1/350 HMS Queen Mary (ISW)

This is my recently completed build of Iron Shipwright's generally excellent HMS Queen Mary, the last of three similar warships (the others being the Lion and Princess Royal) completed shortly before the start of World War I.  As usual with ISW kits, at least of this age (and older), the assembly instructions are skimpy, being simple black line xeroxed pages and not always clear, with a number of parts not identified in the kit, including some photoetch items, and there are insufficient railings for the main and quarterdeck edges (although I had plenty of spare railing to use).  However, the hull is superbly cast and most of the resin parts fairly well-formed, though I had to use brass rods for the upper mast segments (the resin parts being much too flimsy), and the instructions advise doing the same for the yardarms.  As usual with ISW, any missing or broken parts in the kit were quickly replaced with fresh ones once I emailed the company and described what I needed.  The model came with brass 13.5-in guns barrels and I added Aber 4-in. brass gun barrels for the secondary battery and scratch-built the anti-torpedo net booms from brass rod and their hull attachment points from Evergreen plastic strips; the rolled torpedo nets were fashioned from simple spray-painted shoelaces which have a crossed-mesh design and are circular in cross-section.  Rigging is stretched black sprue.  I used Tamiya Ocean Gray spray paint for the brass parts, ModelMaster Dark Ghost Gray for the upper hull and superstructure, and mixed some other Tamiya acrylic paints for the wooden decks (mostly Wood Tan) and corticene decks of the superstructure.  The lower hull was sprayed with a water-based can of Burnt Sienna, which seems to closely approximate anti-fouling red, and Tamiya Flat Black was used for the boot topping and funnel tops.  The ship is portrayed, as best as I can tell, as shortly after her commissioning in 1913 (by the time of Jutland, her foremast was a tripod).  I am indebted for many details of my build to Marius Chescu's superb scratch-built 1:192 scale model, which can be seen on this gallery at this link.

The HMS Queen Mary was one of Admiral David Beatty's battlecruisers present at the Battle of Jutland on May 31, 1916, and engaged the German battlecruisers Seydlitz and Derfflinger.  At 1626, several shells from the latter ship stuck the Queen Mary and her forward magazines blew up, killing some 1266 crewmen with only twenty survivors.  This disaster had come only minutes after the similar destruction of an older British battlecruiser, HMS Indefatigable, leading Admiral Beatty on his flagship, HMS Lion, to utter this famous quote to his senior staff officer, with typical British stiff-upper-lip understatement:  "There seems to be something wrong with our bloody ships today!"

The remains of HMS Queen Mary today are a protected war memorial; the ship lies in three pieces on the floor of the North Sea, and the wreck has been extensively surveyed.  Further information can be readily obtained from Wikipedia.
 

Gallery updated 2013

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