Beetle Whale Boat, c. 1870
Class A Scratch-built Model Scale 1:32 22” Long, 7” wide, 8” high (encased)
SOLD
The exterior is solid wood molding and the interior base is ½” MDF planked over to represent the protective sheathing whaling ships carried on their main decks to protect them from the abusive nature of the trade. The dust cover is brass-bound glass.
The nameboard is section of an antique piano key.
This is fine scale model of the Beetle Whaleboat on display in the Mariner’s Museum in Newport News, Virginia. The plans were drawn at Mystic Seaport. The sailing rig is replica of the rig on the Beetle whaleboat at the Nantucket Whaling Museum. All the whalecraft in the boat are also scale reproductions of artifacts on display at the Nantucket Museum during the early 1990s. The model conforms to Mystic Seaport’s, Guidelines for Ship Models, published in 1980. In the case of this subject, that mean everything, except the rigging line was fabricated by the builder.
This particular model was the subject of a fifteen part series on YouTube chronicling the building of a historically accurate model of the type. Here is a link to the first episode: Building a Whale Boat, Episode One
Tom Lauria was born in the Bronx, New York in 1952. He started building kit models when he was about seven years old and was hopelessly hooked. When he was in his early twenties, he met William Quincy, a master model builder at Mystic Seaport in Connecticut. Mr. Quincy patiently answered all Tom’s questions on a host of model related topics and it changed the way Tom thought about models and building them.
Shortly after, he joined the Nautical Research Guild and eagerly devoured all the information contained in their quarterly journals. Numerous trips to all the maritime museums in the northeast furthered his modeling education. He started restoring half hulls for the Larchmont Yacht Club in New York and in 1987, moved to Nantucket where model building became a fulltime job.
In 1994 Tom and his family moved to Cape Cod, where they live today. He is an active member of the U.S.S. Constitution Model Shipwright Guild. Being a Guild member has been another important step in Tom’s life. The Guild has such a wide range of members with so many varied interests and knowledge that it has proved an inexhaustible resource for anything nautical or model related.