AMERICAN HOMES AND GARDENS 
SSS eS STERN SAE SS 
December, 1912 
ee $ 
Model of an antique ship, worked out to reduced scale in all details 
Antigue Ship Models 
By Robert H. Van Court 
Photographs by T. C. Turner and Others 
HERE is no chapter of history more fas- 
cinating than that in which are written the 
achievements of the men who go down to 
sea in ships. The story begins with the days 
when Egypt, Greece or Phenecia ruled the 
ee sea, or as much of the ocean as was then 
known. Then the proud galleys of imperial Rome had their 
long day, and the time most brilliant of all was during the 
later centuries, when Venice ruled the Mediterranean and 
when the navies of France, Spain, England and Holland 
contended for supremacy upon the high seas, when the 
pride of Spain went down before the power of England in 
the sixteenth century or when, in the seventeenth century, 
the Dutch Admiral Van Tromp swept insolently up and 
down the English Channel. ‘Those were the days when 
the achievements and victories of armies upon the land ap- 
peared extremely trivial compared with the attainments of 
navies upon the water. 
Much of the romance of these and other picturesque days 
is expressed by the models of vessels of different periods 
of history which grateful seamen have offered at shrines 
and altars after rescue from the perils of the deep. In 
cathedrals, churches and chapels in Norway, Sweden and 
other countries upon the Baltic the model vessels hang sus- 
pended from the ceiling, placed there by fishermen and 
mariners as tokens of thanksgiving for escape from ship- 
wreck, and the church upon the little island of Heligoland 
in the North Sea is filled with them. This is but one form 
of expression of the same spirit which existed in earlier 
centuries, for the temple of Neptune in Rome was hung 
with the sea-stained garments of mariners escaped from 
drowning, garments offered as votive gifts to the god of 
the sea. 
The effect of miniature vessels hung amid the arches of 
churches and chapels no doubt suggested this form of deco- 
ration in places where there would be sufficient height for 
the proper placing of such ships-in-little. In the library of 
a New York business man is placed what he calls his “navy.” 
Here are hung miniature models of the vessels of many 
nations and countries. A quaint fleet which extends in end- 
less procession about a large room give more than a hint of 
the history of navigation, together with a suggestion of its 
mystery and romance. Here are represented the galleons 
in which the buccaneers of old plundered cities and towns 
