ACW Naval: Fort Humpter ready for duty!

After some final painting, I am pleased to report that the scratch-built Fort Humpter is ready for service alongside the 1/2400th Ironclads from Tumbling Dice.

A rather busy weekend meant that in all honesty, I didn't have time to make a start on the Monopoly Hotels-as-buildings glimpsed in the previous posts, but luckily remembered I had some 1/1200th Rod Langton buildings from the 2mm Quebec project; alright the scale is a bit suspect, but actually they don't look too bad in these shots posed for the camera.

Currently you'll note a hand-dawn Stars 'n Bars fluttering over the casemate, but by the cunning expediency of putting some blue-tac in the flagstaff base, I can easily swap this for 'Ole Glory depending on the fort's occupants.

I deliberately kept the level of detailing low, both as a matter of convenience, but also in the spirit of my usual quick scratch-build - I was going for a piece that would look the part, rather than being a fine scale model.

Too close an inspection would have the U.S. Engineers shuddering at the shoddy building techniques, but as it will be acting as a shot and shell magnet in most games, I don't really mind!

Of course, she could see service in a number of guises and postures, from the ACW to Aero and Aquanef - definitely a nice large target..... quick and fun to build, and certainly cheap!

ACW Naval: Progress at Fort Humpter

Construction work on 'Fort Humpter' continues apace, with the wall sections filled in and based with more of the cell-section card, as well as some internal buildings from a certain popular family boardgame - I knew those Hotels would come in handy one day!

The thickening of the walls has obviously led to an enlargement of the overall footprint, but luckily things still squeeze onto the original base, so it shouldn't look too huge up against the Ironclads once completed.

I've also been playing around with some large calibre guns as additions, in this case the high tech rendering of some cut up steel pins and pieces of card - at this size, and with my rough and ready style, these should do just fine once painted up:

I'll be using some coarse flocking gel to add some texture around the base of the walls next, to act as rocky outcrops around the construction, and need to sort out the haphazard walkway sections on top, but that is pretty much it bar the painting; some strips of card for the dock and approach causeway, and of course a flagpole and it'll be ready for action.

Whilst working on this, I stumbled upon a great website that has lots of contemporary Harper's Weekly newspaper pages, that have some brilliant drawings of the various original fortifications and battles; the narrative of Fort Sumter can be found here:

http://www.sonofthesouth.net/leefoundation/battle-fort-sumter.htm

The contemporary newspapers are here:

http://www.sonofthesouth.net/leefoundation/the-civil-war.htm

Well worth a look!

ACW Naval: Scratching about with Fort Sumter

"Fort Sumter has been fired upon......my regiment leaves at Dawn......" or something like that! Yes, the recent flurry of 1/2400th activity has seen me leaving my regular projects to the side, and concentrate on the flavour of the moment, here in the shape of a rough idea for a scratch-built Civil War Fort.

Probably more Fort Humpter than Sumter, I thought I'd sketch out a generic design based on the famous original, that might serve in some ship-to-shore action with the Tumbling Dice Ironclads.

A quick bit of internet searching found the U.S. National Parks Service site for the original, which has some very useful contemporary and modern views of the fort and its close compatriots, alongside some plan drawings:

http://www.nps.gov/fosu/photosmultimedia/Fort-Sumter-Maps--Diagrams-Gallery.htm

A base width of 319 feet would see such a fort smaller in length than the large Kalamazoo Monitor seen in a previous post, so not much room for Columbiad guns, even if it is more to scale! As usual, therefore, I threw mathematics out the window, and went with what might look right.

I wanted to go the whole hog and have room for some scratch built artillery on the casemates, so I plumbed for a 120 x 120mm base card and freehanded a semblance of a fort as you see above.

