David Rutherford from Australia has developed a site dealing with ship models in cinema. His site profiles various movies from different eras and shows and describes how they were filmed and built.

What scale modeler doesn't have the dream to be paid for building models and what would be more fun than to build for a movie? From swashbuckling films such as "Against All Flags" and under sea epics like "Das Boot" , the pre-digital film age saw some of the most beautiful models built of ships and submarines with exquisite detail.

The Introduction from Dave's site:

This website mainly concerns itself with the technique of photographing model ships in real water, whether it be in a specifically constructed studio tank with a painted backdrop, out upon a real sea with the real horizon and sky or a combination of specially constructed tank using a real horizon and sky. This is a process that is increasingly rare in these days of digital filmmaking. The golden age was seen in the films of the 1940’s and 1950’s and there are still some strikingly effective examples seen in films right up to the end of the twentieth century. It will also cover model ships that have been built and photographed dry, with various methods for integrating either photographically shot plates of water, CG simulations of water surfaces and fogged in studios representing underwater scenes.