Ship yards of York (11): DIY ship's boats

A recreation of the Battle of Tellicherry calls for some ship's boats, so I thought that I'd have a go at making them myself.

Two little jolly-boats.

While making these I have been chuckling away to myself thinking about 'Asterix in Britain'.

I downloaded lots of photos of models of ships boats, and got excited about how I'd represent the oars with fine electrical wire, have some crew and maybe even a forward gun. Then I thought about the scale.

At 1/3000 a man is around 0.5–0.6 mm, the boat should be 3 or 4 mm long at and around a millimetre or so high. I soon threw out the idea of making oars with wire and settled for tiny balls (more bits) of putty for the crew. The gun wasn't gonna feature.

I was happy enough with these jolly little boats, so decided to try something more adventurous.

Before Keith knocked some sense into me by pointing out, no doubt in his best Churchillian voice, that I could "get so many for so few (pounds)" if I purchased one of the 'Forged in Battle' fleet packs (advice for which I am forever grateful), I was considering making some ships of my own. I still have a nagging desire to have a go so decided to try making a frigate, using one of the Navwar French frigates as a guide.

I 'laid down' a keel using a scrap piece of metal from the sprues to which the masts with sails are attached in the packs of Navwar ships. It provided some weight and also a guide/scale.

Ship's keel.

I applied putty* around the keel and began shaping it using my 'proprietary' modelling tool (a micro screwdriver from a $5 set). Staples cut to size formed the masts, with glue applied to provide extra strength in addition to the putty.

Frigate with staples as masts. A Navwar version behind.

I elected to use the same pragmatic approach as the Navwar ships regarding sails, so made them as single pieces cut from some thin cardboard.

Frigate with sails attached and a bit more undercoating applied. Beginning to hide the imperfections!

Paint brings out glorious detail in figures that are well sculpted, or can hide imperfections in a less-well made model! Ship's boats for comparison. They are a little bit large, but will do.

Disguised with some paint, it's not looking too bad—worked for the jolly boats, after all.

It'll do, especially from a distance on the table top.

I was happy enough with this as a first go so will try making another one later. I need to work more on the bow section to make it look less like a sabot shoe! This ship can join the others receiving some final highlights of paint and added rigging.

Here I have highlighted the blue on the Navwar frigate that is nominally "Hermione" and my un-named, scratch-built one.

*I used Milliput a bit in the past, but more recently (past ten years or so) have adopted DAS Air Dry Modelling Clay, which I like for its flexibility, ease of handling and ability to re-soften with water (I use deionised so that it keeps longer). 'Everyone else' seems to use 'green stuff' for such things. Perhaps I should try it some day, but I am happy with DAS and I have plenty of it. Applying a thin layer of PVA glue, or now I use 'BondCrete', once the clay has been shaped, adds greatly to its strength and durability.

These ship's boats and frigate were the most adventurous that I have been. I'll make at least one more frigate and then will have a go at at second rate! It will be interesting to see how I go with a larger model. Cue more Asterix:

Recent and current paintertainment

Being very much in a 'boating' phase, naval content has dominated my paintertainment recently. I have stumbled on some rippers in the process.

Three Decks

Not paintertainment but I want to give a huge plug for the simply marvellous Three Decks website.

Started by CY Harrison, Three Decks is "...the premier web resource for researching naval history during the Age of Sail." It is a marvellous repository of "...detailed information on vessels, crew, shipyards, dockyards, naval actions, geographical locations and much, much more including background details on the ranks, appointments and the nations involved. Even the National Maritime Museum links to us (VERY proud of that one)", as Mr Harrison states on the home page.

The site boasts information about "29,520 ships, 51,940 seamen, 1,073 actions/battles" originally provided Mr Harrison, now assisted by a team of dedicated editors. There is even a shop from which you can purchase "...pre-dreadnought and World War One era warships in 1:4800, 1:3000, 1:2400 and 1:1800 scales" as well as copies of his book "Royal Navy Officers of the Seven Years War" published by Helion. A great way to assist him/them financially. Or you can make a donation.

I have used the website regularly and often over the past few months to find information about the armament and compliment of ships for actions that I want to recreate on the table-top.

I have mentioned it previously and will mention it again. Cannot recommend it highly enough.

