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| USS Weehawken was one of the nine Passaic class ironclads. The Passaic class were built as the follow-up ships to the original USS Monitor, and in many respects they were simply an enlarged version of that ship. There were upgrades throughout the ships, including the machinery, guns, and so on, but the class largely exhibited all of the strengths and weaknesses of the original Monitor. | |
| Weehawken had a short life. Launched in November 1862, she participated in the initial ineffective assaults on Fort Sumter. On June 17, 1863 she engaged and captured the Confederate ironclad ram Atlanta in one of the few ship-to-ship engagements between ironclads of the war. On 6 December, 1863, USS Weehawken foundered in Charleston harbor when heavy seas washed over her deck and caused progressive flooding. Poor loading of stores and ammunition the previous day put her out of trim, leaving her pumps unable to discharge the in rushing water. Between 24 and 30 of her crew drowned in the sinking. Also lost was the ships mascot, a rooster named Chapman. | |
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This is the Old Steam Navy 1/96th scale kit, resin, 26" overall length. I did a lot of additional work to the basic kit to arrive at the finished model. This includes scribing the deck and hull armor and rivets, scratch building a ship interior (which is mostly invisible on the finished model) and scratch building a large amount of the turret interior. |
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Additional items for the project are the 1/96th scale period sailors and "Cim-Rope" from Cottage Industry Models, and the ship's boats are Amati white metal kits. I took step-by-step photos of this project throughout, and I am working on writing a detailed report on the whole process. Until then, here are photos of the finished model. ~March 2008 |
Completed model photos taken with Canon 400D (Rebel Xti) with hot shoe flash and 50mm fixed lens. Other lighting provided by two Interfit three-bulb fixtures using 5500k daylight corrected CFL's. |
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