‘THE SILVER DARLINGS’
‘We left our home grounds in the month of June,
And for canny Shields we soon were bearing,
With a hundred cran of the silver darlings,
That we’d taken from the shoals of herring’.
Ewan McColl
In this chapter I am going to try and put everything together by demonstrating a large and complicated diorama that is almost totally scratch-built. It will involve boats, buildings, groundwork, figures and even horses. It is going against everything that I have said previously regarding my favourite scale being 1/700, as it is in 1/350 scale!
The theme is that of the Scottish herring fishing industry, in its heyday, at the end of the nineteenth century, just before the advent of steam power. Thousands of boats from towns and villages all along the east coast were involved, and the larger ones followed the migration of the shoals of fish during the year, starting in the Shetland Islands in the spring, moving down the coast during the summer, and culminating in the great autumn fishery, centred on Great Yarmouth in Norfolk.
Gangs of young Scottish women, the ‘fisher lassies’, followed the fleet of boats to work at gutting and packing the fish into barrels of brine, for export to Europe. Experienced workers would be able to gut anything up to 60 herrings in a minute, using a razor sharp knife. They would wrap their fingers in strips of cloth, or ‘clooties’, to improve grip and to protect against cuts and the effect of salt. This was a very hard life for the girls, having to spend six months away from home, and to modern eyes, being paid a pittance and commercially exploited. But the women later looked back and regarded it as the best time of their lives, with a sense of independence denied to most working class women in society.
For the men, the fishing industry was, and still is, fraught with danger, from injury and drowning, and the unpredictable weather of the North Sea.
The diorama depicts the harbour of Pittenweem, in Fife, in the year 1895, or thereabouts. I chose this village for several reasons. It has changed relatively little in the past hundred years. One of the piers was demolished and moved in 1905, to enlarge the inner harbour, but most of the buildings are the same. The size of the harbour was ideal for me to show a sizeable portion of it in 1/350 scale, and still be a manageable model of about 60cm x 40cm. I could pack the harbour with boats, so that it was possible to walk from one side to the other across the decks. It is documented that gutting and packing took place at Pittenweem, and that it was used as a base by visiting boats during the migration south.
The diorama shows the harbour in the morning. The boats have mostly returned from fishing, which took place overnight, racing back to the harbour, in order to get the fish unloaded in as short a time as possible. Scottish herring was always gutted and packed on shore, and had to be in the barrels within 24 hours of being caught, in order to receive the prized ‘Crown Brand’, and the best price.
The fish are put into the ‘farlans’, wooden troughs on the quayside, where the fisher lassies are gutting and then packing into the barrels, which are then loaded onto carts for transport to the railway station, half a mile away, up the hill.
The appearance of Pittenweem, as well as the lives of the workers, and the various types of boats used, are well documented. There are books consisting of old photographs produced by Stenlake Publishing, with names such as Old Pittenweem, Old Crail and Old St Monans. Sailing Drifters by Edgar J March and Plank on Frame Models, Vol 1 by Harold A Underhill give plans of typical Fifies and Zulus, the main types of boats used. On the Internet I found an Ordnance Survey map of Pittenweem, in 1/2500 scale, dated 1895, which gave me the exact shape of the harbour and the layout of the houses along the street. This meant I did not need to do a detailed topographical survey of the harbour, or extrapolate from the images of Google Earth, or a modern Ordnance Survey map.
The Scottish Fisheries Museum, a few miles along the coast at Anstruther, has a number of old models of fishing boats, as well as some real ones, including the Fifie Reaper, which has been superbly restored and is still afloat. These are particularly useful for details of the paint schemes that the boats carried. If you are in this part of Scotland, the East Neuk of Fife, then this museum is well worth spending a couple of hours in, as is also the fish and chip shop a few doors up the street!
This is the harbour as it currently is. Most of the buildings have changed relatively little, although the one on the extreme left was built to replace one that was demolished around 1900, just after the date of the diorama. The pier from which this photo was taken was built around 1904. The previous pier was much closer to the opposite harbour wall, and the inner harbour must have been very cramped. I believe that the area of smooth stonework is the place where the old pier joined the main quay
The old Ordnance Survey gave me the shape of the harbour and the arrangement and sizes of the buildings. For reasons of copyright, I have not reproduced the map here, but this is a copy that I drew, enlarged to the scale of 1/350, to use as a template. Proportional dividers, such as these, are expensive but a very worthwhile investment for scratch-building, enabling you to avoid lots of tedious measuring and mathematical calculations
I did a bit of my own research, by taking a couple of trips to the village to take lots of photographs of the buildings, the stonework of the old pier, and the rocks on the shore. I cannot be sure that buildings were painted the same colours in 1895 that they are now. Almost certainly they were much more subdued and weather-beaten, but at least I can be fairly certain that a house that is plain stone in 2012, without plaster or paint, was the same in 1895.