Drachinifel Naval Histographer

While searching around I found the videos by this fellow on yoo-toobe. He has loads and loads and loads of content about ships, actions, people, and matters naval. They are all top quality, well researched and provide heaps of information in an engaging manner, rather than glitz and superficial entertainment. He focusses on 1850–1950, but has a few videos about the age of sail. I watched the one entitled "Ship Types in the Age of Sail - Sloops, Brigs, Frigates and Ships of the Line". He clarifies the names used for different ships of sail, what all of those 'rates' mean, the origins of the names and how they changed over time, becoming firmly established in the Napoleonic period (for the English at least) and applied to the ships of other navies since then.

From there I chiefly watched some of his videos about the Pacific War; the Solomons campaign and Battle of the Coral Sea. This is another period of great interest to me. Top viewing while painting 'tall ships'—it did not matter that it was not related!

The Operations Room

One of Drachinifel's videos about the Battle of Guadalcanal featured some excellent animation produced by the Operations Room. Not the stupid, arcade-style of large ships zooming around like gunboats that I see in previews of World of Warships, but a video-style presentation of a wargame with ships manoeuvring, the path of in-coming bombers and of defending combat air patrol. Sensational.

I went to that channel and watched the series of videos about the Battle of Leyte Gulf. As with Drachinifel, the focus is on historical accuracy and content, accompanied with their trade-mark, excellent animation, as opposed to Drach's use of stills (predominantly).

The Hunt for HMAS Sydney

Searches on the internet related to the Pacific War lead me to the footage of the IJN Akagi when it was found in 2019; as was USS Hornet—events that I had managed to miss—and then to that of USS Yorktown. Superb video and incredibly moving. It made me recall the time when HMAS Sydney (II) was found back in 2008 and the excellent doco. that was made at the time. It's not available on yoo-toobe, so I splashed out and bought it (for $14.95!).

It was as good 16 years later as it had been in 2008. Perhaps better.

Of great interest to me, was a bit of history within history. In trying to find the video on-line, I found an earlier one from 1993 "The mysterious loss of HMAS Sydney", which I had watched at the time of its release, but had forgotten about. I watched it again, after "The Hunt for HMAS Sydney". It made for some salutary viewing.

From the moment of Sydney's disappearance, stories, myths and conspiracy theories began. They only multiplied in the years that followed, fuelled by the burning question, "How could the Sydney, 'the lucky ship', pride of the RAN have been sunk by a less well armed and armoured raider?" From government cover-ups to a Japanese submarine through to, perhaps the worst of all, accusations of criminal acts by the crew of the Kormoran. These were included in the 1993 video, presented by advocates of each, convinced that they were correct, juxtaposed with the known facts and contradictions and the testaments of living crew of the Kormoran, in 1941 and 1993. Yet, answers were there none. The mystery was very much alive in '93.

It was amazing how incorrect the various theories and stories were, compared with the facts that came out in '08, revealed by the wreck, supported by the testimonials of the German sailors, who provided the information that was crucial in finding the Kormoran and, from there, the Sydney. Chalk another one up for the 'Ockham's razor'-style of events compared to wild, conspiracy theories!

Two excellent videos tied off the story for me. Both were of presentations to the Naval Historical Society of Australia, about the battle and the scientific detective work that lead to the identification of the unknown sailor (21-year-old Able Seaman Thomas Welsby Clark) in 2021—his remains were found in a carley float drifting off Christmas Island on 6th February 1942, brought ashore and buried quickly ahead of the Japanese occupation of the island.

Play For Today

On a completely different tack (ha, ha), the paintertainment for the last few days has been c/- a series of plays/tele-movies produced by the BBC from 1970–1984, called "Play For Today".

Julian put me on to them the other day. I dunno whether they were shown on the ABC. I don’t remember it/them.

There is a universality to the stories so that despite being ‘old’ and having some very English bits to them, I reckon that they still work today and for me, in and of this place. They might work a bit better for me because of the ‘englishness’ that I had in my upbringing (being of an emigré family), since I enjoy stories from the past, and since most of them are from my era (or times that well and truly echoed, like the 'Second War'). Being a '65 drop, the 70s and early 80s were my 'formative' years. Additionally there is the lasting value of a good story with excellent writing that is well acted and produced.

