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Description

Ported from the generic model in the M32B slot included with iambecomelife's massive Merchant Fleet Mod (MFM) for Silent Hunter 3 (SH3), and which is described as an "Clan Davidson Class Merchant" in the fan-made MFM master ship type list. NO MODEL DOWNLOAD.

Great Britain's Clan Line, aka C.W. Cayzer & Co. Ltd. of Liverpool, was one of the world's biggest and best known British commercial oceangoing shipping companies in bygone days. They were in the shipping business in one form or another for well over a century, from 1877 to 1981 (104 years), and they distinguished their ships by naming them after Scottish clans (hence "Clan Line"). During World War I there were so many Clan Line ships that had been requisitioned by HM government for wartime use that they were unofficially known as the "Scots Navy." (grin) Not surprisingly the Clan Line was also well represented in the many British Ministry of War Transport (MoWT) civilian ship requisitions for wartime use during World War II, as well as three by the Royal Navy (of which this is one), and iambecomelife's MFM includes four Clan Line ships to represent four of its various generic merchant classes.

Slot M32B in MFM is occupied by SS Clan Davidson. This was the second Clan Line ship by that name, with the first having been lost during World War I. The second Clan Davidson was laid down in October of 1942 during World War II by the Greenock Dockyard as a wartime variation on the basic Cameron class steamship design (displacement 10,423 GRT wartime, later reduced to 8,067 GRT postwar). She was originally going to be named Clan Campbell but she got appropriated for wartime use by the British Admiralty (not the MoWT!) while still under construction, due to its desperate need for ships of all kinds at that time thanks to wartime losses. Her hull was completed and launched in October 1942 but she was not completed and did not enter service until January of 1943. She was converted during her final fitting-out to serve as a Royal Fleet Auxiliary (RFA) submarine depot ship with the British Royal Navy (BRN/RN or just "the" Royal Navy, nudge-nudge), and was officially commissioned into RFA service with the new name of HMS Bonaventure (F193). Her main function during the war was to serve as the depot ship for the Royal Navy's X-class midget submarine program, and there's two excellent feature films on this subject you can watch for yourself (Wikipedia links below) that tell the story of how the British "X boats" were successfully used to cripple the German battleship Tirpitz while in port and keep her from going to sea for many months. After that was done Bonaventure was sent in for a refit, which was completed in late January of 1944, and after that she was sent to the Pacific to support British submarine operations against the Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN). After the war HMS Bonaventure was decommissioned and subsequently de-militarized for civilian use. She was "paid off" (read disposed of) by selling her back to the Clan Line in 1948. They in turn renamed her Clan Davidson after the first Clan Line vessel by that name, and she would go on to enjoy another fifteen years of life with them and their successors as a civilian merchant vessel. By 1961 it was clear that Clan Davidson was going to need a major rebuild to stay in service, and as what was left of the Clan Line (by this time part of British & Commonwealth Ltd. (B&C) was starting to downsize anyway they decided to scrap her instead. Most online sources agree that Clan Davidson was formally removed from B&C service in 1963 and sold to Sigma Shipping of Hong Kong to be broken up. She arrived at their shipbreaking yard in Hong Kong on Christmas Day 1963, and well before the end of the following year she was just a memory. To find out more about the former Clan Line merchant vessel Clan Davidson (ex-RFA sub depot ship HMS Bonaventure), follow the links below:

www.bandcstaffregister.com/pag…

best source

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Bona…

www.shipsnostalgia.com/media/c…

Here's a link for more info on the World War II era Cameron class steam merchant:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cameron-…

Here's Wikipedia links to those two feature films about the Royal Navy "X-boats" serviced by HMS Bonaventure:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Above_Us…

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Submarin…

This is a straight port with no changes by me.

I should note in passing that this model may not be wearing the correct paint scheme for the real ship in this era (see the pictures at the provided links, also see ASIDE 1 below). That's because MFM swaps around its generic set of textures with the multiple ship models included with it in order to generate the 800+ generic merchants and tankers it can add to any SH3 gaming session. The proper textures or something close to them are probably somewhere in MFM, but I will leave it to others with more diligence and greater insistence on historical accuracy to dig them out and put them on the model, or to make their own custom ones if need be. All I needed was this single image to let you know that the model is in the mod, and that way you folks can take it from there.

While I am no longer making my OBJ ports of Silent Hunter series models available for public download, you can get this yourself in one of two ways. You can extract it piecemeal from the game data using the free SKWAS/s3ditor model utility and rebuild it in your preferred 3D modeling software, or you can rip it directly from the game after installing any necessary mods or mod packs noted above using any good 3D model ripper (3D Ripper DX or NinjaRipper recommended).

For non-profit, non-commercial use only.

ASIDE 1 - There are a small handful of generic navy grey and blue-grey textures in MFM that you can adapt for or use with this model to depict Clan Davidson during her wartime service as the Royal Navy RFA submarine depot ship HMS Bonaventure, as well as the Royal Navy RFA seaplane depot ships HMS Athene and HMS Engadine (which were also converted Cameron class merchants). You might want to pull the model into a 3D model editor and modify it accordingly for greater historical accuracy.

ASIDE 2 - This is a good pick if you're trying to decide on which MFM ships to include as a subset with your own Silent Hunter series fan mod, given that it can be used to represent the entire group of Cameron class steam merchants. There's quite a list of them at the Wikipedia link provided above (20 all told, counting the 3 Royal Navy RFA militarized ones).