Next up, some of that cell-centre packing card provided the start of walls, both internal and external:

and with the help of some blue-tac, we have, hey presto, the beginnings of something fairly suitable, I hope:

To give an idea of scale, I've thrown a TD Corvette and an ASV23 Stern Wheel Paddle Steamer into the photo, as it progresses, it should shape up to be quite a centrepiece for any Ironclad battle:

Alright, who am I kidding? It's not likely to go on when completed and win any model competition prizes, but will give a flavour of a contemporary fort for this new subsidiary project - obviously a long way to go yet, and I'm already distracting myself by sketching out some earthen batteries / artillery emplacements as we speak; but not bad so far for only twenty minutes or so of fiddling around - definitely more to come on this soon, so stay tuned!

A 1/2400th Fleet for Bolivia and some ACW Naval

The recent kind generosity of David Crook (he of a Wargaming Oddyssey and Ogrefencer fame) in disposing of some of his Lead Mountain has seen a large influx of 1/2400th vessels into the shipyards at SteelonSand Towers.

This means that my own Lead Mountain has now grown exponentially (Grrr!), however in one fell swoop I now have enough ships to fill the gaps in both the Pacific War and Nemo vs The Militarist 'what-if' Fleets, as well has have a bit of fun with some ACW Ironclads. (Yay!)

I was lucky enough to get my hands on multiples of various types from Tumbling Dice across their Victorian and ACW Naval ranges, and this has seen me thinking along the lines of producing a Fleet for Bolivia that will sail alongside the historical ones of Chile and Peru.

When the Pacific War broke out, the dictatorial president of Bolivia, Hilarion Daza, apparently appealed for ships that would fight for his country, and was prepared to dispense Letters of Marque, in a legitimised Pirate style, to all-comers. Historically, of course, his offer does not seem to have been taken up, but I'm not going to let that hold me back!

I have a scenario in mind where ex-combatants from the American Civil War, including of course Confederate renegades, put together a rag-tag fleet of surplus war craft, and hot foot it South in search of glory and plunder.....

The ACW range from TD has its critics, and perhaps rightly so, given the slightly a-historical proportions of some of the sculpts, and it certainly suffers in comparison to its rival 1/2400th range from Panzerschiffe. There are some very good points made about this in an excellent Workbench Article over at TMP here:

http://theminiaturespage.com/workbench/555697/

Now given that I am not too concerned about the realism of these particular vessels, I will be quite happy to make good use of them, and have been putting the first coats to a number of different types, that might see double duty if I feel like putting on a strictly ACW game; below we see a collection of Monitors:

From the top, we have the USS Kalamazoo, the Dictator, the Monadnock and Agamenticus, and a slightly converted Monitor herself. The middle pair will be familiar to readers from my earlier conversions, and the larger two are similarly nice sculpts at this scale, but the iconic single turret craft does have a few problems that I did try to disguise. If anything, the TD model out of the packet has more in common with the historical Canonicus class, so I chopped the funnel and painted in some deck grilles as you see below:

The lower model is the 'as-it comes' version, which I will retain as a Bolivian Mercenary vessel, and the above may figure in an earlier sphere of combat. Another slightly problematic sculpt is the ASV53 Cairo Class vessels, that have more in common with a British Waterways Canal narrow boat than they do with the originals, but they will easily serve as a non-descript type in the pay of El Presidente Daza:

One sculpt that is closer to the original, is the generic Cotton Clad ASV59, which has a good stab at portraying, say, the CSS Stonewall Jackson, and the size of it also lends itself to a quick conversion or two - a karate chop on the rear end, and a funnel swap produces a relatively realistic looking USS Tin-clad, the Fort Hindman:

There's some nice illustrations of the various types as wargaming models of a slightly different calibre from the Thoroughbred Models' 1/600th catalogue:

http://www.thoroughbredmodels.com/Ironclads.htm

Similar small-scale conversion work has been done on an ASV56 CSS Texas, to produce another generic type, perhaps an Arkansas or Charleston:

Well, Okay, I just filed off the ship's boats/small protuberances from the stern, but you get the picture! :-)

Perhaps the height of the TD range in terms of general appearance are the pairing available in the ASV58 Pack, CSS Nashvile and Missouri - definitely the best of the bunch:

These are all still a work in progress, and I've yet to glue the sail sets to various masts for the sailing vessels, but hopefully soon I'll be able to deploy full flotillas, whether historical or imagined for all three protagonists in the Pacific War, (Yay!) and all I have to do now is resist the temptation to suffer project-creep into the ACW itself (Grrr!).....

