OK - for a long time it has pussled me.
All the ships from the original SH4 ver. 1.4 looks very close to the real ship. Except one....
Akita Maru
This ship does not look like the real ship. At least not in its WWII era version that looks like this one below.
Note the tall coal engine funnel on the real ship compared to the above and the funnels placement in relation to the rest of the superstructure. Allso the real Akita Maru is listed as 3817 tons while the SH4 Akita Maru is listed as 4070 tons.
Now the milliondollar question.....
I have paged through the ONI-208-J and i can not find any ship that are similar to the SH4 Akita Maru. So what ship was that model based on??