I have now watched "The Flipside of Dominick Hide" (the one originally recommended by Julian), "Another Flip for Dominick", "Aliens", "Dear Brutus", "Bavarian Night", "Last Love" and "Love on a Gunboat". Not a ‘dud’ amongst them.

Fantastically, they are all on the amazing Internet Archive.

Trouble is, I am finding them addictive and there are loads of the bloody things!

I watched ’The Lie’ last night. That one was a bit confronting. It was written by Ingmar Bergman and translated by Paul Britten Austin*. The upper-middle class characters have these really awful, soulless and loveless lives and then it turns particularly ugly at the climax/ending. I was shaken up by that one.

*Mention of Paul Britten Austin brings us back to the main purpose of this blog; the Napoleonic period (in its broadest terms). He was the author of the fabulous 1812 eyewitness trilogy of books, published in the early 1990s and then released as a single volume in 2000. I was intrigued that he'd also translated a story written by Ingmar Bergman, so looked him up to see if I could find more it. I did not, but discovered four interesting points: he married Bergman’s sister, was a scholar of Swedish, died in 2005 and there is a really interesting quote in Wikipedia regarding the 1812 books:

What value a citation in Wikipedia?!!

Ship yards of York (10): Basics completed

Distractions, that figures.

I have been 'at sea' for four months now. Well, almost. I needed a little sojourn on land, for the sake of me sea legs and me sanity, so I prepared some more figures—sorting, trimming, adding pikes, standards and other additions and conversions, undercoating and basing. Then there was a bit of time away from my wargaming room, doing other 'stuff', not feeling like painting. Still, I got some of the long delayed jobs around the place done and I now have a huge mob of figures ready to go once the ships are done...

They nearly are!

The fleet, basics painted, ready for the final touches.

Good painting sessions for much of this week have allowed me to complete the basics on all of the ships. They are now ready for touch-ups, varnishing, rigging (for the Navwar ships) and adding some flags.

English ships at right, French at left.

French ships at right, Spanish at left.

I had been wondering why they were taking me so long to paint and then I realised; there are 85 of the little b#ggers. I had painted the basics on only around 30 of them before the test game that Julian and I did in mid-September.

English

French

Spanish

A Spanish 74, nominally identified as San Justo, with a test of one of the flags and pennants that I have made up on my computer. For this test I simply used paper held on by water tension. I have printed them on to sticky labels for the real thing. There is a number on each flag to help with recognition of the ships, especially in large actions (a clever idea that I got from Julian).

It feels great to get this far. With the end well and truly in sight, I have begun to make preparations for my first game of 'all of the naval actions of the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars'. It will be the Battle of Tellicherry, as I have mentioned it before. It’s a little action on 19th November 1791, so is actually a prelude to the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars. Two frigates of those perfidious English pirates try to stop and then attack a neutral French frigate and the two merchantmen it was escorting. They suspected that the French were taking supplies to aid Tipu Sultan’s ‘rebellion’. They probabaly were, but those particular ships were not.

The last 10% always takes quite a bit of time so I reckon that there will be one more post about painting the ships, perhaps two, before 'the games begin'!

Ship yards of York (9): Audit and prep.

I have allocated the Forged in Battle ships, and re-allocated some of the Navwar ones (French 74s will become 80s to bring the number of them up). Each will nominally represent a named ship of one of the three nations: England, France and Spain. The numbers are really pleasing.

Ships organised into fleets, from left to right Spanish, English and French.

English

4 first rates 100–120 guns

2 second rates 98 guns

1 third rate 80 captured French (HMS Tonnant)

19 third rates 74 guns

4 third rates 64 guns

2 razee frigates

2 frigates

2 merchantmen

4 brigs

French

2 first rates 120 guns

5 third rates 80 guns (including Tonnant)

14 third rates 74 guns

2 frigates

1 merchantman

2 cutters

Spanish

1 first rate 130–136 guns (Santisima Trinidad)

2 first rates 112 guns

1 first rate 100 guns

2 third rates 80 guns

9 third rates 74 guns

1 third rate 64 guns

2 frigates

1 merchantman

2 cutters

I will need to re-flag some of the Spanish 74s as French for First of June/Prairial and some of the French first rates and 74s as Spanish for Cape St. Vincent. The Frigates will be swapped around a bit for various of the smaller actions. In the main though, the ships will be 'fixed' to their allocated nation, merely changing name according to the ships in a particular action.

