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HMS Cowslip

Nice looking. The weathering looks good Your blown pocket money days paid off!

Hi Dave, great ship you have build. A lot of detail on this model, keeps you looking over and over. Nice to read that you tried to show the roughness of the Atlantic in the model. You did a very good job on this. One little nitpick however, the flag is a bit to shiny I my opinion. Like your model. Jelger

Nice job!..i have such a softspot in my heart for corvettes and the poor sods who worked them!..brutal business was the Battle of the North Atlantic..

A nice authentic feel about this build which shows the artist beyond the modeller. Cheers, Peter F

very nicely done; good story and application of weathering.... cheers

Thanks a lot guys. This was a real labour (literally!) of love as I have met some veterans of the North Atalantic convoys - a still much forgotten war that made some of the more famous land battles look like family picnics. Without the convoys, both Merchant and Naval vessels, WW2 would probably have ended in defeat for the allies by early 1943. As well as U-Boats and torpedo bombers, the crews had to cope with machinery breakdowns 00s of miles from a port, freezing weather that stripped the skin from the hands if touched metal when not wearing gloves; heavy seas that even on one Corvette took the entire 4" and mounting over the side and smashed the bridge/wheelhouse front in. That ship was 3 months in dock after that voyage!

Hi, In a moment of nostalgia I decided to relive the most memorable event of my life, a day at sea in the final work-up aboard HMS Cowslip out of Tobermory in the summer of 1942. I must thank Dave Cox for the model he built which enabled me to fully visualise my experiences over again. It may sound odd that an eight year old schoolboy was able to experience such an incredible voyage but it was made possible by my aunt who was a CPO in Supply at Tobermory. During the exercise all the ships weaponry was tested from the 4 inch gun thro' Oerlican cannons, depth charges and the Hedgehog anti-submarine grenades, I was even invited to dine with the Captain but being so young and shy I hardly spoke a word to him and had to leave for fresh air on deck because of sea sickness. I am now 75 so it is extremely unlikely that any of the crew are still with us, if only I could express my gratitude to them for even at that young age I realised what they would be facing from then on. In studying Dave's model I am unable to recognise the Hedgehog launcher platform which I believe was on the bow deck in fron of the 4 inch gun. Was that the case of in my memory playing tricks on me? Thank you once again for recreating that fantastic experience.

Glad my model brought back some memories Roy! The hedgehog is there - to starboard between the wheelhouse and 4"! As I said, the ship was modified in at least 4 stages during the war, and the model shows elements of all of them so not all the details are as she was fisrt built!