Scale: 1:48. A modern waterline exhibition model of the brigantine ‘Volant’ (1867). The hull is made from a solid wooden block with the planking glued on top, and on deck are a number of fittings including anchors and windlass, a dinghy mounted on chocks and a wheel just aft of the deckhouse. It is fully rigged with the yards braced round to port although the sails have been omitted.

‘Volant’ is typical of the great number of brigantines and schooners built in Prince Edward Island during the latter part of the 19th century. Measuring 101 feet in length by 25 feet in the beam and tonnage of 194 gross, she has the typical characteristics of these vessels with a flaring bow, heavy square stern with the curved cabin top. During the early years of their career, many of these vessels were sailed across the Atlantic to ports in the UK, surveyed and refitted to Lloyd’s requirements for classification and sold to British owners. From 1874 to 1901, the ‘Volant’ was employed by Irish owners in various trades. She was then sold to Thompson of Hull and carried coal from the hulk ‘Artemis’ at Gravesend, to Hull where it was used for bunkering the steam fish carriers, which plied between the fleet working the Dogger Bank and Billingsgate, London.

From 1902, ‘Volant’ carried chalk from Greenhithe on the Thames to cement works in Hull and towards the end of the First World War she was sold and re-rigged as a schooner. There is no further record of this vessel in Lloyd’s Register after 1921.

This model is a replica of an original now in Hull Museum that was made by the cook who served in the vessel in 1905.