Vintage Swedish Battleship

[Thumb Dog]

When the topic of Scandinavian paper models comes up, a vintage modeler’s first thoughts will go to the work of Hans Christian Madsen and the numerous models he published in Carl Aller’s publications. But, prolific as he was, Madsen was not the only paper model designer in the Nordic Kingdoms.

The model presented below was imagined and drawn by Fr. Sedivy in 1893. His fanciful battleship perfectly fits a young Swedish boy’s idea of a pre-dreadnaught ship of the line, and would make an important addition to any model collection. Regrettably, I can’t say much more about the artist as I haven’t seen other models designed by him, except to say it always adds a little something to a paper model when the designer identifies himself. The model’s title, found printed on the upper left of the page, gives a hint as to the identity of the unknown publication in which it first appeared. It translates as, “Appendix to the Children’s Christmas Roses (Poinsettias).” This is thought to have been a seasonal children’s magazine or supplement focusing on Christmas activities and traditions. I hope there was a commensurate paper model for a young Swedish flicka as well.

The model came to me as a delightful surprise from the collection of friend and fellow Papermodelers member, Tom Greensfelder. It looked like a buildable project so I was more than happy to give it a go.

I wanted the finished model to have a length of about 13 inches. When I enlarged the scan, I found that each hull side, as well as the deck, now required two parts. I wound up needing four pages for the model as drawn, with another four pages for the mirrored parts. I printed it all out and assembled the port and starboard hull sides and began to attach them to the main deck.

Things came to a grinding halt when I tried to mate the port and starboard bows together. In one of the images below, you can see that the model’s original parts don’t share the same, graceful line on their ram bows. In paper modeling, there always comes a point where everything has to come together, and in a ship model, that happens at the bow. We can often fudge the stern a bit as it’s less obvious, but the finished line of the bow has to be even and smooth. The original hull sides were not going to pan out, so it was time to start over. But before that, I decided to do a quick build of the test model’s remaining components to determine what other parts needed to be finessed.

After some enlarging and cleaning on the computer, I made the most important change to the model. I took the two parts for the port hull side, (the side with the better looking ram bow), and by copying and mirroring them, I used them to make all the needed parts for both hull sides. All the parts and mirrors on the port and starboard sides were now identical and they would have a much better chance of fitting together. I’ve tried this trick before on other projects and if I had been paying attention, I could have caught the bad fit of the bows before I printed the whole thing out the first time.

Once the hull was built, the rest was smooth sailing. As it began life as a fantasy model, I took some liberties with the deck furniture. I added a second funnel along with more cardstock deck guns. The broadside guns were now in turrets, rather than just drawn on the ship’s sides. I enlarged the model’s single torpedo boat, copied it and placed the pair on deck. Brass barrels for the many cannon seemed appropriate and the painted masts were made of brass as well. The length of the lower yard on the foremast make it appear ridiculous, but it is in scale to the model’s rigging diagram. Steam power had fully matured by the late 19th century, and few ships of the time carried massive square sails to be used in case of engine failure.

The flags were the last thing to be attached to the battleship, and they recall an interesting hiccup in Scandinavian history. Note the image below showing the model’s original flags, my cleaned and brightened copies and some modern images. The model’s original blue and yellow swallowtail ensigns carry a hard to discern and unusual mark in their upper left corners. This was the naval ensign of Sweden during the period known as the United Kingdoms of Sweden and Norway, 1844-1905. For a time, the flags of both Sweden and Norway were adorned with this small, odd mixture of both national flags, see below. Sweden won the last war between the two nations, but allowed Norway its own constitution, legislature and fighting forces until the end of the agreement in 1905. The divorce was amicable, and my Norwegian bride and I hardly ever bring it up during one of our rare squabbles.

Score and fold,

Thumb Dog

[Michael Mash]

Wonderfully vintage.
Bravo!

[Tapcho]

Charming! Chapeau etc...

Tappi

[SCEtoAUX]

Looks very good. Nice recovery from the troubles with the bow. A needed skill when dealing with those hand drawn vintage models.
H.C.M. drew some nice models. Looks like Fr. Sedivy did also.

[Don Boose]

TD -

A great read with wonderful images of the model (especially the initial still life of the model amidst the tools and appurtenances of the craft)!

I enjoyed the back story on the model, Swedish-Norwegian history, and your interventions to produce an attractive model. Thanks for the narrative, the clear images, and the model.

Don

[Peter Ansoff]

The vestigial bowsprit on this model is interesting. I recently taught a lifelong learning course on the Austro-Hungarian Navy, and their early 20th century ships had a similar fitting (albeit without the flag staff). Some photos showed a tackle rigged under the sprit, and I suspect that it was used for anchor handling.

[Thumb Dog]

Hi All,

And thanks all, for your thoughtful comments about the Swedish Battleship. And thanks, Don, for singling out the first photograph with its paper modeling paraphernalia. I was channeling the old Micromodels motto of, “Your workshop all in a cigar box!” I hope I was successful.

And hi, Peter Ansoff. Yours was an interesting point about the odd bowsprit-cum-jackstaff seen on the model’s bow. See the enlarged part below. I looked in my copy of, Janes Fighting Ships of World War 1, and saw that quite a few of the period ships of the Austro-Hungarian Navy carried a sizable bowsprit as well as a separate jackstaff, as does SMS Arpad in the photo below. I didn’t find a similar arrangement on any of the Scandinavian ships I looked up, so I don’t know where Fr. Sedivy got his ideas.

You may be right that the bowsprit serves as a cathead to handle the anchor, but in order to service both bow anchors, I think it would have to pivot, port to starboard. I think the spar’s length may preclude that.

When I saw the paper part of the model, my first reaction was it was a steering pole. Here in Minnesota, the Great Lakes ore boats that come to pick up their taconite in Duluth all have spars jutting from their bows that aid in steering the ship. Note the steering pole in my paper model of the William A. Irvin below. The vessels are so long and the wheelhouse is so close to the bow that the coxswain can’t determine the swing of his stern, and the steering poles give him a better idea of the position of his ship.

That’s my guess for the odd part on the model. As mentioned, I don’t know quite what herr Sedivy was thinking. Whatever its function, I’ve never seen anything else exactly like it. I made mine from brass, as I knew it wouldn’t survive long if made from the paper part.

Thanks for your interest in my model.

Score and fold,

Thumb Dog

[Philip]

You've done a wonderful job there, Thumb Dog. Ahhh, they don't make them like that anymore.