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Here is my finished model of the Imperial Russian Navy’s monitor Uragan as commissioned in 1865. It is a paper model built from a 1:250-scale kit for the United States Navy monitor Lehigh designed by the late Magnus Mörck and available as a free download from Models n’Moore (www.modelsnmooore.com). Russia purchased the design from the American government for the US Navy’s first production class of monitors (the Passaic class of which Lehigh was a member) and built ten near clones. I made quite a few changes to model the Russian ship which are detailed in my work in progress for this model. I also there describe how I make my sea bases. I also scratch built a small local boat to add to the scene. A good friend in Riga sent me information about the local boats. It is sprit rigged and I have depicted it working as a long line fishing boat. Thanks again for your support - this is a great community! Maurice

This image is a detail from an illustration in my copy of Das Buch von der Deutschen Flotte (Leipzig, 1884). This is the start of my latest project: a model of the Royal Prussian Navy’s ironclad ram Prinz Adalbert. This warship was laid down at Bordeaux by Arman Frères as one of a pair named Cheops and Sphinx, supposedly for the Egyptian government but, in reality, for the Confederate States of America. When the French government discovered the ruse, it insisted that the two ships should be sold to established governments. Sphinx was sold to Denmark, which declined to accept it and sold it back to the Confederacy, which commissioned the ram as CSS Stonewall. Stonewall went to sea but conducted no operations before the Civil War ended. The ironclad was seized by the United States government, which in turn sold it to Japan. The Kingdom of Prussia purchased Cheops, in part because it was on the brink of war with Denmark. The ironclad ram was commissioned as SMS Prinz Adalbert at the end of 1865 but took part in no operations during either of the subsequent wars with Austria or with France. It was only in active service until late 1871 because, like several of the ships built abroad for the Confederacy, it was high in price but low in quality of materials, and was scrapped in 1878. I am building this model from a paper kit for CSS Stonewall that is digitally published by Heinkel Models. This kit is to 1:200 scale and my models are to 1:250 scale, so I have printed the supplied pdf pages at 80% to reduce them to my favoured scale. I also am building this as a waterline model, which I prefer, and Heinkel Models offer the option of either a full hull or a waterline version. The basic framework is assembled. It looks like it will be an interesting challenge to shape the hull sides at the lower stern and upper bow, where there is much convexity. This project also is likely to take some time to complete because Prinz Adalbert had brig sails as commissioned and there will be large amounts of rigging. I have not built fully rigged vessels for a while so I will need to retrain my brain, my hands, and my eyes in the techniques required for this. Thank you for looking. Maurice

I suffer from a long-standing fascination with the sometimes bizarre vessels generated by the combination of steam power, armour protection, and iron construction. Over the years it has led me to build models of dozens of these often odd vessels. At the moment I seem to be drawn to monitors. USS Monitor, by any standards, was both enormously influential and very unusual for its time. Its impact on warship design at the time was significant, with navies all over the world seizing on its features, for better or worse. The ramifications of this intrigue me. One of the oddities of history is that almost the first non-United States producer of monitors was Imperial Russia. This was a consequence of the then far from cordial relations between Russia and Great Britain, in particular (how things have changed!). The Russian naval attaché to the United States at the time was impressed by USS Monitor’s performance at Hampton Roads and was able, perfectly legitimately and with the consent of the United States government, to obtain and transmit detailed drawings of the follow-on class of monitors developed for the US Navy. Russia promptly laid down ten clones of the Passaic class, the first of which was Uragan. I also have become (once again) very enthusiastic about paper modelling as a medium for creating replicas of iron or steel warships in particular. It is not always an easy medium with which to work but it also is amazingly flexible. My latest project is to build a model of Uragan. It is based on a very nice freely-downloadable 1:250-scale paper model of Lehigh, a Passaic class monitor, by the fine designer Magnus Mörck (who sadly died quite recently) from http://www.modelsnmoore.com/. Note that, though Models 'n Moore is based in the United States, the download is designed for printing on A4 paper. This download also offers the option of building a model of USS Catskill or USS Patapsco of the same class (this is significant for my project) and a very attractive little tug that I certainly will build in the imminent future. Here is what the download provides. There were some differences between the American and Russian warships when they entered service. The most significant, from a paper modeller’s perspective, was that it seems that the Russian ships initially wore ‘Victorian’ livery. My first problem, therefore, was to transition to this from a US Navy all-black colour scheme, quite easy for plastic/resin/wood builders using paint but much more complicated for paper modellers. I should mention that a professional computer geek ‘accidentally’ deleted Photoshop from my computer (using which would make changing colours straightforward) and Adobe offered to rectify the situation very quickly and easily…for several hundred euros! Mörck’s model has a black hull, but his inclusion of Catskill means he provides a white turret that would work with some tweaks. I needed a grey deck and a yellow funnel. Esselte AB might come to the rescue here (file folders)!

