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: Pacific War 1879: Naval Strengths of the Militarists

Some time ago I was lucky enough to find a 1906 copy of Sir William Laird Clowes' book "Four Modern Naval Campaigns" in a charity shop. This is a treatise on what was then the modern art of naval warfare, and looks in detail at the campaign surrounding the Battle of Lissa in 1866, as well as three separate South American conflicts spanning 1879 to 1894.

This is obviously where I drew my inspiration from when deciding where to set the Nemo versus the Militarists campaign, and it has been a mine of information on the vessels employed at the time and their capabilities, as well as having a lot of scenario-worthy detail on the various engagements.

Laird Clowes set out to examine the likely shape of a future Naval conflict for Britain, give that she herself had not had any recent major surface engagements "since the introduction of modern factors, such as steam, armour, high powered guns, the Ram, the Torpedo and the Electric Light".

In describing the Pacific War of 1879, he himself drew upon a number of sources, including the work of Lt. Theodorus B.M. Mason U.S.N. , as well as both French and Spanish accounts; he hoped to: "set forth some significant, though, I fear, still neglected lessons concerning the potentialities and limitations of the Ram in action" and to demonstrate "the immense importance, especially in armoured craft, of superior speed".

His conclusions make fascinating reading, but he makes no mention of the involvement of submarine craft and their potential, (Booo!) although there are some details given on torpedo craft and the various incarnations of their weaponry.

From his descriptions then, here is a breakdown of the naval strengths in armed shipping of Peru and Chile (Bolivia had no navy) at the start of their fight over the mineral and nitrate rich Atacama Desert:

PERU:

Huascar:

Barque-rigged Ironclad Turret Ship, (1865) 1,130 tons

Speed: 11knots (approx)

Armament: 2 x 10" Muzzle Loaders, 2 x 40pdr ML, 1 x 12pdr ML, 1 Gatling gun

Armour: Sides 4.5", Turret from 5.5 to 7"

Independencia:

Ram equipped Armoured Frigate, (1864) 2,004t

12kt

1 x 250pdr ML, 3 x 150pdr ML, 12 x 70pdr ML

4.5" on the waterline and the central Battery; this had an additional 10" of teak backing

Mano Capac:

Ironclad Monitor (Formerly the USS Oneota), (1866) 2,100t

6kt

2 x 15" Smooth Bore Breech Loaders

5" laminated armour on sides, 10" on turret

Atahualpa:

Ironclad Monitor (Formerly the USS Catawba), (1866) 2,100t

6kt

2 x 15" SBL

5" laminated armour on sides, 10" on turret

Union:

Wooden Corvette, (1864) 1,150t

12kt

2 x 100pdr ML, 2 x 70pdr ML, 12 x 40pdr ML

Pilcomayo:

Wooden Gun Vessel, (1864) 600t

10kt

2x 70pdr ML, 4 x 40pdr ML (later changed to Breech Loaders)

Chalaco:

Steamer Transport, (1873) 1,000t

11kt

2 x 40pdr ML

Limenia:

Paddle Transport, (1865) 1,163t

12kt

2 x 40pdr ML

Laird Clowes also mentions that Peru employed Herreshoff type Spar Torpedo Boats, and also had access to some Lay Automobile Torpedos; cable deploying 12.5kt speed, which carried 90lb of Dynamite.

CHILE:

Almirante Cochrane:

Ram equipped Ironclad Battleship, (1874) 3,560t

11kt

6 x 9" ML, 1 x 20pdr ML, 1 x 9pdr ML, 1x 7pdr ML, 1 x 1" Nordenfeldt

9" Iron Belt, Battery 8", Iron Deck of 2 to 3"

Blanco Encelada:

Ram equipped Ironclad Battleship, (1874) 3,560t

11kt

6 x 9" ML, 1 x 20pdr ML, 1 x 9pdr ML, 1x 7pdr ML, 1 x 1" Nordenfeldt

9" Iron Belt, Battery 8", Iron Deck of 2 to 3"

O'Higgins:

Wooden Corvette, (1866) 1,670t

10kt

3 x 7 ton ML, 2 x 70pdr ML, 4 x 40pdr ML

Chacabuco:

Wooden Corvette, (1866) 1,670t

10kt

3 x 7 ton ML, 2 x 70pdr ML, 4 x 40pdr ML

Esmerelda:

Wooden Sloop, (1854) less than 1,000t

3kt

14 x 40pdr

Magellanes:

Iron and Wooden Gun Vessel (1874) 772t

11kt

1x 7 ton ML, 1 x 64pdr ML 1x 25pdr ML

Covadonga:

Gunboat (1854) less than 700t

8kt

2 x 70pdr ML

Abtao:

Iron and Wooden Corvette (1854) 1,050t

6kt

3 x 150pdr ML, 3 x 30pdr ML

Chile also employed a number of Spar Torpedo Boats, and both sides made use of civilian transports and coastal vessels, often up-gunned with ancient muzzle-loaders, as well as Gatling and Nordenfeldts where available.

So, quite a range of shipping, some of which will no doubt provide fodder for the depredations of armoured submersibles, but also others that might just give a better account of themselves. Laird Clowes is at great pains to point out the limitations of Ram attacks when employed against fast ships that are capable of maneuvering: perhaps Nemo won't have it all his own way, after all.......

