Providing some form of occupation for the internees to fill the time was a necessity to reduce the occurrence of 'barbed wire disease'. One scheme was to encourage various art and crafts - this was particularly useful for German internees as the German Government had forbidden internees from taking any form of paid employment that could in any way be useful to the British war effort.
One occupational hobby common with sailors was the building of model boats - some of these models were of a very high standard and could easily be sold - one well known supplier of such models both before and after the war was Bassett-Lowke who supported some of these modellers. However Ships-models were but a small part of the craft work carried on in the camp
The Quaker run "Friends' Emergency Committee" provided much of the support needed to manage and fund this essential activity - some history of the activity and the role of James Baily is available. Disposing of the more saleable of this craft work was made more difficult by the British Government's prohibition on any advertising or public sales - however this did not prohibit sales in Neutral countries - that in Sweden is particularly mentioned
A second foreign market was due to the energetic efforts of the late [1920]Crown Princess of Sweden to help prisoners of war in all lands. She organised in Stockholm an exhibition and sale of articles made in the prison camps of Russia, Germany and England. To this we sent thirty-three cases of goods, valued at well over a thousand pounds, and they were sold within an hour or two. A second similar exhibition was held later at Gothenburg.
This second exhibition in Gothenburg might be the way a particularly fine example of a model boat was donated to the Gothenburg Maritime Museum in the early 1930s
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The maker, Matthias Schmitz himself has an interesting background being interned at the start of the war when the Belgia was arrested at Newport.
Gothenburg Maritime Museum / Sjöfartsmuseet, Göteborg (SMG2648)
particularly ask that anyone with additional information about the maker or
how it came to be donated might contact them.
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| Any comments, errors or omissions gratefully received The
Editor HTML Transcription © F.Coakley , 2025 |
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