HMS Surprise Limited 38"

The highest quality HMS Surprise available!

• 38" long x 12" Wide x 29" High (1:66 Scale)
• Includes a numbered Certificate of Authenticity signed by HMS Founder and Master Builder Richard Norris, as only 50 will ever be made.
• Museum quality with many features not available in a model for under $5,000 or in any model kit
• Real Copper plated hull (not painted on), like the actual HMS Surprise (done to prevent the toredo worm from destroying the wood hull)
• Amazing details: planked deck with nail holes, tied-down cannons, barells, buckets, cannon ball racks, rudder chains, and more.
• Meticulously painted to the actual HMS Surprise
• Masterfully stitched, thick canvass sails that hold their shape and do not wrinkle
• Metal anchors and turned brass cannons
• Advanced rigging techniques with over 200 blocks/deadeyes
• Perfectly taught rigging of various colors and thickness to ensure authenticity
• Authentic lifeboats - not flat bottomed
  
• Requires hundreds of hours to build from scratch (not from a model kit) by our master artisans.
• Built with rare, high quality woods such as cherry, walnut, oak, birch and maple.
• The model rests perfectly on a large marble base between four arched metal dolphins.
• To build this ship, extensive research was done using various sources such as museums, drawings, copies of original plans and photos of the actual ship.
• Visit our Frequently Asked Questions or call with questions.
  

  Offering three other HMS Surprise models
  HMS Surprise 30"
  HMS Surprise 30" Limited
  HMS Surprise 38"
  
  Which HMS Surprise model is right for me?
  Read our "HMS Surprise Buyers Guide"

HMS Surprise was a 38-gun frigate of the Hebe Class of the Royal Navy, although all these Fifth Rate frigates were re-classed as 46-gun under the general re-rating of February 1817, from when carronades on the quarter deck and forecastle were included in the rating. She carried a complement of 284 officers and ratings, and a primary armament of 28 eighteen-pounder guns on her upper deck, with 8 nine-pounder guns (and 6 32-pounder carronades) on her quarter deck and 2 nine-pounder guns (and 2 more 32-pounder carronades) on her forecastle.

The Surprise was ordered on 10 April 1809, and her keel was laid down at Milford Dockyard in Pembrokeshire in January 1810. She was launched on 25 July 1812, and sailed round to Plymouth Dockyard to be completed. Fitting out took place between 9 Augustand 1 December 1812, and she was commissioned in September 1812 under the command of Captain Sir Thomas John Cochrane, sailing for the West Indies on 19 December 1812. She measured 150 feet 4 inches on the gun deck, with a breadth of 40 feet and a half-inch, and a depth in hold of 12 feet 9 inches, giving a tonnage of just over 1,072.

Under Cochrane's command, she served initially on the Leeward Islands, where she captured the American 12-gun privateer Decatur on 16 January 1813, and subsequently on the North American station during the War of 1812. From June 1814 she was commanded by Capt. George Knight and was present at the bombardment of Fort McHenry in September 1814. She paid off out of commission into Ordinary (i.e. reserve) in August or September 1815. By 1822 she had been reduced to a hulk at Milford, but was then fitted out at Plymouth as a convict hulk to be stationed at Cork, where she remained until sold (for �2,010) there in 1837.