Aquanef/Nemo/Pacific War: Militarist Monitors etc....

I've been playing around with tying up the various loose ends of the half-conceived 'started as Aquanef - became Pacific War 1879 - turning back to VSF' project, so thought I'd commit some ideas to paper, as it were.

As you can see both above and below, the Peruvian Monitor Mano Capac has been joined by her sister ship in the shape of the Atahualpa, here in a contrasting scheme of grey and white:

This is for no other reason than to provide a bit of interest, as I've no historical sources for an accurate scheme, so went with what I felt fitted best. This pretty much finishes off the Pacific War 1879 part of the project, in that we now have most of the major surface combatants as provided by Tumbling Dice in 1/2400th.

I suppose I could look at doing some of the transport/civilian vessels of the time, but this is likely to be very much in 'back burner' territory for the time being.

Now the ships as they are can obviously be used historically, and also, as originally conceived, might combine to go up against the various scratch-built vessels of a Nemo-led fleet of Anti-Militarists.

As things stand, the Allies of Nemo have their own submarines depicted whilst surfaced, but I am afraid the daunting task of re-creating the Nautilus in whatever form so far eludes me; I guess it's hard not to be influenced by the iconic depictions we all know so well - to the point of being intimidated enough to give up before getting started!

So, in the meantime, as you might remember from a previous post here, I've been considering using some of the Aeronef vessels from Brigade Models to stand in as a response by the Miltarists to the superior technology of Nemo.

Think of them as contemporary Monitors on steroids.

Now of course, the perverse wisdom of taking maritime-inspired flying-ship designs and converting them back to some rudimentary form of surface ship seems, well....perverse, yet that is what I have been doing, primarily to take advantage of some of the really nice sculpts from Brigade.

http://www.brigademodels.co.uk/Aeronef/index.html

I chose three Aeronef, all with an ostensibly South American pedigree, and have got them to a rough approximation of what a 'super' monitor of the time might look like:

They are as yet a work in progress, but as you can see, we have at top, the VAN-803 Gustavo Sampaio from Brazil, the VAN-1401 Sanchez Carillon of Peru, and in the foreground, the VAN-805 Pernambuco, again of Brazilian pedigree according to Brigade.

These have all had the rear stabilising tailplanes removed, and their rounded hulls filed flat to enable their conversion into surface watercraft:

They are looking a little raw at the moment, but sometime soon, I'll hope to complete and base them, with the largest becoming the 'Huascar II' of Peru, the middle one becoming the 'Arturo Prat' of Chile, and the smallest will become the 'Bolivar' from the nascent navy of Bolivia itself. (Which historically, of course, had no vessels of its own to speak of)

To give an idea of the scale, we see below the Huascar II alongside the wooden Corvette, the Chacabuco:

Followed by the Arturo Prat:

Finally the Bolivar alongside the Atahualpa:

Hopefully, then, these upgraded Monitor types will provide some VSF-inspired muscle to take on Nemo, and also serve to move the project as a whole in a roughly forward direction....

The final, alright who am I kidding? - the next stage, is the re-introduction of a more Aquanef angle, and again, in the absence of any off-the-shelf models, I've raided the Aeronef catalogue once more to look for likely submersible craft, and come up with the following:

We have the VAN-4001 Pirate Cutlass Spar Torpedo Vessel, and the VAN-2005 Turkish Yarhisar Torpedo Dig. To my eyes, these have the greatest potential to be deployed in the guise of true submarines, although I dare say more types could be found amongst the ranks of available Aeronefs.

Finally, again, to give an idea of comparative scale, the two proto-subs up against the Atahualpa once more:

Just how these two vessels will figure, whether as further Militarist super-weapons in response to Nemo, or as part of some yet unconceived mystery contender, I've yet to decide - and that's to say nothing on how Robur's Albatross might get involved, or how the Bolivian Balloon Corps might be deployed to counter him!

