¹⁄700

Spanish Navy Battleship PELAYO, 1895

The Vessel

Displacement -9745 tons

Armament
2 x 12.5in
2 x 11 in
1 x 6.4in
12 x 4.7 in
5 x 6 pdr Q/F
14 MG
7 Torpedo Tubes

OAL-334 ft
Beam-66ft
Draft-24ft
Complement-520

Pelayo was completed in 1888 at the French Yard of La Seyne, there being no Spanish yards large enough at the time to undertake the work. She was based on the French design of the Marceau but with less draft so as to allow her to negotiate the Suez canal fully loaded.

Fitted originally with an auxiliary sailing rig of 4000 sq. ft she was soon reduced to military masts . The main Hontoria guns were mounted in barbettes on the Canet system which permitted loading in any position, 8000 ihp gave her a top speed of 16.2 knots on trials. She had a rebuild at La Seyne in 1897 where she was re-boilered and partially re-armed , the 4.7" being replaced by 5.5". She therefore missed the Spanish-American war by being yard-bound which resulted in her never seeing action with an enemy vessel. She did however fire her guns in anger bombarding the Moroccan shore in 1909.

She was the flagship of the Spanish Navy and attended many International Naval reviews and Regattas. In 1912 she was badly damaged after running aground and thereafter was only used for training purposes. She was eventually relegated to an accommodation , disarmed in 1923 and broken up in 1925.

The model...

The Spanish Pelayo was an unusual choice of subject as a first attempt into the resin ship model market, nevertheless that is exactly what Jadar Models of Poland did. Quality wise for a first attempt it is a credible effort, fairly crisp casting and containing within the kit a small Photoetch fret with ladders, railings, boat seats, davits and gunhouse roofs.





Unfortunately they appear to have used a single, somewhat flawed(!) drawing as their primary source of information on which they based the master. It shows PELAYO with a rounded sloping cruiser stern, as well as missing out 4 x 4.7" guns and apertures from the broadside battery.





The neat little PE boat launching davits were absolutely incorrect, as well as the boat fit consisting of far too few, and all of them wrong...although those supplied had neat PE boat thwarts.





Scaling off photos showed the funnels to be somewhat short so these were replaced with new squashed alloy tube versions.