FOUR HUNDRED MINIATURE SHIPS

New Zealand Listener, Volume 18, Issue 453, 27 February 1948, Page 19

FOUR HUNDRED MINIATURE SHIPS

POCKET KNIFE, tweezers and glue are practically all that Frank McGregor, of Christchurch, used in constructing a scale model of Gibraltar Harbour and nearly 400 miniature ships, which he described recently in an interview in 3ZB’s Scrapbook session. McGregor is a young professional photographer who took up his unusual hobby, he says, as a battle against boredom. It all began while he was still a pupil at St. Bede’s College, when he was ordered to give up reading because of eyestrain. He had to find some way of filling in his leisure, and with a pocket-knife he began working on small pieces of white pine and cedar, making models of warships based on the plans in such books as Jane’s Fighting Ships. As the fascination of what he was doing grew on him, he aimed at greater accuracy in scale and fineness of detail, until some of his latest creations are unusually lifelike productions of their originals. Most of the models are on the scale of three-quarters of an inch to 100 feet, and on the average each took seven or eight hours to complete. An exception

is the battleship Hood, on a slightly larger scale, which involved over 30 hours of work. Included in the collection are models of the Wahine, the Rangatira, and a full-rigged sailing ship, the Mermerus, fitted with 37 whitepainted paper sails cut to scale, The scale model of Gibraltar Harbour, based on drawings and photographs taken from the Pocket Guide Book of the Middle East, is made out of beaverboard and odd pieces of wood. The harbour contains the Royal Navy’s Mediterranean Fleet, the defeated German High Seas Fleet, and dozens of merchant ships at the moles. There are also miniature oil tanks, houses, streets, and graving docks; and on the wharves are model trains, with engines, trucks and carriages*to scale-all made out of matchsticks. McGregor explained that his hobby gave him some practical advantage as a photographer, for the delicate modelling had given him a lightness and steadiness of hand that was of great benefit to him in retouching. "As to my eyes," he added, "I soon found I was taxing them more than reading could ever do. But miraculously all this has strengthened them, to the point where I can do the finest work without worry ot strain. And I don’t wear glasses."