More to come on all this, I fear.... ;-)

Militarist Reinforcements Sighted! (Some progress....)

The Pacific War/Militarists vs. Nemo factions have recently seen some reinforcement after a kind of Summer hiatus here at SteelonSand Towers - I've promised myself that I will spend more time at the painting table, so hopefully the queue of naked lead should get some attention in the coming weeks, and I'll be able to organise things via the Blog.

The Tumbling Dice factory elves were put to work recently to supply a further order of 1/2400th Ironclad vessels for yours truly, principal amongst which were the ASV13 Screw Gunboats, to provide ships for both Chile and Peru, the ASV11 Screw Corvette to act as the Chilean Chacabuco and Esmerelda, and the ASV52 Monadnock to stand in as Peruvian Monitors.

As you can see both above and below, the Screw Corvette is a nice model with a full set of sails and also rat-lines integral to the sculpt, making it easy to paint in a hurry, which is my favourite style!

Obviously, the vessels here are still a work in progress, and have yet to be matched with their metal bases as provided, but I think you'll get the general idea of the level of detail and character available from this excellent range.

The Screw Gunboats pack provides three examples, which will be used as the Chilean Covadonga and Magellanes, as well as the Peruvian Pilcomayo:

These come pre-mounted to a small base part, in a manner reminiscent of the 1/4800th Napoleonic naval range of ships.

Next we spy the competing Corvette Union and the Ironclad Almirante Cochrane, with in the foreground, the first ex-American Monitor, the Mano Capac - converted here from the Monadnock models from TD:

The company does a number of Monitor types in various packs for the ACW period onward, but it is difficult to find one that exactly matches the Catawba class single turreted versions.

I therefore went with the ASV52 Monadnocks, as they are in the same general area in terms of length and breadth, whilst offering the chance of conversion with some judicious filing.

The large fore-funnel is removed entirely, along with the rearmost Dahlgren Gun Turret:

This approximates the look of the two Peruvian Monitors, and this scale is quite forgiving in terms of glossing over the more irreconcilable differences; these comparison shots show how the finished product comes out - compare them with the originals here:

Monadnock:

http://www.facesofwar.com/uploaded_images/monadnock-739503.jpg

Mano Capac (USS Oneota):

http://maquina-de-combate.com/fotos_y_videos/Buques-en-la-Historia-del-Peru/Monitor_Manco_Capac_0003

I've yet to decide whether to attempt to add the Turret-top conning tower/sunshades seen on the originals - maybe I can ignore these, given how small and fiddly these would end up being!

The other issue is that of a suitable colour scheme -period photographs are notoriously difficult to interpret accurately, and I have seen any number of artist depictions from black to grey to white - perhaps I'll go for a different colour to differentiate the sister ship, the Atahualpa.

Anyway, whilst I shake off the accumulated rustiness of the Summer Holidays, why not take a look at some spirited recreations of the Pacific War originals in action:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EEND70_GAgI&feature=related

and the real thing here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=64kfXQR1DAw&feature=related

Hasta luego!

Aquanef: Submarine Revenge of the Militarists

I've recently got to thinking about how the whole Nemo vs. the Militarist factions of the Pacific War 1879 might develop, and in particular how the more conventional historical based vessels might actually cope when taking on the steel monsters of the Deep.

There are rifled muzzle-loaders and Dahlgren guns a-plenty, but could these really compete with the armoured submarines of Nemo and his Allies?

It seems to me that the Chileans and Peruvians, in response to the superior armaments of their mutual foe, would soon have to come up with some super weapons of their own, so I have been delving into the contemporary navies for a few ideas.

Imagine my surprise, then, to discover that it was not the 'Hunleys' and 'Alligators' of the ACW that had cornered the market in early subs, as indeed, both Chile and Peru had tested advanced designs of their own in circa 1864, and actually come up with some decent machines.

Chile, in response to conflict with Spain, had commissioned an immigrant German engineer named Karl Flach to design a submersible that would help to offset the superiority in shipping of their Continental enemy. His steel creation was 12.5 metres in length, pedal powered by a crew of 11, and featured two cannons, one built into the nose of the vessel itself!