Description

Ported from the generic model in the M32B slot included with iambecomelife's massive Merchant Fleet Mod (MFM) for Silent Hunter 3 (SH3), and which is described as an "Clan Davidson Class Merchant" in the fan-made MFM master ship type list. NO MODEL DOWNLOAD.

Great Britain's Clan Line, aka C.W. Cayzer & Co. Ltd. of Liverpool, was one of the world's biggest and best known British commercial oceangoing shipping companies in bygone days. They were in the shipping business in one form or another for well over a century, from 1877 to 1981 (104 years), and they distinguished their ships by naming them after Scottish clans (hence "Clan Line"). During World War I there were so many Clan Line ships that had been requisitioned by HM government for wartime use that they were unofficially known as the "Scots Navy." (grin) Not surprisingly the Clan Line was also well represented in the many British Ministry of War Transport (MoWT) civilian ship requisitions for wartime use during World War II, as well as three by the Royal Navy (of which this is one), and iambecomelife's MFM includes four Clan Line ships to represent four of its various generic merchant classes.

Slot M32B in MFM is occupied by SS Clan Davidson. This was the second Clan Line ship by that name, with the first having been lost during World War I. The second Clan Davidson was laid down in October of 1942 during World War II by the Greenock Dockyard as a wartime variation on the basic Cameron class steamship design (displacement 10,423 GRT wartime, later reduced to 8,067 GRT postwar). She was originally going to be named Clan Campbell but she got appropriated for wartime use by the British Admiralty (not the MoWT!) while still under construction, due to its desperate need for ships of all kinds at that time thanks to wartime losses. Her hull was completed and launched in October 1942 but she was not completed and did not enter service until January of 1943. She was converted during her final fitting-out to serve as a Royal Fleet Auxiliary (RFA) submarine depot ship with the British Royal Navy (BRN/RN or just "the" Royal Navy, nudge-nudge), and was officially commissioned into RFA service with the new name of HMS Bonaventure (F193). Her main function during the war was to serve as the depot ship for the Royal Navy's X-class midget submarine program, and there's two excellent feature films on this subject you can watch for yourself (Wikipedia links below) that tell the story of how the British "X boats" were successfully used to cripple the German battleship Tirpitz while in port and keep her from going to sea for many months. After that was done Bonaventure was sent in for a refit, which was completed in late January of 1944, and after that she was sent to the Pacific to support British submarine operations against the Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN). After the war HMS Bonaventure was decommissioned and subsequently de-militarized for civilian use. She was "paid off" (read disposed of) by selling her back to the Clan Line in 1948. They in turn renamed her Clan Davidson after the first Clan Line vessel by that name, and she would go on to enjoy another fifteen years of life with them and their successors as a civilian merchant vessel. By 1961 it was clear that Clan Davidson was going to need a major rebuild to stay in service, and as what was left of the Clan Line (by this time part of British & Commonwealth Ltd. (B&C) was starting to downsize anyway they decided to scrap her instead. Most online sources agree that Clan Davidson was formally removed from B&C service in 1963 and sold to Sigma Shipping of Hong Kong to be broken up. She arrived at their shipbreaking yard in Hong Kong on Christmas Day 1963, and well before the end of the following year she was just a memory. To find out more about the former Clan Line merchant vessel Clan Davidson (ex-RFA sub depot ship HMS Bonaventure), follow the links below:

www.bandcstaffregister.com/pag…

best source

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Bona…

www.shipsnostalgia.com/media/c…

Here's a link for more info on the World War II era Cameron class steam merchant:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cameron-…

Here's Wikipedia links to those two feature films about the Royal Navy "X-boats" serviced by HMS Bonaventure:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Above_Us…

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Submarin…

This is a straight port with no changes by me.

I should note in passing that this model may not be wearing the correct paint scheme for the real ship in this era (see the pictures at the provided links, also see ASIDE 1 below). That's because MFM swaps around its generic set of textures with the multiple ship models included with it in order to generate the 800+ generic merchants and tankers it can add to any SH3 gaming session. The proper textures or something close to them are probably somewhere in MFM, but I will leave it to others with more diligence and greater insistence on historical accuracy to dig them out and put them on the model, or to make their own custom ones if need be. All I needed was this single image to let you know that the model is in the mod, and that way you folks can take it from there.

While I am no longer making my OBJ ports of Silent Hunter series models available for public download, you can get this yourself in one of two ways. You can extract it piecemeal from the game data using the free SKWAS/s3ditor model utility and rebuild it in your preferred 3D modeling software, or you can rip it directly from the game after installing any necessary mods or mod packs noted above using any good 3D model ripper (3D Ripper DX or NinjaRipper recommended).

For non-profit, non-commercial use only.

ASIDE 1 - There are a small handful of generic navy grey and blue-grey textures in MFM that you can adapt for or use with this model to depict Clan Davidson during her wartime service as the Royal Navy RFA submarine depot ship HMS Bonaventure, as well as the Royal Navy RFA seaplane depot ships HMS Athene and HMS Engadine (which were also converted Cameron class merchants). You might want to pull the model into a 3D model editor and modify it accordingly for greater historical accuracy.

ASIDE 2 - This is a good pick if you're trying to decide on which MFM ships to include as a subset with your own Silent Hunter series fan mod, given that it can be used to represent the entire group of Cameron class steam merchants. There's quite a list of them at the Wikipedia link provided above (20 all told, counting the 3 Royal Navy RFA militarized ones).