Plucky Brit Sailors Tackle Fiendish Foreigner in our Midst
My son and I were lucky enough to see the Portsmouth Model Boat Display Team put on a show at the local boating lake recently, and we were amazed and delighted to see two old blokes actually jump into a couple of model frigates and zoom around the lake in them, firing their guns.
These things - the frigates, not the blokes - were about 7 foot long, with hinged lids like a coffin. Each man - or sailor, if you like - climbed in to his respective craft, laid down on his back and had an assistant close the lid on top of him so that he was completely hidden from sight. I thought "Bloody Hell, they're actually going to zoom about in those things!" And they did. Round and round in circles they went, rotating their turrets and raising and lowering their guns. Looked like a right laugh, although I'm not sure how good the visibility was (they had narrow slits all round the hull), and I'd want to do more than go round in circles. I'd like to see one go over to Cherbourg or Le Havre and dock into a miniature harbour.
The show climaxed with the destruction of a fort in the middle of the lake; obviously no real shots were fired but the gun turrets made smoke and noise and huge quantities of smoke, noise and flames appeared on the fort, which, according to the commentary, belonged to a Chinese opium lord. Imagine that - a tiny Chinese opium lord living in a tiny fort in the middle of Canoe Lake in Southsea! Or perhaps he was a full sized opium lord curled up inside a model.
The frigates, cos I know you're desperate to know, were modelled on ones built in the 1890s and looked like dapper dreadnoughts in their white and yellow paintwork. |
