By RUDI HEMPE
CELS News Editor & Reporter

After a long career at URI as an award-winning teacher and researcher in biology Dr. Frank Heppner is now heading for phased retirement status. But there’s every indication he won’t have idle hands—in fact, chances are they will be busier than ever.

Heppner has a small office in the biological sciences building, made more cramped by the fact that he has models on display here and there and photos of trains and ships on the walls.

Those decorations give a clue to Heppner’s non-academic side—since he was five years old he has been building models and now that he is heading into retirement that hobby will be even more important in his life.

Like most youngsters, model making for Heppner was a phase of life but unlike most kids who drop modeling for other interests, Heppner persevered—and it’s a good thing because one of his latest creations is now off on a world tour.

Heppner lost track of the number of models he has made. He started out like most kids buying wooden kits of railroad cars, ships and planes. As he grew in his hobby, he concentrated on more elaborate and challenging projects.

Not long ago, he mused “As a biologist, I always thought I should have a model of the HMS Beagle,” the ship made famous because it had been used by the famous scientist, Charles Darwin, on its second survey voyage.

He sent away to a major model supply house in Florida and started on the hull. Somewhere along the way, it dawned on him that the model was not very accurate.

He researched a British book on historic ships that described the Beagle and found that the kit he had, other than the hull, was not faithful to the descriptions in the book.

What’s more, on a visit to the American Museum of Natural History in New York, he saw a model of the Beagle. While it was mounted in a very attractive display case, the model was made from the same kit that he had purchased and found inaccurate. He approached museum officials and offered to make a more accurate model of the Beagle using the information he found in the book. They accepted.

Back in his studio that he shares with his wife who does other handiwork, he started making and buying parts for the

Beagle. Some of the parts such as tiny rigging blocks and deadeyes are easier bought than made, he notes.

The HMS Beagle was built in 1820 as a small British man-o-war, a 10-gun brig. But a few years after its launch, its guns were taken out and the ship was refitted as a survey ship for the burgeoning British Empire. Heppner decided to replicate the ship in its 1833 version. The hull that came with the kit he bought could be used, he said, because the British had a habit of constructing several types of ships using the same hull design.

But there were other features that he had to change dramatically to fit the description in the book such as attaching copper plates to the hull (copper plates were used to thwart destructive marine growth and critters, much as copper-based hull paints are used today).

The hull and its various features completed, he started on the rigging—always a challenge as it has to be strung carefully in stages. He figured his model would be finished by last September—but then the “hurricane” struck.

The hurricane was in the form of his Siamese cat, Max. Max was in the habit of visiting Heppner and his wife as they worked in the studio but one day Max decided to visit the studio when no one was there and he promptly wiped out the foremast, the bowsprit and all the associated rigging. Heppner was devastated and today he says that cat was almost on his eighth or ninth life.

It wasn’t the first time one of his models was attacked by a feline. When he and his wife were first married another cat attacked a model of a Baltimore clipper ship he was making. His wife discovered the damage first and when he came home, she invited him out to a fancy dinner with extra expensive wine. Then she had to break the news. ‘Didn’t you always say that the pleasure in model building is the building rather than the result? Well you are going to get a lot of pleasure out of that ship again,’ he recalls her saying.

After Max had his way with the Beagle model, Heppner decided to build a protective plywood case for it. “I didn’t have the heart to start repairing it but I finally did,” he says.

Finally the Beagle was ready to go on its maiden cruise and he notified the American Museum of Natural History. Recently a crew came to his home and they carefully packed the model into a