The ships are gone but their models remain. They can be found in their entire three-dimensional, accurately scaled splendor in the basement of the United States Naval Academy Museum. The Rogers Ship Model Collection is a museum within a museum, and a mecca for naval history buffs and model ship builders.
The collection contains 108 ship and boat models from 1650 to 1850, an era known to aficionados as the classic Age of Sail. All the remains of such famous ships of the time as the HMS Brittannia, a 100-gun warship that fought against the French, is the model that sits in the collection.
The models were built on a 1:48 scale. They are quite large and heavy, too, weighing up to 20 pounds. Built within a year or two of the actual ships’ launching, the models are elaborately carved and minutely detailed above and below decks.
The collection also harkens back to another era in history. They were originally collected by the British aristocracy. Wealthy Americans began collecting them, too, among them J.P. Morgan and E.F. Hutton.
The collection is named after one such wealthy American, Henry Huddleston Rogers, an heir to Standard Oil. When Mr. Rogers died in 1935, he bequeathed the 50 ships he had collected to the U.S. Navy, where they sat in storage for years.
Since 1993, the collection has been exhibited in the museum’s officially titled Class of 1951 Gallery of Ships. They are set in glass cases, backed by dioramas with paintings of the era, in a series of climate-controlled rooms.
Among the gems are the St. George, a 96-gun ship-of-the-line that was launched in 1701, and the early American warships, Hancock and John Paul Jones famous Bonhomme Richard.
The collection is housed in a few gallery rooms. The first room contains three models of British warships built between 1650 and 1715. The differences in the shape and rake of the bow and stern show the changes that were made to such ships during that time.
The next room is the main exhibit space, a large area that houses most of the models and that is laid out in chronological order. Besides the impressive warships, there are models of a royal yacht, an admiral’s barge and several ships.
A darkened corridor holds the bone model display. During the Anglo-French wars from 1756-1815, French prisoners-of-war were housed on floating pontoons. They carved the bone models from their beef rations.
The Rogers Ship Model Collection is considered an historic, an invaluable, treasure. About 400 dockyard ship models are said to exist. The collection has 50 of them, with another 250 housed in the National Maritime Museum in Britain.
The Rogers Ship Model Collection is located in Preble Hall, site of the U.S. Naval Academy Museum, on the grounds of the U.S. Naval Academy, 118 Maryland Avenue, Annapolis, Md. 21402. For information, call 410-293-2108.
The museum is open free on Mondays to Saturdays, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., and Sundays, 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. The museum is closed Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year’s Day.
By Barbara Pash
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