As a child growing up in the sixties I was drawn to “Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea” and I have been hooked ever since. My two major interests as a child were dinosaurs and science fiction. “Voyage” had both. Early on I also developed an interest in model building.

I built the Aurora Plastics model of the Seaview and played with the Remco toy Seaview. But, the model and the toy were not adequate and I was looking for more. I started illustrating the action scenes with oil pastels. Through these pictures I could see a pattern emerging that helped show some continuity with cabin placement. Boy was I fooled!  I decided to create a five foot cross section model of the Seaview. There was no debate; I chose the revised second season version.

I was in Junior high school, eighth grade when I came up with this monumental task. It was a different age. It was an age of no video technology, no personal computers, and an emerging plastics industry. My family didn’t even have a color T.V. set when I began my submarine model project. My grandparents were the first in our family to have a color set. We often visited on Sunday nights. Those were the nights I would take notes on the Seaview’s color scheme. The VCR was not yet available for public sale. I had to rely on good note taking and sketches.

The floor plan of the Seaview was developed through years of sketching and note taking. The original floor plan layout was completed on the drafting board with overlays. My original floor plan was designed before the advent of the personal computer. The outline of the submarine was drawn first. The interior plan was developed using overlays of vellum paper that was taped to the plan. The final overlay version was traced on the plan after I was satisfied with the arrangement. The floor plan evolved over the development of the model. Some floor plan conflicts were never resolved. There were many various obvious conflicts that are easily noticed by the viewers of any of the Irwin Allen shows.
On “Voyage” the Seaview’s Missile Room interior only showed four silos, but the exterior showed 16 to 20 hatches. The numerical order of the silos would vary from week to week. The missile firing panel only accounted for four missile silos. The famous missile that “blew out” the fire in the Van Allen belt was shot out of silo eight.

I chose to include sixteen tubes, the conventional number carried by ballistic submarines of the time period that the show aired. I included warhead access from the third deck and silo hatches on the missile room main deck.

The torpedo tubes in the missile room faced aft, but would be shown exiting from the bow. This was a problem that could not be resolved.

The control room also had many conflicts that could not be resolved. The “acting set” was too short to extend from the bow to sail. The periscope and sail hatch was much too far forward. The flying sub hatch was too far forward, to allow proper access to the Flying Sub.

The floor plan I chose for my version of the Seaview contained three decks. This was in conflict with the floor plan prop that was occasionally seen on the series. There was an old version and a flying sub version floor plan. But the flying sub version was only a modified old version. The prop floor plan showed only four missile tubes. I don’t know how they justified this with the exterior. The Seaview had two decks throughout the movie and first season version. During the Seaview’s redesign, she some how went from two decks to three decks. The Control Room was dropped one deck to be in line with the observation nose. The Missile room was accessed by going down the ladder-way aft of the Control Room and down the missile room corridor. There were cabins above the control room and many instances of cabins below the control room.

My Seaview stood the test of time; it has now been 31 years since its completion. And 
23 years since it was featured in model shipbuilder magazine. I felt it needed some necessary improvements. I wanted to be very careful and plan how I was going to make the modifications. And yes, it was a bit scary. Since my Seaview’s completion, modeling has made some major technological strides and I have grown as a model builder and artist. I felt I was ready to meet the challenge. The Seaview was taken out of service and placed in dry dock.