle coats conducting operations on the bridge. Signalling code is a tongue in cheek MU: 'Fairway has altered, DO NOT try it'.

The tragedy is that having written this update and before I had photographed it, I dropped the model.

Only four inches onto my desk, but on its side. The foremast was snapped in two, the mainmast struts ended up facing the wrong way and the whole mess was held together in a twisted cats cradle of detensioned rigging.

I couldn't just give up and smash my fist down on it. So I cut off the mess, rebuilt the masts and re-rigged it all over again. This time I rigged it a bit better, but now there's a bend in the foremast resulting from the accident I just couldn't correct. Also, I tensioned the leads from the aerial trunk too tight this time, resulting in a distinct linear kink in the aerials between the fore and mainmast.

Maybe a case of two steps forward and one step back.

Last but not least, I'd like to extend a great big fat THANK YOU to David Griffith for everything I learned in his book Ship Models from Kits.