Scale: 1:96. The scale of this model is questionable, and in any case is applicable only above the waterline. The hull has been considerably deepened to accommodate the radio-control equipment and engine. The effect is like a three-dimensional caricature of a ship and made all the more cartoon-like by the figures on deck all brightly painted.

The ‘Royal Sovereign’ was built by William Denny and Brothers, of Dunbarton, to replace her predecessor that had been sunk by a mine, in the Bristol Channel, in 1940. With a speed of twenty-one knots she plied between Tower Pier on the River Thames, London, the English Channel ports, Cherbourg, in France, and the Hook of Holland. For one year, 1966, she was based at Great Yarmouth for trips to Calais but was withdrawn from service at the end of the season. The following year she was sold, renamed ‘Autocarrier’ and converted to a lorry ferry, carrying freight vehicles and their drivers between Dover and Zeebrugge. Having been sold no less than six times, she is still sailing as the ‘Ischia’ providing a ferry service from Pozzuoli, near Naples, to Casamicciola. Much altered from her original specification, she bears no resemblance at all to her days as a Thames pleasure steamer.