The Model builder
68 TREASURE COAST BOATING
Sailor channels love of sea into model shipbuilding
BY SUSAN BURGESS
With an eye for detail and a penchant
for perfection, Nat Huggins
builds ships. And houses.
And packing plants. And no,
he’s not a developer.
Huggins, 81, is a lifelong sailor and a model
builder — but not just any model builder.
His talent is special, and model building has
been his passion for nearly all of his life.
Huggins works from the detailed photographs
and measurements he takes of
beloved old buildings, from engineering
drawings, from concepts and sometimes
from instructions in modeling kits that
would boggle the average person’s mind.
“I’ve given some of my work to museums,
and some as gifts,” the Vero Beach resident
says modestly, as though anyone could do it.
He loves history, so when he takes on a project,
he knows as much about it as any docent
conducting museum tours.
A model of the whaler Charles W. Morgan,
a two-year project, is under way right now.
The keel of the original was laid in 1841 and
it made 37 voyages between 1841 and 1921,
when it was retired, he says. Today, the Morgan
is afloat at the Mystic Seaport Museum
where Huggins happened upon it.
“It’s a beautiful old whaling ship,” Huggins
says. “I’ve been aboard it many times.
I’m fascinated with something that old and
that beautiful. Its sole purpose was to get
sperm whales. The blubber, when it was
rendered on deck, was put into barrels. They
had a cooper on board — a cooper is a barrelmaker
— to make the barrels for them. The
oil was sold and commanded a very high
price because it was very clean to burn.”
His model, which includes thread for
rigging, basswood for the deck, bamboo pulleys
and cast metal, is on a scale of 3/16 of an
inch to 1 foot. The original ship was 133 feet
long, with three masts and a 105-foot deck.
It displaced 313 tons of water. The model
is 27 inches long and is made of hundreds
upon hundreds of pieces. The wood has to
be steamed and formed to match the ship’s
curves; 10 or more of the tiny parts can fit on
the tip of a fingernail.
The patience to place thousands of small
pieces precisely where they need to go is
not common, especially in today’s instant
Internet world. Huggins has been developing
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Nat Huggins of Vero Beach is working on a two-year project —
a model of the 1841-1921 whaling ship Charles W. Morgan.
The original is at Mystic Seaport, the Museum of America and
the Sea in Connecticut.