Do You Ever Get Fed Up of the Commonplace?

[Bob WilsonParticipant @bobwilson59101]

I do – regularly!

 

Here is one of my relaxation models.   It depicts an 1890s tramp steamer that has been driven ashore on the dreaded “Skeleton Coast” of South West Africa many years before.    The peculiarity of the Skeleton Coast is that the coastline is constantly changing and ships that came to grief many years ago, have ended up miles inland.

 

Bob

Edited By Bob Wilson on 08/09/2009 19:16:37

[Bob WilsonParticipant @bobwilson59101]

[Colin BishopModerator @colinbishop34627]

I seem to recall that Clive Cussler wrote a thriller on that theme some years ago.

 

Colin

[neil hpParticipant @neilhp]

it was called Sahara, Colin.

if you like Clive Cussler [ he’s a marmite author] it’s one gung ho read.

 

great subject, bob.

Edited By neil howard-pritchard on 08/09/2009 19:59:47

[Colin BishopModerator @colinbishop34627]

No Neil, Sahara isn’t Nambibia where the Skeleton Coast is. It’s at the other end of Africa!

 

Just looked it up, Cussler’s book is called Skeleton Coast.. I have read most of his books, they are all hokum but frequently based on an intriguing idea or unsolved mystery which makes them entertaining lightweight reading.

 

Colin

[Bob WilsonParticipant @bobwilson59101]

I believe Sahara was set somewhere on a dried up tributary to the River Niger where the stranded US Civil War ironclad TEXAS featured in the story.    Cussler’s Skeleton Coast was called Skeleton Coast as Colin says..    I enjoy listening to Cussler’s stories as “talking books” from the library whilst I am working on models.    I enjoyed Sahara, but have not found Skeleton Coast on a talking book.   Tried reading it, but found it a bit hard-going, and gave up when he referred to the wrecked tramp steamer as “HMS ROVE!”    In several of his books he refers to beat-up old merchant navy cargo ships as “HMS,” and it does grate on me a bit!          He did another called Artcic Drift concerning the abandoned Franklin Expedition’s HMS EREBUS & HMS TERROR.     I did a diorama of HMS EREBUS festooned in ice and snow after years of abandonment and that turned out quite well.     Also did an ice & snow diorama of Nelson’s HMS CARCASS jammed in the ice off Spitzbergen.

Bob

 

[Colin BishopModerator @colinbishop34627]

Cussler doesn’t write his books anymore. like some other authors he has become a franchise. He throws out some ideas and then his “co writer” produces the book. Nice work if you can get it!

 

Colin

[Bob WilsonParticipant @bobwilson59101]

I was aware some of his later books had joint authorship, but not that he had passed it over altogether on some!

 

Here is HMS EREBUS

 

Bob

 

Edited By Bob Wilson on 08/09/2009 21:15:08

[neil hpParticipant @neilhp]

i must have missed that one then colin.

i know the logistics and geography of both the namib and saharan deserts, but when you mentioned a moving ship in sand i took it to mean the ironclad in “sahara”…

must look up “the skeleton coast” and give it a rerad.

his co writers push them out so fast these days that i’ve given up reading them as one piece of momentous drivvel churns into the next. lol

[Bob WilsonParticipant @bobwilson59101]

If you enter:

 

skeleton coast shipwrecks

 

in Google Images, you will find lots of real photographs of some of the wrecks, one is now several miles inland!   Even my model picture has found its way amongst them somehow!

 

Bob

 

 

[Bob WilsonParticipant @bobwilson59101]

Here is another of my dioramas that I build from time to time simply for a change.   Napoleonic Prisoner of War Hulk.

Bob

[Author]

Posts