I built my first ocean liner model wayyyyyy back in December 1963, when I was 9 years old and only a few months removed from a roundtrip voyage to Germany with my mother and brother on Hanseatic. Since Hanseatic model kits were in short supply in my neighborhood, I settled on creating United States in miniature.
How did it turn out? Well, if you can imagine, my model looked like a tiny version of the Big U in her current state, only with a brighter and sloppier paint job.
I no longer have the model. In fact, the only proof of its former existence is a brief 8mm home movie that shows a pajama-clad me dancing and waving the model’s unfinished hull. I don’t think I’ll be uploading that clip to YouTube at any point in the near or distant future.
Anyway, there are many great model builders out there. Look, for example, for at this tiny recreation of Queen Mary 2. Perfection in plastic. I especially like the photo at the bottom of the page, the one with the light shining into the camera. The model looks almost like the real thing. Well, if you squint it does.
