The Ship Model Forum

I was tempted to put this in the review section, as in "Barge Pole" advice. But like Thumper I was taught if you cannot say anything nice, say nothing at all!

I came across this model in the centre isle of either Lidle or Aldi, the two blur in my mind. At sub £10 I thought "Why not?" It has been years since I did any model work, for various reasons, a cheap model seemed an ideal way to climb back into the saddle.

The artwork on the box is beautiful, of course I had forgotten the bit about judging a book by its cover!

Open the box and you get your first sneaky feeling there might be a reason why it was cheap. I recall Frog models in my youth, the boxes were sized to fit the US Supermarket shelves with no consideration to the size of the models.

My first instinct was to launch a search party to find the model.

Checking through the parts I was not surprised to find the sails were those truly awful pressed plastic type, no matter, I have recently taught myself how to use a sewing machine, I will make my own.

Checking out the hull I had to check the box again, had I bought the wrong one? Nope. But HMS Beagle was born a Cherokee Class Brig of the Royal Navy, 10 guns, a real sea going terrier, they built over a hundred of them, why I am not sure as they tended to - well - sink. Anyway, where are the gunports?

Checking the instructions you are invited to paint them on. Really? But the suggested location would put them below the gun deck, on a Brig the upper deck is the gun deck. Then there are four holes just before the quarterdeck, what on earth? They are round but with square surrounds, it seems these are the gunports. Baffled I got on the Internet and did some searching, should have done that first! Revell, bless them, produced a model of the Bounty, a converted Collier with four guns, apparently figuring no one would notice they used the same hull for their model of the Beagle and monkeyed with the deck moulding to try and pass it off as a Cherokee.

Checked mirror to see if I had big green flashing neon sign on forehead spelling "Sucker"

I toyed with the idea of doing a Steam Punk hack, but found out just about every disgruntled person buying it had done that already. Okay then, I will take it as a challenge, I would see if I could kit bash it into Beagle, or perhaps just a generic Cherokee. So here goes, I will probably make a right meat pie of it, but it might be fun, and it might wake up my dormant modelling skills, such as they ever were! Maybe even give some people a laugh.

That seems to be not a new bought kit.... This Revell is absolutely not a bad kit but not of a brandnew production date We are still modelers and a little work is always needed with all brands.

The comparison to Frog models is totally wrong.

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Revell's Beagle is a nice model of a different ship. Get you cat o'9 tails as you are looking at HMS Bounty.

Well here is a view of the typical fit, getting the two halves of the hull and the deck together should have been easy, there were parts that were obviously meant to intersect to lock it together, but they just did not fit, I started to get the impression the deck was made at a slightly different scale to the hull sides, I had to get in with a small nail file to remove some projections to get even a passing fitting. Once clamped together I used my favourite liquid polymer, Tamiya, trusting it to flow into all the joins. I had to go back a couple of times but eventually got a reasonable hull.

To answer the comments: It is new bought, but obviously there is the possibility it was a returned item put up for re-sale, the box did look a bit abused, but that is nothing new for these low cost supermarkets.

I stand by my comment on Frog, I built a lot of their warships in the early 70's and a destroyer came in the same size box as a battleship, both at the same scale, for example.

I agree it probably is the Bounty, sort of, the bowsprit was the first thing that struck me, I will come back to that during the build. But the shape of the hull, I am building a 1/60 wood model of Endeavour and the hull lines are very similar, but Beagle is supposed to be a Brig of War, not a fat collier like Endeavour, and of course Bounty.

Here the hull being assembled, notice the raised sections on the gunwale, these are supposed to slot into recessions on the hull sections, but the spacing is slightly out, making it impossible to get a proper fit until filed off. I am not complaining, just commenting.

The bow was horrible, it was supposed to form a hole for the bowsprit and a U shaped support, but the prongs of the U were hopelessly distorted and one snapped off when I tried to straighten them, looking to remake them I studied pics of the Beagle and realised this whole area was wrong anyway, the forecastle had been modified with raised sides, changing her from a flush deck, this was to improve sea keeping, particularly the tendency of the main deck to be constantly awash as noted by some who sailed in her. This was done during conversion to exploration and then again after her first mission. The quarterdeck was also raised, apparently at the expense of the Captain, in the references I found this is included in the sea keeping mods, but that makes no sense to me, you do not add a lump to your ship which will act as a fixed sail, you would reduce the risk of being pooped, but at a cost of sea worthiness. Looking at the other changes it seems more likely the quarterdeck was raised to provide a sheltered steering position and additional accommodation for paying passengers.

Anyway, first job was to trim and fill the bowsprit mounting.

I now needed to raise the bow midships gunwales and the quarterdeck, the quarterdeck also needs extending to cover the steering position. The midships gunwale was glaringly too low, not only by the few sketches available from history, but by the gun ports. The model comes with only one cannon, placing it on the deck confirmed things were all wrong, the cannon would shoot over the gunwale without the need, or even room for a gunport.

I decided to use strips of basswood rather than plastic, for the simple reason I have a good stock of them and only a few scraps of plastic.

I now needed to raise the bow midships gunwales and the quarterdeck, the quarterdeck also needs extending to cover the steering position. The midships gunwale was glaringly too low, not only by the few sketches available from history, but by the gun ports. The model comes with only one cannon, placing it on the deck confirmed things were all wrong, the cannon would shoot over the gunwale without the need, or even room for a gunport.

Didn't your model come with at least a dozen mould release pin marks all over the main deck?