SS SEA FOX
This model presents a bit of a problem as far as her description is concerned. Henry Scheafer presented her as the SS Sea Fox, a 1951 US C3 Cargo vessel. There is no listing of a 1953 Sea Fox in the Lloyds Ship Register, and her stack insignia is not of a generally known type.
The vessel does very much resemble a WWII era C3 cargo vessel, though there were many variations of that basic design. There was a C3 built by Federal Shipbuilding in Kearny NJ and launched in 1940 as Sea Fox. However, she was completed as Mormacport.
The 1940 Sea Fox/Mormacport was one of the very first WWII C3 cargo vessels. The C3 designation was related to a pre-WWII US Maritime Commission designation for cargo ship sizes. The smallest cargo ships in the program were C1 vessels, the next sizes up were C2 and C3 vessels up to a C4 class. Similarly tankers were designated T1, T2, etc. Of the tankers the T2’s were most admired for their brilliant diesel electric propulsion system. Passenger ships were similarly designated P1, P2, etc.
The C3’s were meant to be relatively quick modern cargo vessels of a size considered attractive to US cargo liner companies. They were powered by steam turbines and had a top speed of about 17 knots.
In this case Moore McCormack Line, one of a number of large shipping companies at the time, acquired the vessel before she was completed and operate her as the Mormacport.
Hundreds of C3’s were built during the war, not all as cargo vessels. Often a ship was pulled off one of the many building ways and converted into a submarine or seaplane tender or even a small aircraft carrier. After the War many of these ships were readily purchased by shipowners all over the world and many continued to sail into the 1970’s.
The model
Henry Scheafer completed this model in 2006, it is not known if the model was scratch built or built from a kit.