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?

Oops - I did it again - 1/2400th Ironclads!

I need another project like I need a hole in the head. I need another project involving ships -when I weigh it against the thousands of land troops in various scales that adorn the 'Lead Mountain' - like two holes in the aforementioned head. So what do I go and do now?

Well, you guessed it, I convince myself to start a new project, (only on a small scale, of course...) involving the 1/24ooth Victorian Naval Ironclads available from Tumbling Dice here in the UK.

Now I, along with many others, have been hankering after the release of the AquaNef Rules to compliment those currently available for AeroNef / Land Ironclads; and the news that Steve Blease will be hosting an AquaNef game at the upcoming Salute show has me ruminating on how I might approach this new area. For me, the submarine connection has to be intrinsically linked with one particular vessel and period; the Nautilus of Captain Nemo, and his 'rage against the machine'-like attacks on the late Victorian Ironclad navies of various nations.

Now AeroNef and its counterparts are more normally associated with 1/1200th as a scale, although of course this is somewhat elastic, given the effective use of Irregular's 2mm or 1/900th minis by most of us alongside the offerings from Brigade, but in typical contrary fashion, I was intrigued by the 'smaller' range of Ironclad vessels brought out by Tumbling Dice - I reasoned that they might be cheaper than using existing ships available in 1/1200th, and, well, let's face it, I had been looking for an excuse to give them a try for some while....

So this post will be a run through/review of the sample pieces that I have ordered so far, and will hopefully give a flavour of the range, as well as setting out my ideas as to how I would like to approach the 'feet wet' part of the AeroNef universe.

As you will see in the photo above, I purchased a number of different types of vessel that would be appropriate to the time period of around 1865 to 1885, and as usual from Tumbling Dice, the models are well proportioned and quite charismatic, although there is a modicum of clearing up to do in terms of flash on the castings; all models appear here in their 'out of the packet' state.

Unlike the 1/4800th Napoleonic naval showcased elsewhere on this Blog, these vessels come with separate metal bases, that are etched with wave-like markings around a vessel-shaped slot for the ship itself. this of course would enable the option of differing basing styles, and if you were to utilise these metal bases alone, they are nice and substantial, and a good fit for their respective ships.

First up, let's look at an example of what I ordered, namely in the photo above, the Peruvian battery Ironclad the Independencia, seen here with the separately moulded rat-lines and sails that came in its twin-pack with the Huascar (ASV61). I think that the rigging, particularly in the clumsy hands of a clutz like myself, might be a bit too much to attempt on models of this scale, so I probably will do without them, but the sails, furled and set, will be a useful addition.

The model itself is nicely made, with lifeboats visible in the stern quarter, as well as some detail amidships - although of course there are no visible armaments as such.

Below we see another general example; this the Chilean (ASV62) Almirante Cochrane battery ship - here the additional sails are cast onto the base, and there is more in the way of flash to clean up, but nothing too major - remember all photos on this Blog are clickable for a close-up, Macro view.

Rather than go with perhaps the more conventional Franco-Anglo pairing available in this range, I decided that the stomping ground for my Nemo-esque shenanigans would be a bit more exotic to my Eurocentric eyes, and I plumped for the War of the Pacific 1879~1884 as a background to the project.

This would take advantage of the available models in this scale from Tumbling Dice, who make the major ships from both Chile and Peru, as well as some interesting entries from Argentina, the U.S. and further afield, also other generic types that will be useful.

http://tumblingdiceuk.com/sail_steam.html

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

Let's look at the samples I bought one by one; being a miserly sort, I restricted myself to those packs that offered multiple ships, and therefore good value over their counterparts available in, say, 1/3000th or 1/1200th.

From ASV61, then, the turret Ironclad the Huascar:

Her pack-mate, the Independencia once more:

The British turret ship HMS Cyclops (ASV40):

The generic Steam Screw Corvette (ASV15):

The USS Cairo Armoured Stern Wheeler (ASV53):

The Argentinian Turret Ironclad Los Andes (ASV64):

The ACW-era generic Cottonclad armoured side-wheeler (ASV59):

With multiples in each pack, this grouping gives fifteen vessels of seven different types, which should offer a good starting point for either representative ships from a number of navies, or even the groundings of a more 'imagineered' navy of the era and location, that might take on what will probably be some scratch-built submarines, including the iconic Nautilus itself.

Some comparison shots to give an idea of size:

Some nice inscribed detail on those two ACW types, although there was some lumpy casting left-overs on the base of the Cottonclads that will need to be filed off.

Corvette versus the Cyclops; the sailing ship has lovely proportions, and the turret ship looks suitably business-like:

Huascar and Independencia together; I have seen a number of artist's renderings of the former that depict her cleared for action with the foremast removed - to give a clearer field of fire for her turret guns, I suppose - so she may lose that mast during the painting process:

Finally, the Chilean and Argentinian entries; once cleared of flash, the former is a lovely sculpt, and the Los Andes type has a nice flying bridge over the turrets:

So, once again we find ourselves with more raw lead to paint, and the beginnings of another round of research and sorting out, perhaps on-top of some serious scratch building.....certainly enough to provide that inevitable distraction from my other projects....until the next new idea comes along of course.... ;-).