Ship Models
Channel Islands Maritime Museum (CIMM) displays an extensive number of exquisitely detailed ship models. The majority of these models represent the “Age of Sail”. The Museum’s models include two important collections.
One is the Marple collection, all the models built by master modeler Edward Marple. Ed was a dental technician who anticipated his retirement and years of time to be productive. He actually tried a number of hobbies but he wanted something that required his professional dental technician skills so he chose ship modeling. He experimented with ship modeling by first constructing two models made from kits with solid wooden hulls. These completed kit models are beautiful examples of Ed’s capability but from them he moved on to extremely detailed scratch built plank-on-frame models. We are fortunate to have all the models Ed completed, a total of nine, plus the incomplete model he was working on when he had to abandon the hobby because of his failing health.
The second collection includes nine Prisoner of War models from the Napoleonic Wars, the era covering 1790 to 1815. History tells us that many French sailors were captured by the British during those wars and imprisoned in England. The prisoners eventually developed a small business building model ships and selling them to the British people. Hundreds of these ships were built and the majority were made from bones left over from their meals. Most of our POW models are made of bone. Interestingly, the prisoners were able to retain the money they made from the sale of these models and some of them returned home after the wars very well off. CIMM boasts the second largest collection of this type model in the United States.
In addition to these collections, our models depict ships from many parts of the world and span more than 5,000 years of maritime history. We start with a model of a boat made from reeds representing ships that sailed on the Nile River in 3,000 BC and continue to present day steel behemoths that carry up to 6,500 automobiles to our local Port of Hueneme.
For the ship model enthusiast, CIMM is a Mecca of the art. The Museum also sponsors a Ship Model Guild, an active club of local model builders, who meet once a month at the Museum. The public is welcome to the monthly meetings, third Tuesday of the month at 6:30 PM and all are welcome to join the Guild.
Our trained volunteer docents will guide you through this crowded miniature anchorage and OH! what stories they can tell. Your docent might: ask you why Ancient Egyptians used papyrus to build their reed boats; explain how a Roman galley sunk other ships using the galley as a weapon; discuss how Drake’s famous Golden Hind relates to the major jewelry area of today’s London, Hatton Garden; point out a 17th century ship whose construction cost exceeded the then current norms by 1,000 percent and was a factor in the English revolution; show you a 100 gun ship of the line that sank in water shallower than the top of her masts without a shot being fired causing the death of over 1,000 people; direct you to the models of two famous fighting ships, both over 200 years old but remain commissioned ships in their Navies; identify the last surviving 19th century whaling ship and show you the precarious perch where whalers spent hours on duty searching the horizon for whales; tell the story of a World War One German raider that sunk more than 15 ships without any loss of life; and of course all these stories, and more, are supported by the Museum’s finely detailed models.