Unfortunately, disaster struck on a proving run, and the designer, his eleven year old son, and another nine men were lost. There are some details on this Wiki page here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flach_(submarine)

also, more interestingly, some artist's impressions of how she may have appeared here:

http://thesubreport.com/blog/?p=126

and details on the current search for the whereabouts of the wreck, with a view to raising her for posterity:

http://thesubreport.com/blog/?p=123

The tragedy curtailed Chile's submarine ambitions, but the same conflict with Spain also motivated Peru to seek a similar technical advance.

In 1864, Federico Blume, a railway engineer, developed the 'Toro Submarino' or submarine Bull, which included such innovations as ballast tanks and a rudimentary system of air schnorkels; the end of the conflict with the Europeans saw it retreat to the drawing board, only to resurface when the strife with Chile began.

Blume's vessel was a 48' craft built from 1/4" boiler iron, was crewed by eleven men, and launching in June 1879, attained in trails an operating depth of twelve fathoms for a duration of thirty minutes, and a speed of 4 knots. In October of the same year, she was deployed to engage the Chilean Blanco Encelada and Almirante Cochrane near San Lorenzo Island near Callao with a pair of towed torpedos, but the mission was scrubbed when the vessels moved the location of their anchorages at short notice:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toro_Submarino

http://shermyjllore.blogspot.com/2009/03/first-submarine-peru.html

Once Chile's star was firmly in the ascendant, the submarine Bull was scuttled with the rest of the Peruvian Fleet, and so the underwater advances of these two South American nations were stillborn - doesn't mean I can't resurrect them however, does it?

I think I feel a bit of a scratch-build coming on...... :-)

Taking things somewhat further, I've also been considering beefing up the surface vessels of the belligerent nations, with input from some contenders available from Brigade's Aeronef ranges. Now of course these are supposed to be aether craft, but a bit of surgery to remove the tail apparatus and a few additional bits and bobs, and these should make some decent looking 'super-Monitors' or 'Ironclads-on-steroids' to take on Nemo and his ilk.

(Of course, Peru had some real ACW-era Monitors serving in their historical fleet; see here for the Mano Capac:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Oneota_(1864)

and the Athualpa:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Catawba_(1864)

both bought surplus from the USA.)

First up then, I'm looking at the VAN 1401 Peruvian Sanchez Carillon class Frigate, which with the tailplanes off and the bottom of the hull filed flat, should make an interesting addition to the mix:

Additionally, we have the VAN 803 Brazilian Gustavo Sampaio class Light Cruiser, which will see some similar attention to produce an ocean-going heavyweight worthy of a fight with Nemo:

So hopefully lots to look forward to here, whether some revivified historical subs, or some more imagineered surface craft!

In a coming post I'll be looking to put down on paper some technical specs for the respective fleets, as well as hopefully some scenario ideas based around the real events of the Pacific War - so stay tuned for more Aquanefiness to come.....

Aquanef: 1/2400th Militarist Flotilla is launched....

A look now at some of the South American inspired 'Militarist' ships that have so far left the slipway, as it were. These are about 80% complete, in that they need some tidying up; doing the Macro photos and seeing the results up close sure helps in flagging up those problem areas!

Having painted a lot of Pre-Dred 1/3000th, and dallied with the 1/48ooth Napoleonic from Tumbling Dice, I thought that these might sit nicely somewhere in the middle, however, I found them quite tough to deal with.

My 'style', if you can call it that, is quick and dirty, and whilst the clean lines of 1/3000th don't allow for too much straying into blobby territory, and 1/4800th actually benefit from a broad brush approach, these were more problematical.

Heavy handedness here meant some obviously over-thick applications of paint, and some very wobbly lining out being more apparent than usual....thank the gods that I have never been brave enough to let myself loose on quality the like of Rod Langton....that would be a car crash!

In my own way, though, and in terms of the tabletop, I'm fairly satisfied with them, and some re-touching and a bit more detailing, along with an ink wash, should finish them off alright.

