...; transferred from the Ministerie van Marine (Department of the Navy), The Hague, to the museum, 1883

Object number: NG-MC-1270

Polychromed wooden half block model of the starboard side of a monitor, mounted on a rectangular wooden backboard, painted a cream colour.

The model features a ram bow with a fish davit fitted. The sharp stern with overhanging counter is fitted with a rudder with a rounded blade and a three-blade screw propeller with its shaft. The stern deckhouse bears the white coat of arms of the Kingdom of the Netherlands. On the flush main deck is a single turret with a large circular hatch and two of three sights on top for the gunners. There is one narrow deckhouse with a companionway on the foredeck and a elongated narrow deckhouse behind the turret running all the way to the stern. On top of this deckhouse are a funnel and a bridge leading to the top of the gun turret. The sheer is completely flat. One sheer rail is indicated. The hull is flat-bottomed and painted a red colour below the waterline. A single mast is shown in a truncated form.

The monitor Hyena, measuring 56.76 metres in length and armed with two 23-cm guns, was built at the Navy dockyard in Amsterdam from 1869 to 1870. The armament was changed to one 28-cm gun, one 7.5-cm gun, two 3.7-cm guns and two 3.7-cm revolving guns in 1887. Hyena was used for interior defence only. Although the monitor was damaged in 1888, it was not decommissioned until 1905 and sold for breaking up in the following year.¹¹A.J. Vermeulen, De schepen van de Koninklijke Marine en die der gouvernementsmarine 1814-1962, The Hague 1962, p. 111.

Scale (on model) 1:40.

E. Simpson, Report on a Naval Mission to Europe: Especially Devoted to the Material and Construction of Artillery, s.l. 1873; B.J. Tideman, Memoriaal van de Marine, bevattende opgaven betrekkelijk de afmetingen, constructie, ... van Nederlandsche oorlogsschepen en omtrent enige havens, dokken, sluizen, werven enz., Amsterdam 1876-80, livret F; J.M. Obreen et al., handwritten inventory list for items 944 to 1431, 1884, manuscript in HNA 476 RMA, inv. no. 1089, no. 1279; S. de H., ‘De eerste Nederlandsche pantserschepen’, Ons Zeewezen 31 (1932), pp. 4-8; A.J. Vermeulen, De schepen van de Koninklijke Marine en die der gouvernementsmarine 1814-1962, The Hague 1962, pp. 91-92; J.M. Dirkzwager, ‘De introductie van pantserschepen in Nederland’, Tijdschrift voor Zeegeschiedenis 4 (1985), no. 1, pp. 23-41, esp. pp. 35-37

J. van der Vliet, 2016, 'Rijkswerf Amsterdam, Half Model of a Ram Monitor, Amsterdam, c. 1867 - c. 1869', in J. van der Vliet and A. Lemmers (eds.), Navy Models in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: https://data.rijksmuseum.nl/200316131