Scale: 1:48. Full hull model of the smack 'Mary' (1875). The model is decked, equipped and rigged, with the sails furled. The name ‘Mary’ is on the port and starboard bows and ‘Mary Truro’ is on the stern counter. This model was originally built as part of a scenic model of a west coast river port.

Built by Hugh Eddy Stephens for the stone trade, ‘Mary’ spent the first 70 years of its life trading about the beaches, harbours and creeks of South Cornwall and South West Devon. It was designed with a very shallow draft in order to be able to load cargo from beaches or quays which dried out at low water. The vessel’s great width (17.5 feet) enabled it to load ample cargo and provided great stability.

Originally rigged with a pole mast, a topmast was later added to enable the use of a topsail high enough to catch the breezes coming off the wooded banks of the creeks into which ‘Mary’ traded. The boat was fitted with an engine in 1926, and after a further 20 years of trading was sold to Appledore owners, and refitted as a motor barge for the local gravel trade. In 1949 it was sold once more and employed in carrying stone from the Lancaut quarries near Chepstow to repair the sea walls above Sharpness Bridge. Three years later ‘Mary’ was in Newport Docks dredging up mud which contained a high concentration of coal dust. This was made into blocks and sold as low-grade fuel. The vessel was again in the stone trade between 1954-57 and one of its last jobs was to lay moorings at Berkely Atomic Power Station, before its working life ended in 1958.