CLASSIC BOAT JANUARY 2018 53
A
round 5,000 hours into building a replica^1 / 64 th
scale model of Nelson’s Agamemnon, Malcolm
Darch knew one thing for sure – next time he’d
build something simpler!
More than 10,000 hours in – six days a week over the last
fi ve years – the completed model sits in the home of its owner,
a retired Salcombe businessman who commissioned it for a
tidy sum, and it bears something not seen by naval historians
for some time – an accurate stern.
The search for this elusive element of the build took Darch
two years of detective work alone. “There was no known record
of what that part of the ship looked like in detail,” he says. “A
painter can shade the stern or hide it behind a sail, but you
can’t do that with a model. Every inch of it has to be accurate.”
What Darch has discovered about the rear end decoration of
the 64-gun third rate battleship, launched from Buckler’s Hard
in 1781, will surprise some, as it goes against famous depictions
of her, but Darch knows he has answered one of the questions
that has dogged scholars of the period for more than a century.
Darch was born to artistic parents in Bristol in 1950. In a tale
he must have repeated 100 times, he almost cut his thumb off
aged six, making a model aeroplane. “My mother said: ‘That’s
the last model plane you’ll make, my boy.’ So I went to boats.”
Taught to sail by the Island Cruising Club in Salcombe, Darch
was a dinghy instructor aged 14 and after
excelling at engineering at school, decided
he’d become a yacht-building shipwright.
“This was 1966 and an entire generation was
told to be computer programmers,” he says.
“Aged 16, I called up the youth employment
offi ce in Bristol – the fi rst time I’d used a
phone – and said I wanted to build yachts.
The man told me it was a most unusual
request and that as far he knew, yacht
building families didn’t employ outsiders.”
Darch’s experience making boat models
and the fact that his father had taught him
how a lines plan worked won him an
apprenticeship at the new Shipbuilding
Industry Training Centre in Southampton, with much hands-on
work in the new yard of Port Hamble.
“Port Hamble was very posh then. Rope Walk [which is now
residential] was a two-storey wooden yacht store, full of bits of
yachts and kit that people would die for today. A maze of steps
and store doors bearing the names of famous yachts, all
smelling of Stockholm tar and canvas. It was a joy to go round.”
Darch worked on many of the famous boats of the time,
including Morning Cloud, Noreyma, Casquet and the Yeoman
boats. After graduating with the top prize in the country – he
proudly shows off the silver medal today – he took a job as
shipwright with the Island Cruising Club, back in Salcombe, in- He never left. “I was young, I had long hair and I never had
any luck with women anywhere else!” he says.
But when the luxury tax on yachting, imposed by the Labour
government in 1975, put Darch and many others in the marine
industry out of work, he had to look for an alternative way to
make a living. Darch returned to his childhood love of model
making. “Not as a commercial model maker. I wanted to build
at my own pace, for connoisseur collectors.”
He found an early patron in local hotelier Bob Northcott,
who accepted the 25-year-old Darch’s quote of £7,250 to build
the full fl eet of seven historic Salcombe lifeboats. These, as
modelled by Darch, can be seen in the RNLI museum and shop
on Salcombe quay today.
Darch set out with the aim of doing 100 models in his
lifetime. Aged 67, he’s reached number 57 and may continue
for another 10 years. “I wanted to represent the best of each
style of vessel, predominantly British. I’ve been talked into
building two Napoleonic era vessels and I have no desire to
build any more. They’re a nightmare. The wooden walls really
take it out of you. My desire now is to build models of the
classic yachts – Suzanne, Latifa, Rainbow, Jolie Brise and
others of that ilk.”
He never does more than one model to maintain individual
values and each carries a hidden logo, usually visible with a
dental mirror, to prove it is a genuine Darch. He is renowned for
working to the highest standards and says his work is an
attempt to reach ‘the pinnacle’ of model making.
“All that training in boatbuilding and naval architecture, as
well as simply thinking about the way you tackle a problem, I
have used it all, but in miniature,” he says.
Each model is built using satin walnut or English boxwood,
dense and steamable. Darch points out the tiny steamed planks
on the stern of Agamemnon, which sits on the worktop in his
harbourside attic studio. Of his search for the missing stern
details, he says: “I found out that the
painter Nicholas Pocock had been
commissioned by Admiral Hood to
depict a scene at the 1782 Battle of the
Saints. Research subsequently proved
that Pocock painted Agamemnon from
life when she was being repaired in
Chatham Dockyard in 1784. It turned out
the original work is hanging up in
Admiralty House, in Portsmouth Naval
Dockyard. It shows the position of all the
fi gures carved on the stern, which has
always been elusive for artists and model
makers in the past. Ships of the time
were similar, but each had a unique stern,
as the carving there represented the ship’s name in neoclassical
sculpture and frieze painting.”
Darch is a perfectionist whose eye for detail and skill in
miniature is written all over Agamemnon. Painting the frieze
that weaves its way around the ship alone took 240 hours. The
deck planks are individually laid and tapered. The copper
sheathing on the hull is 2,000th of an inch thick, with each of
the tacks marked in place. Each cannon is rigged and bears the
king’s cipher. The rigging is the right thickness, all ropes spun in
natural or man-made yarn with the correct lay. The ship is fully
fi tted out down below.
“There are people out there who will point out the fi ne
details if they’re wrong,” says Darch. “For instance, until 1793
the main preventer stay would have been secured to the
foremast, but thereafter it went onto the bowsprit. This model
depicts the three-year period Nelson was aboard and changes
took place over that time. All the books said the deck planks
weren’t tapered, but I’ve found out they were, from a model of
the period that showed a proposed upgrade of the Ardent
class, of which Agamemnon was the fi rst to receive the new
style. You have to get things as they were. It’s a journey of
historical research and deep discussion with many experts.”“All that
training in
boatbuilding
and naval
architecture,
I’ve used it in
miniature”