My million-matchstick Navy’s got firepower!
PHILIP Warren’s the admiral of his own armada – and in size, this one’s pretty hard to match.
The 87-year-old has built an incredible 484 warships using a million matchsticks
His fleet of fancy took 70 years and includes 250 royal navy vessels of every class from the 1940s onwards along with dozens from other nations.
They range in size from a 40-inch copy of the American supercarrier USS nimitz to Second World War corvettes of just a few inches long.
royal navy stalwarts like HMS Ark royal, HMS Belfast and HMS Sheffield – sank by an Argentine exocet missile in The Falklands – are all lovingly represented.
While his model navy may not rule the waves, they dominate the house where he constructed them in Blandford, dorset.
The retired stationery wholesaler boss says his hobby has kept him ‘level-headed’ after the loss of his wife Anita, 16 years ago. And he has no plans to give up just yet.
‘My friends joke that every year I say this will be the last but I always keep going,’ said the father of one. ‘My hands are still steady and my fingers are still dextrous enough to make them. The painting on them is tiny but, for my age, I feel like I’m doing pretty well.’ Just like the royal navy, whose size has been slashed over budget cuts, Mr Warren’s vessels are downsized too, having been built on a 1:300 scale. As well as matches, the wooden boxes they came in provided more building material – and are used for the hulls, for example.
He even made tiny aircraft to go on his carriers and his fleet also includes submarines. The pensioner says he taught himself to craft the warships, getting hints and tips from other modellers.
nowadays, he uses the internet as well as books and magazines for research.
The ships are usually built on the living room table where he would chat with his wife as he indulged in his pastime. His first model was HMS Scorpion, then the royal navy’s latest destroyer.
The most recent addition, a 36-inch model of the carrier HMS Queen elizabeth, was completed in April. ‘She’s commissioned but not fully in service now, so I’m ahead of the navy,’ he joked. ‘I’ve got the F-35 planes there already too.’ It comes a week after the Mail revealed how Michael Wrobel spent 30 years building a diorama of the Battle of Waterloo with up to 6,000 model soldiers.