The Ship

Designed and built in 1851 by William H. Webb for the California trade of Barclay and Livingston, to carry gold miners and their supplies. Its record of 91 days from New York to San Francisco was surpassed only once.
Swordfish was also in the China Trade to Canton, Kwangtung Province, China.  One voyage was the fastest time from the “Line” to New York ever recorded in a sailing ship. She foundered in 1864 on the Yangtze River in Shanghai, Kiangsu Province, China.

The Model

This was Ed’s first wooden ship model, except for one that he had to put away for months because of his work and when he returned to it, found that the glue had dissolved, leaving only pieces of wood, warped and ruined. Needless to say, he was discouraged but kept trying out glues on smaller jobs until he found one that could weather the dry heat of the Tucson, Arizona, desert and the moist heat of rainy seasons.

Scale: 3/32”          23” long by 15” high
Solid hull – pine wood – painted.
Marine model kit with very little deviation from kit instructions.  He was just a beginner at that time.
The quality of the standing and running rigging resulted from work on plastic ship models.
Ed made a card matrix of the hull of the ship at different levels, using file folder-weight card, so that each side would be the same as the opposite side.  By turning it over, it could be used for each side at marked intervals with a matrix for each level.
Swordfish  is the first of only two solid-hull ships that he built and painted.

-From notes prepared by Dorothy Marple