Featured Wooden model steamship

This is the best thing my son got today, in my opinion. It's 30" long and 19" tall to the tip of the masts. Excellent condition. Now I have to do some research to see if I can identify it - or at least the style, if not the actual boat. It looks like another mid-century item - a lake steamer probably. It reminds me of the Mt. Washington that steams around on Lake Winnepesaukee.

 

Dunno that much ‘bout ships that aren’t grey, but I wonder if you can look up the stack colors and find out what line uses red-white-black?

 

You sound like my hubby. BGB - Big Gray Boats. His was the USS Warrington. Toyota bought it for scrap after it hit ordnance in Vietnam and was decommissioned. He's not been fond of boats since.
Good thinking - stack color.

 

clean lines....good looking.....were there kits to make these???

 

That's what I was thinking - someone made it from a kit. More likely an early Home Goods type of decor thing, but I love model ships of any kind so it's found a good home here. This wooden one belonged to my uncle. The sail cord had disintegrated and a good friend restrung the sails for me.

 

Ship Ship Hooray !!!!!!!

 

Yes, looks like a kit model. Although back in the day the models were all wood but you had to steam them and bend them to specs of the directions. Not the kind of model you get done in a few days. Some kits took 6 months to finish but those were the ones that were the older sailing ships and you had to "RIG" it.

 

USS Strauss and USS Warrington were well-known to all ships operating off Vietnam. Including mine. The charts had an area marked in red called the “Straw Area” where those two ships were severely damaged by, it was thought, misplaced US underwater mines. Straw of course is an acronym made of the two ships’ names. Yes, ole’ granddaddy Spring could tell ya some sea stories about his adventures in the Western Pacific, early ‘70’s, but “don’t get me started.”

 

Thank you for your service !

Y'old salt !

 

Huh. My husband is impressed that you knew that. Which ship were you on? Were you part of the convoy? He filmed the voyage on Super 8 (no sound) going through the Panama Canal, on board, etc. The Navy took the portion of the film just prior to and just after the event. The next part of the film shows them being towed to the Philippines by their anchor chain. He was a Yeoman and was in the Bursar's office counting money when they hit the ordnance. He said the ship raised up out of the water, came down and money rained down. It hit the second time and blew a hole in the side. A miracle no one died. They were taking on twice as much water as they were pumping off for awhile. He was the Captain's 'talker' on deck. The Captain would give an order and he'd repeat it in the radio. They had to sleep on deck after the event because there were no lights and so much damage below. The Navy kept it in drydock in Subic Bay for four months pretending to fix it so the North Vietnamese wouldn't count it as a loss. There is still some question whether it was mines or if a plane ditched a load of ammunition in the wrong spot before it landed on a carrier or if the ship was in the wrong place.

 

Was on USS Preble (DLG 15). You can be sure the culprits were mines, specifically Mark ?? Destructors. They are regular low-drag aircraft bombs fitted with noses that have the sensors inside to make the device into an anti-ship mine. Any airplane that can carry the bombs can carry the destructors. That’s what i recall anyway. On snother ship in ‘74 or so we worked with CH-53 helos to sweep the mines in Haiphong Harbor as required by the treaty. The helos towed MOP’s (magnetic orange pipes) to set off any mines that had failed to self-sanitize as desiged. The helos weren't designed as tractors so a number broke and went down.