Clearwater Models: BONHOMME RICHARD (Heller)

This is the very very small kit from Heller Cadet in 1:500 scale of the 1765 sailing ship named BONHOMME RICHARD. The first release was in 1964 as Heller L060. It probably had solid plastic sails. This slightly later version has vacuform thin plastic sails meant to be cut out and hung.

The original vessel was a merchantman trader for the French East India Company named Duc de Duras which managed two trips to China before being bought by the king of France.

The French king gave the ship to the new USA government as a war loan in February 1779, and by September that same year it had been sunk by the British Royal Navy off north Yorkshire in the battle of Flamborough Head.

But it lived on when the captain of the Bonhomme Richard managed to capture the victorious warship HMS Serapis and sail it as a pirated vessel to the Dutch port at Texel where they made a new US flag from faulty memory and a description in a book in order not to be seized as a pirated vessel. The Texel or Serapis flag is the most unusual of the early US national flags.

Paint is a Tamiya spray white primer on the hull, and sand colour on the deck. Everything else is Vallejo acrylics. I cut off the original yards from the side of the masts and built new yards from plastic rod and from metal wire. The vacuform sails are hung from these. The rigging is sewing thread, and the vacuform sails are from the kit. I built the gold captains cabin section onto the stern of the ship as the original kit had only a flat stern. I built two additional yards and sails from the vacuform material for the two sails hung under the bowsprit as these show up in paintings and museum models. There are nice very tiny cannons on the decks.

I made all three flags by printing tiny images in colour regular and flipped so when glued together the flag would face the correct way from the mast. Flags include the best representation of what was the US national flag in 1779; the "first navy jack" of the US Navy (Don't tread on me); and the Texel or Serapis flag on the stern. It would not have been possible for the BHR to fly the Texel flag as the ship had already been sunk - but it is flown as an historical marker of the event.

I bough the kit at a flea market in Ottawa for $4, and finished it in 8 days.

UPDATE: This model placed second in the giant CAPCON biennial model contest on 28 September 2019 at the Canadian War Museum in Ottawa. (non-powered ships)