Below we see the Peruvian ships the Huascar and the Independencia mounted on their integral bases:

I decided to keep the foremast of the Huascar in place after all, as I think it would have looked a bit naked without it - although it might complicate things somewhat when action stations are called!

The other ship needs some attention to the ratlines, and I might change my decision to go with a white trim and brown ship's boats - I think that all-black hulls might be a bit more realistic, if a bit bland, and as most contemporary pictures have the boats in white, then this would add some spots of colour to the whole.

The Huascar in a closer view; I tried suggesting the two 10" Armstrong guns in the Coles Turret with a couple of black 'windows':

Now for the Chileans; on the left the Almirante Cochrane, and on the right, Tumbling Dice's generic steam screw Corvette, depicting perhaps the Chacabuco:

I went with white masts not for any particular historical reason, but rather just to contrast with the yellow of the Peruvians; they might unite to fight off Nemo and his Allies, but are, after all, enemies. In terms of the look of both sides historically, it seems that they followed the standard black, white and yellow ochre peace time scheme of most navies.

I've been very pleased with the integral bases, they fit their respective ships like a glove, and also allow for a bit of 'heeling over' for dramatic effect, should you require it.

I've solved the storage issue by applying magnetic sheeting to the bottom of each, and trimming to size.

I suppose the only thing is that they are really too small to add in any sort of national identifier or name/data, although I am thinking of running with an idea to have a sort of trailing slip which could hold this information, which could be added to the various ships as and when required, but this has yet to leave the drawing board.

So, somewhat tentatively, then, the Militarists deploy their vessels to meet the strange threat of the unknown monster fish causing havoc with their merchant shipping....although apparently on a rather green and fuzzy sea....perhaps it's the Sargasso?

Aquanef: The Fleet of Nemo's Allies

"May, 1879. The Coast of Peru, near Iquique: shipments of arms and ammunition are coming south to equip the belligerents in what will come to be known as the War of the Pacific. Chile, Peru and Bolivia have ignited a struggle over control of mineral rich areas of the Atacama desert, and principally, the supply of Saltpeter, an ingredient essential to the production of gunpowder.

Captain Nemo, outraged by the prospect of militarists fighting a war over the very thing that enables them to destroy their fellow man, has decided to intervene.....two merchant vessels, loaded with a cargo of Minie and Chassepot rifles, see a monstrous shape emerge from the depths and race towards them at high speed...."

A quick run-through, then, of the completed vessels that will fight alongside Nemo in the conflict outlined above. First off, we have the Ironclad submersible the 'Catfish':

Next, we move on to the steam-powered 'Squid'

Finally a couple of views of the 'Piranha'

Some group shots; the paint schemes have come out looking rather more 'cute' than I had originally intended, so I may have to dirty them up with some ink-washes and maybe some rust streaks here and there:

Nemo's Allies sail off to prevent mankind from destroying itself:

So what of Nemo's own vessel, the Nautilus itself? Well, that scratch build would be a distinct step-up from this level, and is something I'm still thinking about. The iconic image familiar to modern readers is probably the version created for the 1954 movie version starring James Mason, done by Harper Goff for Disney studios; I doubt if I could really do this justice -

see some once commercially available versions here:

http://www.julesverne.ca/jvnautilus.html

It is interesting to ponder, though, that the original version described by Jules Verne in 20,000 Leagues under the Sea, bore more than a passing resemblance to a vessel contemporary to the time of writing, namely the 'Alligator' of Brutus de Villeroi, built for the US Navy:

http://www.navyandmarine.org/NavalArt/HindsBoats/alligator.jpg

There's a fascinating site detailing the hunt for this lost vessel to be found here:

http://sanctuaries.noaa.gov/alligator/welcome.html

I think mine will be more likely to resemble this one, and then the search will be over!

Professor Arronax: "What is in those sacks they are carrying?"

Nemo: "Nitrates and phosphates for ammunition. The seeds of War. They're loading a cargo full of death....when that ship takes it home, the World will die a little more...."