Arabian Dhow (Cigars of the Pharaoh)

Cigars of the Pharaoh (French: Les Cigares du Pharaon) is the fourth volume of The Adventures of Tintin, the comics series by Belgian cartoonist Hergé. Commissioned by the conservative Belgian newspaper Le Vingtième Siècle for its children’s supplement Le Petit Vingtième, it was serialised weekly from December 1932 to February 1934 before being published in a collected volume by Casterman in 1934. The story tells of young Belgian reporter Tintin and his dog Snowy, who are travelling in Egypt when they discover a pharaoh’s tomb filled with dead Egyptologists and boxes of cigars. Pursuing the mystery of these cigars, they travel across Arabia and India, and reveal the secrets of an international drug smuggling enterprise.

 

– courtesy of Wikipedia

The finished model:

The story:

As I’ve said before, I love Cigars of the Pharaoh. It’s easily in my top 5 favourite Tintin adventures. When I was a kid, I was fascinated by ancient Egyptian artifacts, so the idea that Tintin and Snowy would be cast adrift at sea in a pair of them is quite appealing. It’s a great sequence in the book – Tintin and Snowy are knocked out by some kind of sleeping gas and awake to find themselves (and Professor Sarcophagus) bobbing around in the sea, ten miles of the coast of Arabia, in a pair of wooden sarcophagi (one of which is conveniently dog-sized!). How in the world are they ever going to get out of this predicament?

Then, as luck would have it, they are fished out of the water by a passing Arabian Dhow, captained by a stand-in for Henry de Monfreid, and then instantly subjected to the high-pressure sales tactics of Senhor Oliveira de Figueira for the first time.

It’s a great sequence, and the first time Tintin really has an adventure at sea (not counting all the times he booked a voyage on some large ocean-liner). So, it seemed appropriate as a good place to start in terms of building out the “sea-faring” aspects of my Tintin modelling project list. Of course, I’ve done a couple of smaller boats before, including the life boat from the Karaboudjan and the little motorboat from the Black Island – but neither of them are really going to help me much in my quest to eventually build a scale model of The Unicorn.

The build:

So, as I usually do when I’m starting a project that doesn’t have a specific kit to rely on, I look for the closest thing I can find. In this case it was the Heller 1/75 scale Niña. It’s not quite an Arabian Dhow, but the lines of the hull are close enough if you squint a bit.

To help the squinting along, I did three main things – first, I moved the mast forward, then I cut down and lowered the upper deck, as well as made it flush with the stern. Finally, I added some strips to the railing of the ship to give it a bit more support and weight. Even though it’s not perfect, it’s pretty close – and besides the ship really only appears in a handful of panels and is really only visible in the first one. I was also able to do it with minimal reconstructive surgery to hide the gaps, so I was pretty pleased with how that turned out.

Since a lot of the action takes place below deck, I opened up (and boxed in) that area. Then I added a few boxes in strategic locations to give the illusion of a full cargo hold. For that matter, I also decided to fill out the space below the upper deck with cargo as well. It’s relatively hidden from casual view, but I like models that reward you a bit if you take the time and trouble to investigate, so it didn’t feel like a waste of time to me.

I have to admit though, the project did stall out when it finally came time to deal with the sail. At first I wanted to have a billowing sail like we see in the first image. However, after a lot of thought and reflection, I decided – given how limited shelf space is – it would take up too much room and block too many other projects. So, even though it spent a year on the Shelf of Doom reflecting on what it had done, when I finally did rescue it from a fate of apathy, I decided to furl the sail and get on with it.

I was strangely over-pleased with myself for using a bit of thin Tamiya “Pla-Paper” for the sail, but it held its shape well, and could be glued and painted as easily as any other part. Instead of wasting a lot though, I only did a very loose roll and then plugged either end with a thing strip of tightly-wound pla-paper, acting as a cap. It made it look like a lot more sail than is actually there, and I didn’t waste any in the process.

I’m not sure what I can say about the rigging process other than it was a complete work of fiction. I just put some ropes in spots loosely based on what few, small drawings exist of the ship’s rigging. If anyone wants to challenge me on the rope placement, then feel free – my response will be bah! close enough.

Check out the project below and tell me what you think: