Like many mariners, Ernest Haylett had a hobby: he made beautifully detailed models of ships. These were so good that some of them were displayed in Liverpool Museum and at least one other was in the Liverpool offices of the shipping company for which Ernest worked, T&J Harrison. Those in the city museum were lost when it was bombed during the Second World War, but one model in Harrisons’ offices, of one of the company's early ships, Warrior, above, was still there in 1993.
They were full working models. This clipping from the Natal Mercury shows Ernest Haylett’s model of the square-rigged Hesperus, in which he served in 1894, sailing in Durban harbour.
This photograph shows Ernest's family with his model of a Yarmouth steam drifter. My father told me that his mother Edith would not keep Ernest's models in the house, so they were all given away.
Ernest’s third son Kenneth, who also went to sea, inherited this talent. This photo shows one of his locomotives in Singapore. It is raised up on blocks and running on steam.
This is probably one of the last models Ernest made, of the ship on which he died, Harrison Line's steam ship Defender. Sadly, I have no record of where the picture came from nor of where the model now is.
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