Merveilleuse!

Ship yards of York (8): Arrival of 'Keith's ships'

The 1/3000 ships produced by Forged in Battle, that I was made aware of by Tim and Julian and then Keith *made* me buy, arrived today—and I could not be more pleased!

Ships and bases on a towel to dry after washing.

The models are excellent. They are robust, have a good amount of detail and an absolute minimum of flash—just a tiny amount on the bottom that I needed to trim to get them to sit flush on the stands. They are stable with a good weight to them once glued to the stand. In short, they look bloody marvellous!

Forged in Battle sent me a 'bonus' of an extra two 74s, which was most generous and a wonderful surprise. It is doubly good, since they are the most common ships of the line.

I received not 31, but 33 of these beauties!

The models are not as detailed as the Navwar ships, but there is sufficient for this scale.

The ships are a little smaller than those from Navwar, but it will hardly be apparent once they are painted and 'sailing' around a table-top ocean. Also, once mounted on the bases, which are thicker than the Navwar ones, they nearly the same height.

I was interested which were closer to a true 1/3000th scale, so did a comparison for Santisima Trinidad.

Comparison of the two Santisima Trinidads: Forged in Battle at left, Navwar at right.

I used the information about her from the Three Decks website. This records that the gun deck was 220' 6", which is 67.2084 m in modern measurements, or ~22.4 mm at 1/3000. The breadth is given as 58', 17.6784 m or 5.9 mm at 1/3000th. I measured the models, simply using a ruler, and the Forged in Battle version is closest with ~ 17 mm for the gun deck and around ~5 mm wide, compared with the Navwar version at ~19 mm and ~6 mm wide. So, I'll use the Navwar version as Santisima Trinidad and the Forged in Battle ship will represent a smaller 1st rate.

Ships on their bases ready for undercoating and painting.

Ship yards of York (7): Action Under Sail Play-test

It went really well. I am a happy chappy.

Before I could stage a game of "Action Under Sail", I needed to 'find' my table.  I moved everything to the far (left) end of the table, gave the now clear section a sweep and vacuum and then unrolled and laid about 1.2 x ~2 m of my recently purchased 'ocean' material.

I was applying off-white (Tamiya 'deck tan') to the sails of the Spanish ships when Julian arrived. He waited patiently while I completed that and then applied blue with a blue-grey wash/highlight to the bases, all the while making me feel good about how the painted ships looked. It's wonderful to have wargaming friends! :)

It also gave him a bit of time to look at a few aspects of the rules that I wanted his thoughts about. The delay was not too long and we were ready to sail.

Above, Spanish squadron, lead by Argonauta, followed by San Agustin, Santisima Trinidad (flag), Montañés and San Felipe Apóstal, with the frigate Ninfa protected by the ships of the line and positioned to relay signals.

English squadron, Zealous in the lead then Agamemnon (flag), Bellona with Adamant out of photo to left. Frigates Sybille and Phoebe on the Spanish side of the line.

Consistent with the first game using any new set of rules, it took us a while to get going and to get into a 'rhythm', but we were soon sailing away and finding that we'd made mistakes in the fleet and movement orders for our ships—player mistakes, not mistakes with the rules. For two reasonably experiences tabletop sailors, we were directing our mini charges in an amateur fashion!

Fleets on course to come to grips, Spanish nearest camera, Ninfa yet to be moved.
Note the good looking and useful wind direction and ship orientation tool that is provided with the rules, for printing and assembly.

The English squadron turned to intercept the Spanish...

and came on aggressively.

Sybille and Phoebe came too close, receiving broadsides from San Felipe Apóstal (at the former), Montañés and Santisima Trinidad (at the latter), while Argonauta (furthest from camera) fired at HMS Zealous in the lead of the English line.

The frigates HMSs Phoebe and Sybille sailing too close to the Spanish line drew the first broadsides of three of the ships, including the 'biggest ship in the world' Santisima Trinidad. Bonuses for initial broadside and the double-shot that I had loaded resulted in serious damage to the hulls of both frigates—damaging all of Phoebe's starboard guns, and killing some crew.

We had a fair bit of discussion about this result. Made some calculations, considered alterations and thought about a change. We then moved to the firing of Argonauta against HMS Zealous and decided against the change. Further firing over the next three turns confirmed us to stick with the rules as writ!

