OcCre’s HMS Beagle is a very appealing kit to many ship modelers, and first time builders are no exception. The kit is designed as a moderately priced wooden kit of medium difficulty, what OcCre labels a level of 3 on a difficulty scale of 1 to 6, with 1 being the easiest. It might not be the best choice for first time modelers, but sometimes, it’s the subject matter that drives the shipmodeler to a successful build.

While we recommend a first time builder start with something like the OcCre Polaris, or perhaps Amati’s Lady Nelson, for the more ambitious, this particular modeler decided to take on OcCre’s HMS Beagle as his first ever ship modeler, and he clearly knocked this one “out the park” as they say. So, here is ModelShipWorld member DonSangria’s HMS Beagle…

The builder comments that he took his build slow but steady, and that he made some of his own improvements along the way. This includes making his own sails out of silkspan, which is a paper-like cloth. While the kit includes a full set of pre-sewn sails,  the thin material he used gives a more scale appearance to the model.

Note too, how the builder angled the yards slightly, adding a more lifelike, natural appearance of an actual ship on the seas. The few figures he put on the decks, and the curling shape given to the flags only add to that lifelike feel.

DonSangria’s model is based on the 1/60-scale wooden ship model kit of HMS Beagle from OcCre, which you can find on our shop here.

There are other kits of HMS Beagle, but this one is the closest in appearance to the original ship, as presented in the thoroughly research work of Karl Heinz Marquardt, in his book on HMS Beagle that was published as part of the Anatomy of the Ship series. That book is out of print, and used copies are rare and apparently in high demand, as pricing for a used copy is in the neighborhood of $250.

But, you don’t need that book to build a fine replica of the ship, you just need a well designed kit, like this one, where OcCre has clearly done their homework to bring you the finest representation of HMS Beagle available. And, to make construction easier, OcCre not only gives you a detailed, step-by-step construction manual, they have also created a series of build videos that are readily accessible on YouTube. In addition, there are many fine builds on ModelShipWorld and elsewhere, so you can easily follow others’ work.

We’ve only shown you a few photos of DonSangria’s beautifully done model, but you can see more at ModelShipWorld.com, there’s more than 20 of this beautiful model. Ω