Scale: 1:96. Built by Fairfield, Govan, for the Union Castle Mail Steamship Company, the ‘Gloucester Castle’ (1911) was a typical passenger liner of the early 20th century. She was the first of three intermediate liners built for Union Castle’s ‘Round Africa’ service. During the First World War she was requisitioned as a transport and, in 1915, she was converted to a hospital ship. She was torpedoed in the Channel, but didn’t sink, and survived the war to resume commercial duties in 1920. In 1926 she was transferred to the West Coast Service from London to Beira via South African ports.

Laid up at the outbreak of war in 1939, ‘Gloucester Castle’ was immediately requisitioned. In 1942 she was the only Union Castle ship making regular sailings to Cape Town and, in July of that year, she disappeared without trace. It was not until 1945 that the full facts emerged, when it was ascertained that she was sunk on 15 July 1942 in a night attack by the German surface raider ‘Michel’. Ninety-one crew and passengers were lost, and there were 61 survivors, including two women and two children, who were later transferred to a supply vessel and taken to Singapore and Japan for internment.

The model has a wealth of gold-plated fittings, made to a scale of exactly half that of standard shipbuilder’s plans.