Scale: 1: 96. A full hull exhibition model of the four-masted steel barque ‘Parma’ (1902). The model is fully rigged with sails bent on and stowed, the whole of which is mounted in an acrylic waterline diorama base, showing the ship at anchor. This model has subsequently been re-displayed in a larger diorama together with a model of the ‘Mozart’ (see SLR0048).

This is a highly detailed model and includes all the working equipment on deck, a simulated plated hull, alongside of which is one of the ship’s boats ready for use to and from the shore. To get a better idea of the scale, a number of crew members have been placed on deck: two forward on the forecastle, one on the poop deck aft and two in the boat alongside. It depicts the ultimate development of the large ocean-going sailing ship with a steel hull and rigging, which allowed it to be driven hard in most weather conditions.

The ‘Parma’ was built in 1902 by A. Rodger & Co., Port Glasgow, as the ‘Arrow’ and measured 327 feet in length by 46 feet in the beam and had a tonnage of 3090 gross. Originally owned by the Anglo-American Oil Co. used for carrying paraffin in small square cans known as ‘cases’, it was one of a fleet of ten case-oil carriers trading between New York, Philadelphia, Australia and Japan. This business gave profitable employment to sailing vessels at low freights until about 1910.

In 1911 the ‘Arrow’ was sold to F. Laeisz, Hamburg, and renamed ‘Parma’. At the outbreak of the First World War, it was interned at Iquique, and later in 1920, assigned as war damage reparations to the UK. For the next ten years, it traded between Europe and Talcahuano, Chile, carrying nitrates with an average eastbound passage of 96 days.

In 1931 ‘Parma’ was sold to Ruben De Cloux and the well-known sailor, author and photographer, Alan Villiers. Carrying up to 62,000 bags of wheat in the Australian trade, ‘Parma’ was the largest and most successful of the large sailing ships, making a 20th-century record passage of 83 days to Falmouth in 1933. It was aboard this ship and a number of other square-riggers that Villers made film documentaries to record the last sailing ships operating commercially. The large Villiers archive held by the NMM includes photographs taken on the voyages he made on this ship. Villiers sold his shares in this ship in 1931 and after a minor accident in Falmouth Harbour in 1936 the ‘Parma’ was used as a storage hulk at Haifa and eventually broken up in 1938.