Scale: 1:48. This model of the 'Breconshire' (1942) is very similar both in style and depiction to the ‘Glenearn’ (SLR0023) and is made to the same high quality. Like the ‘Glenearn’ there was provision for a limited number of passengers, and we can see the signs of their creature comforts amidships such as teak decking and handrails. Passengers, though, would not be able to forget that this was essentially a cargo ship. Sitting at the tables laid out to the rear of ‘B’ deck, their view would be of a forest of derricks and rigging and large hatch covers.

The ship was laid down as the ‘Telemachus’, but was taken over on the stocks at the yard of the Caledon Shipbuilding and Engineering Co. Ltd., Dundee, by the Admiralty in 1942 and completed as an escort carrier. Renamed HMS ‘Activity’ it had a distinguished naval career in the protection of Atlantic and Arctic convoys and was engaged in a notable action against a large pack of U-boats within the Arctic Circle, in April 1944, when three of the attacking submarines were destroyed.

‘Activity’ ended the war in the Far East theatre, and in 1946 was purchased for the Glen Line. Following extensive reconstruction, it was commissioned late in 1947 with the name ‘Breconshire’ and traded for 20 years between the Far East and Europe. She was sold in 1967 for breaking up in Japan.