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Part 3: The Models
Ship models have been made for as long as there have been ships. Early examples include Egyptian ship models found in the tomb of the legendary King Tutankhamun dating to more than 2,000 years BCE. Ship models have served many purposes: to document how a particular ship looked at a particular time, as representation of how a proposed ship would look when built, as trophies or mementoes of ships someone has admired or served on, purely as decorative art, and even as toys.
To create accurate models, an accurate scale is required. The scale of the model of the USS Solace (AH-2) displayed here is 1:48; one inch on the model equals 48 inches (four feet) on the actual ship. The model is 94.25 inches long; multiplying that by 48 gives 377 feet -- the exact length of the Solace. An easy way to compare the size of the real ship to the model is to image a crew member on it. At the scale of 1:48, a sailor six feet tall would be just 1.5 inches tall on the model. |