Scale: 1:48. Builder's full hull model representing the 'St Enoch' and 'St Patrick' (both 1901), a bucket dredger.

A fine shipbuilder’s model that helps to explain the process of dredging. The original case and the elaborate supports that supported the model no longer exists and the model’s mooring chains that ‘secured’ it to the baseboard are also missing, presumed lost. Much of the vessel’s steel structure has been depicted in polished wood, while the lower part of the hull has also been left unpainted, revealing the model’s ‘bread and butter’ solid wooden construction. The steam winches and other machinery have been well made to the extent that it looks like a fully working model. The chute for the spoil on the starboard side has been lowered, and the one on the port side is in its raised position.

The model represents the twin-screw steam dredgers ‘St Enoch’ and ‘St Patrick’ (both 1901) built for the British Admiralty by Lobnitz & Co. They were bucket-type dredgers designed for inland, rather than sea-going operation. In this type of dredger the material is raised from the bed by means of a continuous chain of moving buckets. These are kept in position by the ladder of the dredger which can be moved up and down as the tide rises and falls, or as excavation progresses. To maintain her own position the dredger is equipped with moorings, generally six flexible wire ropes attached to anchors or the shore: one ahead, one astern, one on each bow, and one on each quarter. We can see from the model that the hull shape is wide and flat-bottomed, like a barge, for stability.

A fleet of hoppers are required to dispose of the spoil at sea. Bucket dredgers are chiefly used for hard clay, or gravel, and the vessels depicted here had a dredging depth of up to 48 feet.

St Enoch served first as Yard Craft No26 at Portsmouth, then at Malta in 1897 for two years before spending 30 years at the summer anchorage for the RN at Wei Hai Wei in China.