Here is that kink. There was chisel work on one side of the pier and building out on the other. The raised sea wall was made with some strips of corrugated cardboard. The whole thing was then covered with a layer of Polyfilla. I have sanded it down to a vaguely smooth surface, and here you can see me giving the pier a rough texture with the Dremel-type tool. The real pier is extremely uneven stonework, and not the sort of place to wear stilettos or use a wheelchair. Other parts of the base will receive different treatments, depending on what the original surface might have been
This is going to be the base. There is a sheet of 6mm MDF, 60cm x 45cm. On top of this is glued a sheet of watercolour paper, which will represent the water surface. So much happened to this paper in the course of construction that it really did not serve any useful purpose. The quayside and piers are made from more 6mm MDF. The outer pier, at the bottom, in real life has a very distinct kink, very obvious from photos and Google Earth. I needed to make some adjustments to the shape later on.
The whole diorama took about a year to make. It was entered into the competition at the IPMS UK exhibition at Telford in 2012. It won a silver medal. I was disappointed in this as I thought it warranted gold, but I discovered that it had been marked down for a couple of mistakes of which I was aware. As well as rectifying these, the final few finishing touches have since been added.
So, come on, my Silver Darlings, let’s get building!
This was my first attempt at making the rocks outside the harbour wall. Even though I was going to texture the stone chippings with Polyfilla, you can see why I said, ‘No, that ain’t gonna do!’
This is much more like it! I simply built up some ridges of Polyfilla. When it was set, I went over it several times with different Dremel cutters to give the appearance of fingers of rock, with deep fissures and cracks, but still largely being solid. The cutter in the chuck is very thin and sharp. I think it is of dental origin, and good for deep cuts
And this is what it all looks like after a few layers of paint have been applied. The stone on this part of the coast is sandstone of a rather bright ochre hue. Over a first coat of acrylic paint, I built up the colour with artist’s oils; ochres, sandy browns and umbers; and washes of burnt umber, sepia and blacks
Now we move onto the boats. These are the basic hull shapes. I used some walnut sheet that I found in my cupboard. It is not the ideal wood to use, as it is very hard and produces some very irritating dust. I shaped the hulls using a belt sander. I won’t show you how, as I’m probably lucky to still have all my fingers. ‘Don’t try this at home.’ The hull at the right shows the raking stern of the Zulu, while that in front has the straight stern of the Fifie. I made a total of ten hulls, of various sizes
For the deck I used grooved plasticard, and plastic strip of appropriate size for the rubbing strakes, stem and stern posts, and for the bulwarks, which are surprisingly low. They are just high enough to trip up a sailor, but not high enough to stop him falling in the drink. They have a very distinctive appearance with exposed timberheads. Combined with a rail on the inboard side, this gives the appearance of a row of slots, and this is what I am trying to imitate with this Dremel cutter. When painted and given a dark wash, it will look OK
This shows some of the masters at various stages of construction. You will notice that I have put no deck fittings or hatch coamings on them. This is because I wanted to be able to have every boat slightly different. Even though it would make more work for me in the long run, I did not want to cast absolutely identical boats
These are the masters in a cardboard ‘box’, waiting for me to pour silicone rubber to make a mould. The mixing ratio for the catalyst in the stuff that I have got is so complicated that I need a calculator. I generally paint some of the mix over the masters first, try to avoid air bubbles, and then pour the rest. The mixture takes twenty-four hours to set, and any bubbles that have got incorporated during mixing rise to the surface and burst
Everything is set up for casting. There is the mould, cans of resin and hardener (don’t get the lids mixed up), mould release spray, disposable glasses for mixing, measuring cups, mixing sticks and an incredibly useful little brush
As I am a doctor, I purloined a few of these brushes from work. They are used for taking cervical smears. They are great for brushing the resin into all the corners and completely fill the mould without voids. When the resin is fully solid, you can crack it off the bristles and use the brush again. Work very quickly, because the resin begins to go off and cure within a minute or two. You can slow the reaction down a bit by cooling the cans of resin and hardener in the refrigerator before mixing
These are a couple of the castings that I made. Each of them contains one of each size of boat. I cast more than I knew I would need. This gave me a chance to sort out the best formed hulls and discard those with major casting flaws or big air bubbles. I am hardly an expert caster and am not capable of achieving a professional standard. I was willing to accept hulls with defects in the sides, because they would not be noticeable when packed together in the harbour
Here are some hulls showing the various stages of completion of the deck details. At the left is a basic hull with nothing done to it. Next is one with the centre line marked, hole for the foremast drilled, and shape of fish hold and cabin roof drawn in. Then four with a variety of deck arrangements. You can see that I have put thwarts going across the boat, the housing into which the foremast will go when lowered, hold coamings, and cabin roofs in some. Finally two with the hold opened up by grinding with the Dremel and cleaning up with a file
