Scale: 1:192. A waterline model of the composite clipper ‘Thermopylae’ (1868) mounted on a scenic plaster and carved wooden base. The model is decked, fully equipped and rigged with sails set and braced. It is also complete with a number of scale figures on deck together with a red ensign flying from the peak of the gaff on the mizzen.

The ‘Thermopylae’ was built by Walter Hood and Co. of Aberdeen and owned by George Thompson’s Aberdeen White Star Line. Measuring 210 feet in length by 36 feet in the beam and a tonnage of 991 gross, it was renowned as a fast sailer making a succession of good passages including London to Melbourne in 63 days on its maiden voyage. After a notably successful career in both the China tea and Australian wool trades, the ‘Thermopylae’ was sold to the Mount Royal Milling and Manufacturing Co. of Victoria, British Columbia. In 1890 it was converted to a barque-rig and put into the Vancuover–Hong Kong trade.

When the Portuguese government bought her in 1896, and renamed her ‘Pedro Nunes’, it was intended to covert it into a sail training ship. This proved to be too expensive and it was reduced to a coal hulk in Lisbon. In 1907, the hull was condemned and ceremonially towed out to sea and sunk by torpedo.