Worlds in Miniature by Jack Davy Charlotte Dixon

Author:Jack Davy, Charlotte Dixon [Jack Davy, Charlotte Dixon]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781013293580
Google: Ptj_zQEACAAJ
Publisher: Saint Philip Street Press
Published: 2020-10-09T02:43:57+00:00

Figure 5.4 Cliff Swallow’s model of the sailing boat Curlew. Some of the planking on one side has been omitted to show how the boat was made with a series of frames.

Photo Charlotte Dixon.

Figure 5.5 The full-size Curlew under sail in Falmouth in 2005.

©National Maritime Museum Cornwall.

Is there anything else that you would like to say about model boats and the process of making them in a miniature form that hasn’t been covered?

Pat: I don’t spend enough time on model-making, but it does transport me back to my youth. There aren’t many times when I’m not fiddling and working with a model, when I’m not transported back and I can walk down Fenchurch Street in my mind again or I can go to Greenwich Maritime Museum and their models. To me scale was fascinating and I find every time I look at and am involved with models, I’m transported to a younger time, which is not an unpleasant experience. In the same way I look out on the water and I can’t get my head around the scale of a ship moored out in the bay and the Curlew sailing past and a Flying 15 sailing next to that. The fact the same-size people are in each boat always amazes me and I think, how can that possibly be! Which is a whole new concept of time through modelling them. It does transport me back to an inquisitive, youthful time and I quite enjoy that.

Cliff: That isn’t my take. I mean for me it’s just really enjoying the aesthetics of sailing boats. I just love the concept of the refinement. A wooden square-rig sailing boat today looks very ancient but actually they were the epitome of sophisticated engineering and advance application: many long years of evolution to arrive at something that worked like that, given the materials that they had to hand and the knowledge. I just enjoy that understanding or feeling or being able to at least begin to understand some of the evolution and aesthetics of sailing boats.

Pat: Yes, I think the half models are a classic demonstration of that.

Cliff: The evolution of hull shapes.

Pat: Yes, and as you quite rightly say over a great long period of time the energy that was put into developing that. When you look at a boat or a model representing that boat, the thought and energy from centuries before that’s gone into it is remarkable. Certainly, models have a way of encapsulating that development to that point in time. [We can see that with] your Bounty, with the Flying 15, with Curlew.

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