Six RMS Mauretania Hulls

[PF Naughton]

Hi,

 

While surfing eBay last week I stumbled across someone selling a batch of miscellaneous unboxed ship models fairly cheaply, which included a couple that I had hoped to eventually pick up someday.  So I put in a bid and ended up winning the lot.  The package arrived earlier this week and included not only a complete bagged kit for the Heller Roc Amadour (fishing vessel) and a bagged Lindberg Coast Guard Tug, but also bunch of unbagged sprues for several kits including an old Lindberg American Presidents Line Passenger vessel, an old Lindberg Coast Guard Patrol Boat and six Airfix RMS Mauretania models.  I haven't fully checked to see if all the parts for the unbagged kits are there, but even if they are not I am sure I can either scratchbuild something to replace the missing parts and/or use the parts that are present as a basis for something else. 

 

The big issue though, is that I'm not really sure what to do with the six RMS Mauretania hulls.  I have read on Wikipedia that over her life she appeared in a variety of different paint schemes including:

• a black hull and white upperworks
• a dark gray hull with black funnels (during WWI)
• two different dazzle paint schemes (during WWI)
• as a Hospital Ship, with a White Hull & Upperworks with Buff Funnels and Red Crosses and a Green Band (during WWI)
• a drab Gray (immediately after WWI)
• a white hull and upperworks (in the 1930s)

 

I guess I almost have enough kits to do one in each paint scheme, but that would seem like an awful lot of very similar builds.  As such, I may look into trying to kitbash some of the hulls into something else, but I'm not sure what yet.  One thought is maybe doing a what-if early aircraft carrier kind of along the lines of HMS Argus, and another thought would be to use the hull as the basis for a generic WWI era passenger or passenger/cargo vessel.

 

Anyway, I was wondering if anyone else had any other suggestions?

 

Thanks

 

Pat

[Martian]

Lusitania?

 

Martian 👽

[VMA131Marine]

10 minutes ago, Martian Hale said:

Lusitania?

 

Martian 👽

This would be do-able. The hardest part would be replacing all the horn type ventilators on the upper decks with the dustbin type that the Lusitania carried. The Lusitania also had more wheelhouse windows.

[MikeR]

IIRC Lusitania had a narrower superstructure from the promenade deck up as well. All very doable!

 

Mike.

[Killingholme]

Some light reading...

 

http://russiannavy.net/militaryPhotos/engineering/Liners/lusitania.pdf

 

 

[PF Naughton]

Hi,

Thanks

Pat