As you will observe, my wife prevailed, so I finished another almost-complete project before moving forward with Uragan! This is my just completed model of the Imperial and Royal Navy’s Danube River monitor Leitha. Leitha was one of a pair of river monitors (the other was Maros) commissioned in 1872. After almost fifty years of front-line service conducting operations in most of Austria’s wars in the period (and participating in an attempted revolution), Leitha was ‘sold commercial’ (I think this is the correct English expression) and became an elevator gravel barge for the next seventy-five years. In 1992 a group of enthusiasts purchased the barge and began a five-year process of restoring the vessel into the earlier state as a monitor, mostly using volunteers as a labour force. Leitha now is a floating museum ship in Hungary. My model was built from a 1:250-scale paper kit published by JSC of Poland. JSC has a very individual approach to the structural design of its publications. In this case, the entire hull is built around a box girder structure from bow to stern and the final shape created by adding skins over formers attached to the box. It took me quite a long time spent studying the diagrams and the parts themselves before I felt comfortable to progress to the construction itself. This JSC kit is not as well detailed as the publications of some other companies. For example, some details are indicated only two-dimensionally by printing them onto the deck. Fortunately, I had two excellent references for this vessel: Friedrich Prasky’s Donaumonitoren Österreich-Ungarns von 1872 bis zur Gegenwart (Neuerwissenschlaftlicher Verlag: Vienna, 2004) and Georg Pawlik, Heinz Christ & Herbert Winkler’s Die K.u.K. Donauflotille 1870-1918 (H. Weishaupt Verlag: Graz, 1989). Be forewarned; these both are written in Austrian German and use the Imperial and Royal Navy’s technical terminology, which can be quite different from German German (the Imperial and Royal Navy’s immediate ancestor was the fleet of La Serenissima--the Republic of Venice—and this strongly influenced its terminology). Nevertheless, the information is these two works is priceless when building models of these intriguing warships. The outcome was that I added quite an amount of extra detail to my model of Leitha. I added laser-cut paper ladders and railings and substituted model railway chain for the anchor cables. I scratch built bollards from rolled paper tubes capped with punched paper discs. I added scratch-built masts, flag staffs, bitts, steam pipes, davits, anchor davits, mooring posts, a siren, and a galley chimney from brass rod. The two pumps were scratch built from brass tube and rod soldered together. The hawse pipes and cable fairleads are from copper tube. JSC produces a set of laser-cut card details for this kit but I used only part of it: the steering wheel, the anchors, the landing brows, and the interior details and rudder for the boats. Rigging and the tackles on the davits are from chemically blackened fine copper wire. I made the ‘Danube River’ and the plinth in the same way as for my model of the German monitor Mosel. Similarly, the sailors are modified suitable Preiser Z-scale figures. The gig, in this instance, was modified from JSC’s provided parts with the crew’s oars from brass wire and paper. My wife and I used to row as crew of racing pilot gigs, so this element certainly brought back memories! Building this model was definitely most enjoyable and a great opportunity to learn (I think I worked out a much better construction sequence than with Mosel this time!) but I know it still has its faults--I probably should replace or scratch build the jollboot. Thank you for taking a look. I hope you too like it . Maurice

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