‘ALL ON ITS OWNSOME’
This is about having a ship on its own, without any supporting craft or vessels, in the sea, and calling it a diorama. Now I know that some people will turn round and say to me, ‘It can’t be a diorama. You’ve got to have more than one thing to call it a diorama.’
This is a point of view that springs from the strict definitions that competitions have, written to decide how models should be apportioned to the various classes, and make the judging fair. These rules may be necessary, but I don’t think they ought to dictate how we use our imaginations in designing our models. Personally, I don’t care two hoots about the rules of any competition. I make models to satisfy myself. If I have to put the model into one class and not another, so be it. I don’t really enter competitions to win prizes, although I do take the hump if the judging has been very unfair. I put the models on the competition tables because people look more closely at them than if they were on the club table.
So if you wish to take the view that a single ship cannot be a diorama I will not argue with you too much. But that is not really what this book is about. It is about putting an element of ‘life’ into your models, and it is every bit as valid to do this to an isolated single ship as it is to do it to a group of them.
Maybe you sincerely believe that a single ship cannot be called a ‘diorama’, whatever the circumstances. But let me try to persuade you otherwise. If you go back to the first chapter, you will find that I list some ideas, subjects and themes that can be incorporated into dioramas. Some of them can be equally applicable to a composition that incorporates only one vessel, as they are to those that have more than one, or other elements.
You may choose to show some activity happening on board a ship. A number of things spring to mind: the crew lined up on parade, or perhaps manning the deck edges as the ship is dressed overall with flags for the Fleet Review. There could be more mundane activity such as swabbing the decks, sailors lining up to collect their pay, or playing sports, such as a boxing match or tug o’ war. A photo in a book that I have about the Victorian navy shows crew members going through the exercises of cutlass drill on the quarterdeck. I’ve always thought that it would make a rather fascinating arrangement, and the 1/700 figures from Lion Roar, that can be bent to take whatever pose you like, would make it entirely possible.
Or drama on board a ship. What about the crew fighting desperately to contain the damage from the effects of gunfire, bombing or a kamikaze hit? Or the other side of the equation, the combat situations that I previously spoke about. Or a ship may be sinking. At Telford in 2012 the diorama that took the bronze medal had only one quarter of a ship, the stern of the Titanic, just about to disappear below the waves.
Or an emotional scene. How about the crew of a damaged warship, paraded on deck dressed in their whites, with the bodies of dead comrades covered by flags and about to be consigned to the deep by the captain or padre?
All of these subjects could be considered as worthy subjects for dioramas, even if some of them could just as well be entered into single ship classes in competitions. If I were being cynical, then I could suggest waiting for a while before choosing which class to enter until you have sized up the opposition. But I know you’d NEVER be so sneaky or conniving, would you?
So, let’s look at a few models that involve only one ship.
This is my model of the light carrier USS San Jacinto. When I bought the kit, labelled as ‘Premium Edition’ by Dragon, I expected something quite special. I was quite disappointed when I examined it more closely and found that the basic mouldings were twenty-year-old Pit Road ones, with the addition of a small fret of photo-etch and a totally gimmicky transparent flight deck, which would reveal that the hangar deck was moulded some six feet too low. Construction was something of a struggle. I have never called the completed model a diorama, but I could do if I wanted. I include it to show that the addition of figures and activity to a model brings life and interest
The deck of the San Jacinto. The crew are moving the aircraft to the stern, in preparation for an airstrike. The varied poses that Lion Roar include on their fret come in very useful here. This is even one of those occasions where I am glad of all those little men with both arms upraised, because they are ideal for pushing against the wing of an aircraft! But close-up photography is a harsh critic. Look at those Oerlikon tubs. I really should have tried harder to eliminate those sloping verticals that Dragon’s earlier kits are notorious for
I chose to open up the lift and the roller shutters in the sides of the ship, and then include some rudimentary details inside the hangar. The deck has been raised to the (approximately) correct level and some framing added to the insides of the bulkheads in areas that are visible. I also scratch-built the 40mm guns to replace the awful things included in the kit. I found that the photo-etched guns from White Ensign were over-scale, and this model was built before the resin offerings from Niko had started to become available
This is the Czarist Russian battleship Potemkin, depicted during the famous mutiny in 1905. Why anyone would want to show her at any other time is beyond me! The story goes that the ship sailed past the rest of the Black Sea Fleet, with their guns trained upon her. Her crew were cheering and trying to persuade the crews of the other ships to mutiny as well, but feared all the time that they would be fired upon. If I were doing this model again, I think I would include more figures on the deck. Note also the colours of the funnels. Although the official colour scheme called for them to be an ochre colour, a photo taken during the mutiny shows unequivocally that Potemkin’s were white.
Jim Baumann’s model of HMS Furious shows what I mean by having some activity on a ship. The little airship certainly adds a lot of life and interest. I’m not sure what it is made of or how it is supported, but it certainly looks every bit as though it is lighter than air. (PHOTO BY JIM BAUMANN)
A single ship in a dramatic setting. The Austro-Hungarian battleship Szent Iztván was torpedoed by the Italians during the First World War. The subdued lighting and cloudy background that Jim has used in his photo adds to the sense of foreboding and tragedy surrounding the doomed ship. (PHOTO BY JIM BAUMANN)
The Combrig 1/700 resin kit of the USS Astoria had been sitting in my stash, in a semi-started condition for several years. A couple of photos in Steve Wiper’s book on the New Orleans Class cruisers show the Astoria in the process of recovering one of her floatplanes, and I used these as inspiration for this diorama
The half-completed model is fixed to the base as the sea surface is being built up. The positioning of the ship away from the centre line is enough to give space for the floatplane off the starboard quarter. It also helps to emphasise that the ship is supposed to be executing a turn to starboard in order to give an area of smooth water for the plane to land on. I have not really managed this very well. Because the ship will be heeling to port as she turns to starboard, I had added a strip of plastic under the waterline to angle the ship away from the vertical. The hatched rectangle in front of the floatplane is the approximate position of the sled that the ship is towing, and onto which the plane will taxi.
And some photos of the completed model. Because the basic conception of the diorama is so simple, there has not been much more to say about its planning and construction. But note one or two things. The sled has been made from a piece cut from a pair of my wife’s old nylon tights, and it is being towed on a line rigged on a boom, which is deployed from the foredeck. You can see the other one hanging on the port side of the ship. Steve Wiper’s photos seem to show a lot of the crew watching the fun from the starboard side of the quarterdeck, and I have tried to reflect this in the arrangement of the figures
