Full size printed plan Passenger Ferry M.V. SHANKLIN Scale 1:72 suitable for Radio Control

Full size printed plan no material or model

M.V. SHANKLIN

Full size printed plan on a sheet 36” x 36”

Eleven page article with building notes and photos

Scale 1:72

Length 33"   Beam 8"

Suitable for Radio Control

by Colin Bishop

Model

 Scale, 1:72; the length 33in. and the beam 8in. This was also near enough to model railways 00 scale. This size was O.K. but there was a snag. Shanklin has a very unusual hull shape and a glance at the lines made it glaringly obvious that there wasn't very much hull underneath the water to hold the rest of the ship up. The Denny List gave displacement tonnage as 820 and at 1.72 scale this resulted in a model weight of 78oz. or just under 51b. Weight of radio, batteries and motors, etc., came to 39oz. leaving a further 39oz. for hull, superstructure and fittings. Obviously it could be done but construction would need to be kept fairly light. A good point was that the 'fish platter' shape of the lower hull meant that the weight needed to bring about a given amount of sinkage increased rapidly with immersion giving in practice a further 8oz. to play with. As it turned out, when ballasted to the correct waterline the all up weight was 7oz. — not far off the mark! I did not want to redraw the plans so I made myself a pair of proportional dividers out of thin section brass channel and pins which saved an enormous amount of time when transferring dimensions from plan to model and in construction of the fittings. It was, however, necessary to redraw the body plan and about three of the key waterlines to ensure total accuracy.

History

Shanklin was completed in 1951 at the famous shipyard of Denny of Dumbarton as the third of a trio of virtually identical sister ships for the Portsmouth-Ryde foot passenger service. The two earlier vessels, Southsea and Brading had been built some three years previously and Shanklin was in most respects a repeat order, the main differences being that her lifeboats were carried at bridge deck level and her funnel was somewhat larger. Down below her twin 8 cylinder Sulzer diesels were not fitted with gearboxes as in the other two vessels but instead were made reversible for economy reasons. Some 30 years later this was to lead indirectly to her loss.

Thank you for looking Rose