The whole fleet ready for painting. I think they are all slightly different. The masts are brass rod of suitable diameters for the size of boat. In real life they were surprisingly thick, and were unsupported, apart from the burton and the halyard, which were running rather than standing rigging. It is not obvious in this photo, but the foremasts are raked slightly aft, and the mizzens have distinctly odd-looking forward rake
These boats have been painted in the typical colour scheme of black hull with a white waterline that rises towards the bow. Perhaps that was a nineteenth century version of a ‘go faster’ stripe. I chose a variety of colours for the decks: plain wood, grey, brown and red lead. The models and boats in the Fisheries Museum show this, as well as the fact that blue was the predominant colour for the deck fittings. The yards are simply pieces of plastic rod, while the sails are made from cigarette paper. I only used a small rectangular or trapezoidal piece, rather than the full size sail. After gluing to the yard, the paper was painted with diluted PVA glue. This softened the paper, and enabled me to get it to fold and hang like canvas fabric
I found making the buildings almost as interesting as the boats. You can see that I am using the proportional dividers to prick off distances on the photo and convert them to the correct size for the model. Basically I set the wider points to the width of the building on the photo, and the narrower to the size of the building’s footprint on the base. It is also obvious how the converging verticals on the photo complicate matters. And the foreshortening of the verticals as the camera was pointing upwards means that the heights cannot be totally accurate. But I reckon that it’s close enough
The pieces of plasticard were glued to blocks of balsa wood, carved to shape. Roofs were made from grooved plasticard, or in some cases, scribed watercolour paper, if I wanted to replicate terracotta pantiles. This latter method did not work well on larger buildings and I ended up just using a layer of acrylic gel and impressing it with a vertical linear pattern
It is necessary to check things frequently as you go along. As I worked from left to right, I found that I had a tendency to make things just slightly bigger, and had to constantly correct myself
Here we have barrels cut from plastic rod and glued into piles. I did not attempt to try and get the true shape of a barrel. It would have driven me mad to do that for somewhere in excess of 700 of them! Baskets are cut from plastic tube, and the troughs, or ‘farlans’ are made from plastic strip. I’m rather pleased with the lampposts. I was just going to slip a piece of brass wire inside a bit of hypodermic needle. But when I trimmed off the green plastic, I found that the hard white plastic inside would do very well for the base of the pillar
Nets are made from bits of my wife’s nylon tights, held in shape on a strip of double-sided tape, and then hardened with CA glue. Sacks of salt for preserving the herring are made from Fimo paste, which is hardened in the oven. The piles of plastic strip represent baulks of timber which were slotted into position across the entrance to the inner harbour to protect against winter storms
The large spherical buoys are simply mustard seeds. I hope they don’t start germinating! And held in position on the back of a pile of ‘Post-it’ notes you can see the various stages in making wheelbarrows, with pieces of copper wire for the handles. Although it is not very visible in the photo, the legs at the back end are just little dabs of acrylic gel
Here I’m really having fun. I was racking my brains trying to work out how to scratch-build cartwheels in this scale. But then I discovered this sheet of handwheels, in laser-cut card by HMV of Hamburg. So here there are three carts, a milk float, four horses, one of those new-fangled horseless carriage contraptions, (they’ll never catch on!) and even a baby’s pram
I’ll now move on to show you the completed diorama. But first is an illustration of a mistake. I had painted and textured the water first, and then glued the boats to it. I ended up with gaps under the hulls, as you can see by the slips of paper. The diorama was marked down because of this fault at Telford in 2012. I was disappointed at first, but I can see that it was justifiable
The boats are crowding into the harbour any way they can. The skippers were reputed to be very skilled at getting their boats into any gap that was available. In the period between the last photo and this one being taken, I have filled those gaps using Vallejo Still Water, which has the other advantage of smoothing out some of the sharpness of the ripples. It now looks much better
These sails which are still hoisted were made from stuff slightly thicker than cigarette paper. The blocks and tackle on the rigging of all these boats was photo-etch, from Alliance Model Works
As far as I am aware, the large yellow house at the far end is now converted into apartments for holiday rentals. I have no financial interest in it
The plastic of the buildings was roughened slightly with some of the acrylic paste that I use for waves. They were then painted with acrylics and details, depth and texture given with artist’s oil paints. At the right you can see the blue and yellow milk float, and women buying milk by the jug-full
The fisher lassies at work. There are about 300 figures in the diorama, in resin, by L’Arsenal. Sixty or so had to undergo ‘gender reassignment surgery’. This mainly involved building up skirts using acrylic gel, and sanding down the hat to look more like a headscarf
When I had glued all the boats onto the base I realised that the way they were orientated drew the eye automatically to this point on the quayside. It needed a point of focus. So this is a fish auction. Samples of fish from boats that are not already contracted to a particular packer are being examined and bid for
It has taken me about three years to build all the dioramas for this book. Now that I’ve finished, I’m rather looking forward to making one or two single ships. I wonder if I’ll have forgotten how to do it?
I know, I’ll go and buy a copy of my first book!