Tuesday, June 12, 2018

The Miniature Ships of Mr. Theodore Gommi

In the 1930's and into the 1940's, there ran in Popular Science a series of articles on the construction of miniature model ships. These were the master mind of builder and ship enthusiast Theodore Gommi of Hoboken, New Jersey.  While these might not have been the first miniature construction articles to run, they were the first to have possibly found a mass audience here in the United States.
He wrote these articles so that someone who possessed even the most basic of tools could build a fine model. To my knowledge, he was one of the first authors to suggest the use of balsa wood in the construction of miniature ships. He was also an advocate of the "bread and butter" method, using several sheets of thinner material to build up a hull.
Most of his articles concentrated on the construction of warships in 1/1200, though he did cover the larger 1/600 scale as well. Obviously, converting from one to the other was a fairly easy task. Most of the time, his designs were fairly sound, such as an article from August of 1934 that covered the construction of the USS Saratoga and some four stacker destroyers in 1/600.
(All Images via Popular Science/Google Books)

However, when later destroyer classes were built, he had a tendency to make their turrets slightly on the small side. This image of the USS Winslow from an article on building destroyers in the June 1939 Popular Science shows just that.

Most of the other details were there, albeit simplified, as one would expect on miniatures.
Sometimes, his model designs showed the limitations of the available information. His plans for the USS North Carolina, from January 1939, appear to have been based upon the ship's profile only. This is something I plan to cover another time in a little more depth.
The work of Mr. Gommi went a long way to advance the construction of miniatures here in the United States, yet he seemed to have put aside the articles after 1944. He appears to have continued building models, however, much as he had before and after the series.
Needless to say, his contribution stands, and indeed appear to be one of the few popular articles on the subject published in the United States during the first half of the 20th century. 

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