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Members Profile - Alan Poole

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Hello, My name is Alan Poole.


I am currently the Secretary for the MBA Dover and also the Newsletter editor.

I have been in the MBA Dover since the very beginning and believe passionately about our club.

Model boat modelling has been my hobby for many years, I started when I was a lad, many moons ago.
One of my first model boats was a static waterline model of RMS Queen Mary, this was built from the old Hobbies plans and I still have it somewhere up in my loft.


In the early sixties, I built a scale Vosper RTTL which I sailed at Kearsney with the old Dover Model Club then ran by Harry Turner who owned Turner's model shop in the town.
A break of some years then happened due to me going into the Army and then getting married before I got back modelling again in the seventies.


I built a 1/32nd scale "HMS Brave Borderer" from plans and entered it into the famous Model Engineer Exhibition in London, at that time it was held at the Seymour Hall in Edgware Road.
I gained a Bronze award for this model, and as it was 'the' model exhibition at the time, I was very proud of my achievement.

My next model was the Walmer RNLI Lifeboat, "The Hampshire Rose".
This ended up as a labour of love because it took 3,500 hours of work over a period of five years to build, including research.
This was again entered into the M.E.Exhibition where it was awarded a Silver Medal, going up! That boat is now in the Royal Cinque Ports Yacht Club in Dover.

During this period I joined the Royal Naval Auxiliary Service and served as an engineer, we operated several classes of ships and one was the 23m Fleet Tenders of the "Loyal Class". A model manufacturer brought out a kit of one of these vessels so naturally I built one, another Silver medal in the kit class at the MEE. 

By this time I had become bored with "skimmers" and decided to enter the then black art of model submarines, my first boat was the 'S' Class HM/SM Satyr, (right) I had great fun with this model and even communicated with the wartime skipper of the real submarine Satyr. 

HM/SM Ocelot, (left & below) now preserved in Chatham was my next boat 74 inches long and built from a set of commercial mouldings. This one got the Maritime Trust Award at Olympia.

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The design of midget submarines had always interested me so I decided to build the British X-Craft next. X-24 was in Gosport so I modelled her, two years later she was finished and, yes, back to the MEE.
Because it had been totally scratch built, it gained the Gold Medal and also the Mountbatten Trophy and The Maritime Trust Award again.
This model is now displayed in the Royal Naval Submarine Museum in Gosport, Hampshire alongside the preserved X24.

The model of a Type XXI submarine (left) that I bring to some regattas, was built for Marine Modelling International and was reviewed in the September 2005 edition of MMI Magazine, also in that publication an article can be found about the fishery protection vessel "HMS Anglesey" (below), this was based on a Sirmar fibreglass hull but all details are scratch built. 

I have always liked to get the best paint job possible on my models and then distress it by what is called "weathering".
Most of my boats have a degree of weathering which really brings a model to life.
In the picture of the fittings on my "Loyal Mediator" (below) you can hopefully see the effect that I try to get. The interior of the wheelhouse has also been detailed with most of the equipment faithfully replicated.

Several other models are in my fleet;
The Poole Lifeboat "Inner Wheel", Danish patrol boat "Flyvefisken" (right) and the Flower Class corvette, "HMS Hydrangea" are some, and there are many half built models which I will finish sometime, these include:-

Dover Harbour Board tug "Doughty".

"HMS Kent".

"HMS Sheraton".

"XSV Shipham" and "HMS Bronnington"

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All I need is time, patience I have..

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