Scale: 1:48. The ‘Lysistrata’ (1900) was built for James Gordon Bennett, Jr of the ‘New York Herald’, an experienced sea-going yachtsman in sail and steam, who had previously owned the schooners ‘Henrietta’ and ‘Dauntless’ which had raced across the Atlantic in 1866. She was said to be the most luxurious yacht of her time and, on an impulse, her fabulously wealthy owner would take her on voyages which might last for days, weeks, or months, as the mood took him.

Among the yacht’s many ‘extras’ were a Turkish bath and a full-time masseur to ease the publisher's hangovers. But the most eccentric feature was, according to the journalist Lucius Beebe, ‘a soft padded cell with special seagoing fittings for the ship's cow, an Alderney, which…supplied the Commodore's table butter and the ingredients for his brandy milk punches at breakfast’.

From 1877 Bennett lived in Europe and, on taking delivery of ‘Lysistrata’ he continued to run the ‘New York Herald’ from his $600,000 314-foot yacht. On Bennett’s death, in France, in May 1918, she was sold to the Russian Navy where she served as a gunboat and fishery protection vessel. She was listed in Jane’s Fighting Ships as late as 1966.

It is an elegant model of an elegant subject. The gilded figurehead of an owl has been very finely rendered, as have all the yacht’s decorative features. On the decks, the bench at the stern has been simply but deftly made while, on the upper foredeck, the three serving tables have tiny turned silver-plated legs. The yacht’s eight boats are well executed, almost models in their own right.

The model was made in the large modelmaking workshop of Denny’s of Dunbarton, a small-scale testament to the skills that the yard contained. There is another contemporary model of the ‘Lysistrata’ in existence, made by Paxton & Company of London, which has a place of honour in the New York Yacht Club’s headquarters in New York, NY.