Papers relating to Richard Frederick Bell and his model of the Danish five-masted barque KOBENHAVN

Folder of material relating to the modelmaker Richard Frederick Bell and his model of the Danish five-masted barque KOBENHAVN (1921), see SLR0059 in the Royal Museums Greenwich collection. Included are two framed photographs of Bell with the model, and his button badges for the Model Engineer Exhibition, 1946, and the Shipwrights Exhibition, 1947.

Administrative / biographical background
Bell was born in Gloucestershire in 1891 and served an apprenticeship with the Doxford engineering company at Sunderland. He was employed at the H.J. Beazley shipbuilding yard at Southampton, and was later foreman plater with Harland & Wolff Ltd. at North Woolwich. His detailed model of the Danish five-masted barque KOBENHAVN (1921) took twelve years to construct. It was awarded the championship cup in the marine models section of the Model Engineer Exhibition at the Horticultural Hall, Westminster, in August 1946. It was also in the Shipwrights Exhibition organised by the Worshipful Company of Shipwrights, at the same venue in 1947. Through arrangement with the Borough of East Ham Education Committee, it was displayed at East Ham Library until 1979, when it came to the National Maritime Museum.