This summer sees the publication of a new modeller’s manual on the great White Star liner Titanic, based on a quite extraordinary model built by the author Peter Davies-Garner. It is difficult for a photograph, or a description in words, to do justice to this: built to a scale of a quarter-inch to the foot, the model is eighteen feet long – longer than even a large estate car – and the detailing befits the scale. For instance, each rivet was punched: 61,000 in the hull alone and another 8,000 in the funnels. Why such attention to detail? What is the function of this model? The answer lies across the Atlantic in Orlando, Florida, where there is a permanent display called Titanic – The Exhibition, which tells the whole story of the ship. There are artefacts from collectors along with full-size mock-ups of the state rooms and the grand staircase, and guides in period costume take visitors around the displays. It was this organisation that commissioned the author, back in 2002, to build a giant model to form a central part of the exhibition. After thirty months’ work, it will go on permanent display there in May 2004. The book is not the story of the building of this particular model but a detailed explana-tion of how to build any model of Titanic, using superb scale drawings and photographs of the author’s model in various stages of build, clearly showing every aspect of the ship and its equipment. There are any number of fascinating contemporary photographs of the prototype, half a dozen of which have never been published before. It’s certainly a book which will appeal to the Titanic enthusiast as well as to the more dedicated model-shipwright. The model’s first public appearances bear testimony to that. The author, who lives in Germany, completed the model this spring, and it made its first public appearance in its finished state in Southampton at the British Titanic Society Convention. It was then moved to Belfast where it was exhibited in the City Hall and in just five days some 7,000 people paid a visit – testimony to the undying fascination in this ship, and to the interest in this remarkable model. The book may not do full justice to the model but the 600 illustrations will give any Titanic enthusiast new insights into the build and details of the ship, and will certainly inspire any aspiring modelmakers. Back to Greenhill Military Book News No. 129 Table of Contents Back to Greenhill Military Book News List of Issues Back to Master Magazine List © Copyright 2004 by Greenhill Books This article appears in MagWeb.com (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other articles from military history and related magazines are available at http://www.magweb.com