Ship Model Journal

Every year more and more people travel to far away places to see new sights, taste different foods, and learn more about the world around them. Visitors make the trek to St. Augustine, Florida year-round and while there, visit the St. Augustine Lighthouse and Museum. When they make their way to the Gallery in the upstairs of the Keepers’ House, our team of ship-modelers enjoys the opportunity to talk with them. For the help we [...]

HMS Victory – the ship’s wheel. The people who have visited with the ship modelers at the St. Augustine Lighthouse & Museum have been a widely varied group. They seem to have had one thing in common, however. After having spoken with our group of modelers, most have expressed an interested in following our progress on the current model we are working on, HMS Victory. […]

The San Cristobal, a Spanish bergantin, was one of the ships of the Ponce de Leon Expedition to Florida in 1513. In early 2013, St. Augustine celebrated the 500th Anniversary of Ponce de Leon’s legendary expedition to Florida’s coast. Three ships, the Santiago, the San Cristobal and the Santa Maria de la Consolacion, set out from Puerto Rico on March 4, 1513. The fleet crossed open water until April 2, 1513, when they sighted land [...]

An ancient clay model of a Greek warship. Ship modeling is most definitely not a “new” hobby by any means! In fact, its history goes much further back than most people actually realize. Ship and boat models have been discovered in the Mediterranean dating from ancient Egypt, Greece and Phoenicia. Models are a thing of beauty but also of tremendous historic value to also help archaeologists in estimating size of various sea vessels used in [...]

HMS Victory at Portsmouth Dockyard in England HMS Victory remains as majestic today as she was on launch day, May 7th, 1765. This ship and her mother country will celebrate the ship’s 250th birthday in 2015. The Eighteenth Century: Still Alive in England … […]

Doug Anderson and the Victory Today’s blog begins by going backwards in time a bit. I would like to share a kind of “Love Story”, one which eventually brought the model HMS Victory to the Lighthouse. As time and this blog go on, we will talk about the little-known Rebecca and other models as well, posting photos as each of the ships progress. […]

This is one of the models you will find on your visit to the St. Augustine Lighthouse & Museum. Welcome! We hope you will enjoy this new blog, the Ship Model Journal, provided by the modelers at the St. Augustine Lighthouse & Museum! Unknown to many visitors, the Museum houses an incredible collection of ship models. They are on display throughout the museum, in the gift ship and the Keepers’ House. Some are quite large [...]