March 2024

From the Interim Chairman

Our Sunday meeting in February was well attended and featured four exhibits from expert model maker Colin Vass. His amazing scratch-built Warspite model took him fifteen years to make and featured many working and remote-controlled parts. We were blown away by the level of detail, the size and the quality. You can see Part I of six short videos about it at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Td-qE_w3w4U.

We are continuing to build the forward BNRA programme. Please let us know if you have a talk that you can give, either on the Sunday series or the Zoom sessions. It can be quite short, or our normal length of 40–45 minutes. At the May symposium we hope to have the next Journal issue available. Our new editor Rob White is beavering away on it and promises an interesting and fun edition. We plan to organise a visit in June – watch this space!

Models, Photography & Artwork Meeting

For those able to attend the February meeting at Sturdy’s Castle, there was a feast in store. There are insufficient superlatives to describe Colin Vass’s very large and amazingly detailed models of HMS Warspite, the Italian Cruiser Zara and two MTBs. Rob White was busy with his camera and images of the ships, which have sea-going capability, will appear in the next issue of the Journal.

Another model was John Foreman’s working Holland submarine boat, brought along to accompany his talk on the history of these early submarines. He convinced me that the design was unsound from the outset, with the hazards of petrol engines – the crew smoked – gassing batteries and other perils. Amazing that no lives were lost during their short history.

Susan Amos gave a most interesting talk on the history of the Sheerness Dockyard Chapel, built in 1828 in the neo-classical style used for all the dockyard buildings. The chapel was rebuilt and embellished to suit Victorian taste after a fire in 1881, while a second serious fire in 2001 caused serious damage and destroyed the roof. Thanks to the efforts of Sheerness Dockyard Preservation Trust, the chapel has been restored to its former late Georgian identity. Susan was able to visit during the 2020 lockdown and again for the official opening on the 23 June last year.

Susan’s article on the chapel will appear in the next issue of the Journal. See here: https://ahfund.org.uk/news/latest/rescued-from-ruinsheerness-dockyard-church-re-opens/.

Brain Teaser

What is the connection between the wooden wall ships HMS Hindustan (1841) and HMS Impregnable (1860) and the London department store Liberty’s?

Phoenix in Films

In 2022 the tall ship Phoenix, star of many films, was advertised for sale and subsequently sold. Built in Denmark in 1929 by Hjorne and Jakobsen of Frederikshavn, and intended as a Baltic Trader, for 20 years she worked instead as an evangelical mission schooner. In 1991 the Phoenix was converted into the 15th century caravel Santa Maria for the Ridley Scott film 1492 Conquest of Paradise while a 1996 conversion turned her into a two-masted 18th century Brig; in this rig she starred in the following: Horn Blower series; Captain Sabretooth; Voyage of Discovery; Moll Flanders; Frenchman’s Creek; The Scarlet Pimpernel; and Chronicles of Narnia: Voyage of the Dawn Treader. Since 2017 she has made appearances in the following: In the Heart of the Sea; Poldark – all series; Taboo; and Frontier.

Recent documentaries include Enslaved 2021, Tom Cunliffe’s series The Boats That Built Britain (available on YouTube at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h189q_gH73Q) and Dan Snow’s podcast History Hit 2021. In April 2022, the vessel completed filming in her third series of Outlander in Scotland; last year Ridley Scott used her in his film Napoleon; she also featured in Great Expectations with the BBC on the River Beaulieu. See here: https://woodenships.co.uk/sailing-yacht/tall-shipphoenix/.