Category:Toy and Model Boats (display)

Display Area
35 - Toy and Model Boats (display) Arch Four
––   01   02   03   04   05   06   07   08   09 10   11   12   13   14   15   16   17   18   19 20   21   22   23   24   25   26   27   28   29   30   31   32   33   34   35   36   37   38   39 40   41   42   43   44   45   46   47   48   49 50   51   52   53   54   55   ––   57   58   –– ––   61   62   63   64   65   66   67   ––   –– ––   71   72   73   74   ––   76   77   78   79 80   81   82   83   84   85   86   ––   ––   ––

A cabinet of toy and model boats, in Arch Four, by the Museum's emergency exit. More ships and boats are on display in Arch Two.

The display (@ ~2005)

A precious collection of pre and post-war toy and model boats, including some exceptional early Bing clockwork examples. Many of the models are displayed with their original boxes adding to their interest and rarity.

Toy boats have been found in Ancient Egypt and played with by children down the millennia, unlike their modern transport counterparts like trains, aeroplanes and automobiles, all of which arrived with the advent of the industrial revolution of the 1800s.

Tinplate toy boats are amongst the rarest of toys due to their vulnerability (many sit rusting in the murky depths boating lakes to this day) and the fact that they were not mass-produced in the same quantities as toy trains and their 1ike. so look closely now at the 1904 BING liner KAISER WILHELM from BINGs first series. Bing were amongst the greatest of all toy-makers, along with Märklin and Georges Carette, all of them based in or near to Nuremberg in Germany which was the toy-capital of the world at the turn of the Nineteenth/Twentieth Century. It was the golden age of tinplate with toys based on warships and the impressive new large passenger liners.

Two rare examples of Bing ships that escaped the bottom of the boating lake are the Second Series liner of 1913, and the Third Series liner of 1923, based on the Beregrano (sp?), all clockwork.

The Hornby Speedboat is an example of a British made clockwork model of the 1930s and the Bowman steam-powered racing boat must have "cut a dash" on the boating lakes of the 1930s, no doubt, trounced by the 1931 SNIPE using steam-engine principles.

Amongst the other post-war models are HMS Cossack, steam-driven and radio-controlled: a 1955 toy Nautilus inspired by the film 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, and note the Chad Valley card-ship Queen Mary, each deck printed separately to build into a complete cardboard model. Sold on board the Queen Mary in the 1930 it's arguably an early example of an early-learning toy.