by John Lemire
1/70 Pedro Nunez (Revell Germany)
There is a bit of ‘history’ about the Pedro Nunez kit, originally from Revell and released, many years later by Revell Germany of this 1/70 scale kit.
What is amazing is that way back in the 1950’s and 60’s Revell produced some of the finest plastic sailing ship kits rivaled only by Heller many years later. Some of these kits, such as U.S.S. Constitution have become classics and many have disappeared or have reappeared briefly and then disappeared again, such as U.S.S. Kearsarge and C.S.S. Alabama. My ‘ultimate favorite’ is Thermopylae.
When I was very young, my brother and his wife would have me stay over at his house for my birthday. He ‘dabbled’ with models. One was a beautiful (although unpainted and straight from the box) model of the Pedro Nunez. Many years later I became seriously interested in making model ships and searched in vain for this kit. About forty years later Revell Germany re-released the kit but then it disappeared again.
If my memory serves me, back in the 1950’s these kits were deluxe and went for a whopping price of around $12. When this kit was released the price was now $140. Money was no object and I finally got my hands on it. It was only then that I discovered that the Pedro Nunez is actually the Thermopylae. After the end of the great clipper ships, Thermopylae was sold twice, eventually to the Portugese government who converted her into a cadet training ship. Her long career ended as target practice for their navy.
OK – to me, here is the key to really beautiful plastic ship models and I call it more of a hybrid or conversion. I probably spend twice as much on fittings and lumber than on any given kit itself. First, I use scale lumber to actually plank the deck with real wood. The second is that I make my own dead-eye combos and ratlines, painstakingly and tediously tying every single knot fairly representative of how they were actually rigged on real ships. These two techniques make a plastic ship model every bit as beautiful as a wood ship kit costing hundreds of dollars more and can be assembled in a lot less time.