I was engrossed in the game and our discussion about the firing, so forgot to photograph a couple of turns—oops! The Spanish kept sailing on and it appeared that our inept sailing might result in a minor action. Argonauta had lost her main mast top gallant in turn five.

Ah, the admirals were not complete buffoons after all, turning their ships to engage.

The time that we had taken over the first seven turns now paid off. We were comfortable with orders, movement and firing, which was good since the next two turns were really involved. We pro-rated the movement of the ships to more easily determine which fired at which and when during the turn.

English ships of the line approach the turning Spanish.

Montañés fires a raking broadside on Zealous, while she in turn rakes San Felipe Apóstal. 

Half-way through the turn, Bellona got her turn at San Felipe Apóstal, taking out more guns and crew.

The English have élite crews, compared with the raw of the Spanish (on a three-level scale), enabling them to fire and reload more rapidly and so be able to fire at the beginning and end of a move. Zealous had this point-blank stern rake on Santisima Trinidad. She had fired previously part-way through the move, rather than at the beginning, so this shot should not have been allowed, but we wanted to see the effect. A shot at the hull damaged guns and killed some crew.

We both should probably have followed the more usual tactic of disable first (fire at rigging) and then move in to hammer (and board) the enemy ship, but, aside from this, the firing and damage seemed reasonable for single broadsides.

Both squadrons continued to turn. Spanish in line in centre of photo, frigate Ninfa off to the left (showing ill effects of my clumsy hand on the delicate mast). English frigate Sybille in the foreground (Phoebe out of photo behind her), while the four English ships of the line are coming around the Spanish.

At this point Argonauta and Zealous were positioned to exchange broadsides, but no. Zealous was unloaded on the starboard side due to that rake on Santisima Trinidad. Argonauta duly unloaded her port side guns on the English ship's hull.

We continued the ship's wearing.

It was Argonauta's turn to be unloaded (top of photo). She took fire from both Zealous and Agamemnon, adding losses of guns and crew to her previously 'felled' t'gallant. Sybille fired at the unloaded Montañés, while Phoebe (with the guns of her undamaged port-side batteries) and San Felipe Apóstal exchanged 'pleasantries'.

That was our lot. I had to rush into town before shops closed and Julian needed to leave, since he'll be heading to the airport today for his 'international man of mystery' work. 'Twas no matter. The aim was to try and to evaluate the rules. In nine turns we did and they were... pleasingly good. There have the detail that I am after, but it has been cleverly integrated and somewhat abstracted so as to streamline play without losing the flavour and challenges of trying to command and to move ships on a tabletop sea, to bring them to fire on your opponent's ships and in a state of readiness to be able to do so.

Most importantly, we'd had a good game. Lots of decisions and challenges as players, discussion of results, quick looking up to compare with general statistics, getting comfortable with the system and having an absolute ball. After all the weeks preparing these lovely, fiddly little ships it was so pleasing to have them 'sailing' around, getting contorted together and sharing the joy of it all with a fellow-traveller in the naval caper.

Thanks Steve Birnie. If you are still around, I hope that someone is able to bring to your attention this little game in which two wargamers who enjoy French Revolutionary-Napoleonic Naval 're-discovered' the rules that you wrote—some 47 years after the event—and spent a really enjoyable 4–5 hours doing so!

Next step 19th November 1791, 'Battle of Tellicherry'. English frigates HMS Phoenix and HMS Perseverance engaging the 'neutral' French frigate Résolue of 32 under capitaine Gallamand. I'll prepare a description of the historic action for reference and as a comparison with the action as played. In the meantime, the other ships need to be completed, rigging to be applied to them all and then the ships from Forged in Battle, which I expect to arrive any day now, will need to be done—interspersed with painting the now long-neglected land forces.

 'Tis a joy to have so many wonderful hobby 'jobs' to fit in! :)

Summary of the game

Rules: Action Under Sail, 2nd Edition by Steve Birnie, published November 1977 by Tabletop Games.

Scales: not stated, but presumably the rules were designed for 1/1200th scale ships, with a time scale of a few minutes per turn.

Ships: Navwar 1/3000th scale Napoleonic ships.

'Terrain': a roll of material for a blind or 'block out' purchased from Spotlight :)