Scale: 1:192. A contemporary full hull model of the steel torpedo ram HMS ‘Polyphemus’ (1881). The hull is mounted in two halves either side of a silver plated waterline base, which itself is then mounted in turned silver-plated pillars on an original wooden baseboard. The fact that the waterline and pillars are silver-plated would suggest that this model was made for a commemorative or presentational purpose, although one would expect to see an inscription of some sort as an explanation.

Although built to a small and rather unusual scale, it is complete with a variety of fittings including anchor gear, lifeboats, six circular machine gun towers, whilst on the foredeck are three crewmen working a mooring line around the capstan. Located alongside is a smaller torpedo boat, the type of which would be carried by a larger warship.

The ‘Polyphemus’ was designed by Nathaniel Barnaby in 1878 and eventually built and launched at Chatham Dockyard in 1881. Measuring 240 feet in length by 40 feet in he beam, she had a tonnage of 2640 displacement. Her main armament consisted of 18 torpedoes, fired through the submerged ram bow and over the broadside, together with six Nordenfelt machine guns in round towers on the bridge deck. Because the hull was designed with a low freeboard, the upper portion of the deck superstructure was built as two separate rafts which would detach and float away in the event of the hull sinking.

The emergence of the larger and faster torpedo-boat destroyers in the 1890s soon made this craft obsolete and the ‘Polyphemus’ was event sold to George Cohen for breaking in 1903.