1/200 Titanic Build I
An Early Fascination
Most of my interests in childhood were pretty typical of most kids overtaken by imagination - Star Wars, The Lord of the Rings, and Jurassic Park were very influential to me. Another topic, however, strangely also captured my interest. When James Cameron released his hit in 1997, the world was swept up in a rejuvenated interest in the tragedy of arguably the most famous ship that’s ever taken to the seas. I was too young at the release to see the movie, and indeed didn’t see it until years later, but I was exposed to the subsequent bloom of the Titanic interest.
My first real introduction to the ship was a PC game from Cyberflix called Titanic: Adventure Out of Time. The game, released in 1996, boasted more engrossing visuals than almost any of its contemporaries, presenting an interactive version of the ship that could be explored. During those early years, I didn’t completely follow the complex story about time-travel to thwart plots on that Titanic that would catalyze into the First and Second World Wars (though, as an adult, I find the story immensely clever and interesting). What I did do is spend hours wandering the depths of this luxurious vessel to an eerie and foreboding soundtrack. I was enraptured by the mystery that shrouded this doomed ship.
Titanic: Adventure Out of Time, Cyberflix (1996)
From that initial burst of interest, I received a few gifts from family that only deepened my curiosity. Chiefly, it seemed, this manifested as puzzles. The Puzz3D of the ship from Wrebbit was certainly my favorite - to be able to actually hold something tangible once completed was a great joy. That being said, I still enjoyed the inevitable puzzles that came from film merchandising, though I still had yet to ever see the movie.
Even so, it was a 1,000 piece puzzle of Ken Marschall’s painting that depicted the the bow of the ship slipping beneath a calm and icy surface that really hooked me. Beyond the appeal of grand design during the industrial boom, the painting evoked a sense of narrative that had - until that point - been absent in my interest. It felt less like an impressive construct, but a vehicle for a very human story.
Various puzzles that I assembled many times a piece in my childhood.
Me, age 7, with a foam model of Titanic that my dad found on Ebay.
My interest in scale models started early. The early kits I put together were cheap quality and highly inaccurate, but what eight year old cares about that? Seeing parts on a sprue start to come together with some glue into a recognizable shape was simply one of my favorite past-times. I assembled aircraft, Star Wars ships, and, of course, the Titanic. The kits were small, 1/700 scale if memory serves me. Now, I had no idea what I was doing from a technical standpoint. I used a kitchen knife to separate pieces from their plastic stems, I didn’t sand down the considerable flash and stubs from the choppy cuts, I didn’t prime the model, and the paints applied with a large, cheap brush were Testors enamels. All in all, the models were poorly constructed and finished, but to my young eyes, it was there - it was the ship right there in my hands.
It’s weird how some memories get lost within hours while others endure in vivid detail for years. This is one of the latter. When we lived in Montana, we would occasionally take trips up to Canada to stay in a Ramada Inn that had an indoor water park. Some of the perks of that city we visited were things that were a bit more scarce in Montana like a bustling mall and a Toys R Us. On an outing to those places, which to an eight-year-old might as well be an early Christmas, I saw something I could hardly believe. It was the largest model kit of the Titanic I had ever seen. There was stunning artwork adorning the front of the box. I had no idea how much it cost, but I was certain it was outside my budget for souvenirs.
The 1/350 scale-model from Minicraft, which to me at the time might as well have been 1/2 scale.
Now, children are not particularly skilled at hiding when they want something. I was definitely no exception. I must have stared at that box on the shelf for most of our time in that store. Resigned to my fate, I wandered away. I have to credit my parents, they really knew how to surprise me. When we got back to vehicle, I opened the door to hop in and taking up my seat was none other than the kit I had been eyeballing. After I had left my post at the shelf, my dad had swooped in, bought the kit, stowed it in the seat, and returned before I was any the wiser. I would wager I had a goofy smile plastered on my face the entire ride back to the hotel.
I put a lot more effort into this kit than I had in any previous venture. This one felt serious. I had a card table set up in the living room with my glue, paintbrushes, paint, and of course, the 30-inch ship. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find any pictures of me building this kit way back in 2002, though I know some exist somewhere. I never did finish it. Life moved quickly, between moving across the country, starting a new school, and my interests shifting from toys and models to sports and chasing girls.
Back toTitanic
I didn’t think much about going back to building scale models after high-school, which at that point had been exclusively putting together tanks as a hobby. My models disappeared into a Rubbermaid somewhere, and I was engrossed in other pursuits. Still, I found myself getting pings of nostalgia when I would see a diorama at a museum that made me miss it. I began thinking, I could do that, particularly once I shifted my professional ambition from career military to fine arts. When I discovered how many military veterans build models, many of which pay the utmost attention to detail and accuracy, I realized I couldn’t put it off any longer. For my senior exhibition for my Bachelor of Fine Arts program, one of my pieces was a diorama depicting the German Offensive in the Ardennes - a piece that took me several years and over a thousand hours. It now resides at the Infantry Museum at Fort Stewart.
Wacht Am Rhein, Diorama consisting of 6 vehicles and over 40 figures.
Building models, especially with an aim of promoting them as a form of art, was extremely rewarding. I had the opportunity to merge history with artistic interpretation, creating narrative and little vignettes of stories across a scene. I was admittedly pretty nervous when I first put this piece in the gallery, but once I saw how viewers flocked to it, craning their head and exploring, looking for details and pointing them out to others, I realized it was worth the immense effort.
When it was announced that one of the largest quality model brands, Trumpeter, was releasing a massive 1/200 scale Titanic, all those old memories came flooding back. I suddenly found myself wanting to build the ship again, though this time with as much historical accuracy as I could.
One resource that really kick-started my decision to begin the project, particularly for an ambition to furnish the interior, is the in-progress video game Titanic: Honor and Glory. The project offers a demo of their website to tour the completed areas of the ship on their website: https://www.titanichg.com.
A comparison of the Cafe Parisien as seen in Titanic: Adventure Out of Time, Cyberflix, 1996 (top) and Titanic: Honor and Glory, Vintage Digital Revival LLC, 2020 (bottom).
I have stocked up on resource books as well as joined a few social media groups and forums dedicated to the the archiving of historical information. I’ve been submerged in a wealth of technical drawings, first-hand accounts, and images that will be invaluable as I move forward with this build.
Titanic: The Life and Death of a Legend. Michael Davie, Updated by Dave Gittins. First Vintage Books, 2012.
How It Happened: Titanic - The Epic Story From the People Who Were There. Edited by Geoff Tibbals. Robinson, 2018.
RMS Titanic: A Modelmaker’s Manual. Peter Davies-Garner. Seaforth Publishing, 2018.
The Titanic: The Extraordinary Story of the “Unsinkable” Ship. Geoff Tibbals. Carlton Books, Ltd., 1997.
Ken Marschall’s Art of the Titanic. Ken Marschall, text by Rick Archbold. Hyperion, 1998.
Titanic: The Ship Magnificent Volume 1 and 2. Bruce Beveridge, Scott Andrews, Steve Hall, Daniel Klistorner, and Art Braunschweiger. The History Press, 2017.
So that gets me to the here to the beginning of this massive undertaking. Let’s get started.
