Arthur Davidson (“Dave”) Baker III
My first ship model was a Wallace Rigby card model of the battleship North Carolina built in the fall of 1945. The next year, I moved on to wooden warship models after receiving a book entitled How to Build a Model Navy and another book the following year on building waterline models in 1/1200th scale. I continued to scratch build several hundred models in that and 1/600th scale for the next quarter century, even carving recognition models of Russian submarines while serving aboard a U.S. Navy ship.
When working in the Washington, D.C., area during 1965-1970, I turned to 1/250th scale card models of warships. In 1999, we moved to Williamsburg, and the next year I joined the HRSMS. I also began volunteering at the Mariner’s Museum identifying ships in photos for the Museum’s Library and building wooden ship models in the ship modeling demonstration booth. I returned to card modeling in 2013 at the Museum after receiving a number of 1/250th and 1/100th scale card model kits of other countries’ monitors from friends in Europe and Canada and have also built a few lighthouses (and one dinosaur, a giraffe, and a few birds) from card. I assist several companies in the design of highly detailed cast metal models of warships in 1/1250 and plastic kits in 1/700th and 1/350th scales. Also, I have been publishing books and articles about warships and navies for about half a century as well as preparing line drawings for other authors’ books on the same subjects under the name “AD. Baker III.”