Nineteenth Century New Bedford Whaleboat - Amati - 1/16 - Build Stalled Indefinitely

[Noel Smith]

Talking of Moby Dick, I watched a film on TV fairly recently with Chris Hemsworth playing the leading role. It was about the last voyage of the whaler Essex that was actually sunk by a whale.

In the film a British actor Ben Whishaw was playing the part of the writer Herman Melville interviewing the crewman of the Essex that Chris was playing about the disaster. Melville wrote his novel Moby Dick based on that crewman's experience.

 

Whaler's boats make really interesting models in their own right and I may be looking to make one myself having just completed (and corrected) Artesania Latinas Titanic's Lifeboat kit that was clicker built. 

 

Pity I cannot see the pictures of this whale boat build. Really messed up this thread unfortunately.

Edited April 23, 2023 by Noel Smith

[Peter2]

Yes, it's a pity we can't at present see the photos of Bertie's lovely boat model. He does a good job elsewhere so they will be worth viewing. Maybe soon....

Anyway, meanwhile, here's a quick anecdote: years ago, as a young non-nautical person (who gets nauseous on a water bed) I read somewhere an article which claimed that during the filming of the 1950s Moby Dick movie on the Irish coast, the original huge life-size fibreglass version of Moby Dick himself broke loose in a storm and floated away, never to be seen again by the film crew.

(So the film production team had a replacement Moby Dick made, and filming resumed.)

Nowadays I am more "sceptical"/"skeptical" of such a "fishy" story.

But still wouldn't it be great to think that some horrified whaling captain and his crew later that year might have seen a huge white whale on their horizon, and then become obsessed with hunting this (fake) leviathan?

"Cap'n, we've put five harpoons into him, and still he floats!"

Indeed is that filmic plastic giant beast still out there somewhere, bobbing on the cold waves?

I must find out ... "Ready the ship! I don't care if the International Whaling Commission have currently imposed a moratorium on hunting certain cetaceans! We must reduce plastic in the oceans!"

[Bertie McBoatface]

The build photos are lost forever but the build remains. It stalled on the tedious job of making the oars and paddles and harpoons and boathook and spades and lances blah blah blah.
 

However, it is not dead. I have that kit of the Charles W Morgan, a famous whaling ship, and those two were always meant to be built together. When I start the Morgan, I will restart the whaleboat.
 

You will have to be patient but let me assure you, “Whale meat again, don’t know where, don’t know when.” 🤣

[perdu]

To bring a small amount of life, if not liveliness to this build have an  old one of mine.

 

Not from a kit but back then I had never heard of a whaling boat model being around and inspired by another re-reading of Melville then other works on the topic I made this diorama which won the Barton Holmes Trophy for me at the 1980 IPMS Nationals.

 

I'm sure the work we have lost here was finer but this was what I could produce to nominally 1/32 scale

 

This from IPMS Magazine and the only other surviving picture shown here is from Scale Models April 1981 Nat's report

 

I gave the model to our branch a chairman, an ex matelot at his request so I only have two pictures taken from magazines these days and memories of  a very interesting build

 

 

I know, crap pictures but maybe a spur to Bertie, come on fella get back on with it please.