Ship yards of York (part 3)

I had completed building the English and Spanish ships a couple of weeks ago, prior to heading to Mt Barker for John's game of Laichling, but it has taken me a while to apply any paint to them. Now that has begun (slowly), it is time for a little update and to respond to previous comments and questions!

English ships, undercoated, with added dry-brushing. I started painting the 100-gun 1st/2nd rate on the right, but stopped as I looked for 'guides' of colour-schemes to use for each ship.

French ships. I had part-painted these years ago, but have now applied the grey and white dry brush—hence they look a real mess at present. I had wondered if I'd prefer the approach of undercoat, apply base coat, dry-brush and then highlight. Fortunately, I do not, so will use the easier and quicker method of undercoat, dry-brush and then colour (which will be the case for the English and Spanish ships).

Spanish ships, undercoated and dry-brushed. The 'mighty' Santisima Trinidad at the front and the strangely 'stumpy' Rayo behind her, then six 74s, frigates, merchant ship and brigs.

Ray, you asked about my intentions with painting the ships**. Apart from not very well(!), I am painting them using a modified 'Mitch method'. This involves my usual undercoat in Payne's grey, now followed by the 'Mitch magic' of a dry-brush with grey and then with white, before adding the appropriate colours as part paint, part highlight. Mitch uses inks (and is considering army painter), but I don't particularly like the brightness of inks and am not into 'new fangled' things like army painter (haha), so am sticking to simple acrylic paint. I'll leave the fancy stuff for the likes of you and Mitch, Ray! 

**Incidentally, I went to check exactly what you had said and asked and could not find your comment on my blog. I had seen it and read it via the email that I receive notifying me of a new comment; but it was not on the blog?! I went looking and, sure enough, there it was in the list of comments but marked as 'spam'. How rude of blogger!! This is the second time that it has happened with one of your comments. I have no idea why! Anyway, rectified now and your comment is posted.

I finished the undercoating and dry-brushing over the weekend and started the 'colouring in' last night. I did not get far though, part of one ship, before I hit a road-block. It's the same one that I get with non-uniform land units. What colours do I want to use? How can I make them all look different?

The ships can all be basically painted the same; most often some sort of brown, light or dark, but sometimes almost yellow, or red which is alternated, generally with black, for the decks/lines of guns and sections in-between. Alternatively they could be painted with the main body of the ship one colour and black (or other colour) for the lower hull and around the deck. Most ships had splashes of colour and often gold around the figure-head and the decorative galley/captain's cabin (rear).

There are quite a few options and I would like a bit of variety. Some way to discern between the look of the ships. So, I put down the brushes and went searching for pictures that showed variations of colour schemes for the first, second and third rate ships, frigates, sloops, brigs and cutters.

This took me several hours last night, and some more today, but I now have pictures of representative vessels for English, French and Spanish ships of each class to act as a painting guide or perhaps a 'library of inspiration'. It will be paints out again this arvo'/evening.

In response to my previous post about the ships, there was a bit of a 'discussion', via comments, about periods that we do not wargame. A few of you mentioned that Napoleonic naval is not one that 'grabs' you sufficiently. I can understand completely. It does not have the same visual appeal as large-scale land battles, there is the messy business of building the ships and the (real or potential) problem of all that rigging. Then, when you get them on the table, the wind messes with where you want your ships to go and you never get to engage with the enemy!

For me, Napoleonic naval follows a familiar wargaming story. I have always had an interest in this aspect of the French Revolutionary-Napoleonic period, but I am now in deeper and deeper, thanks to the process of constructing these fiddly little f#@$%!! ships, looking into colour schemes to use and, most importantly, what to do with them.

I had a bit of an epiphany regarding this last point.

I was looking at various, smaller actions, one here another there. Quick searches and then skimming entries on Wikipedia, was sufficient to produce a list of three or four. It was not a particularly structured and not really what I wanted. I wondered about a listing of all of the actions, so as to choose some to have a go at on the tabletop.

Like any encyclopaedia, Wikipedia is a useful, first pass to get an idea about a topic (battle). Generally, I am after more depth, so go looking elsewhere. If my books are lacking (as they are for naval), then I'll head to JStor, archive.org or look at the references listed under the entry in Wikipedia. In this case, it was the reference list for one of the actions that yielded some real 'gold'! Three tomes that have all the details that I am looking for:

• Batailles Navales de la France vol 1–4, by Troude,

• The naval history of Great Britain vols 1 to 6, by James,

• Biographie Maritime vol 1–3, by Hennequin.

These are all secondary sources, but were written and published soon after the events, so are almost a primary source. I was able to get the complete set of all three from the marvellous archive.org and Gallica BnF.

I now have a new and exciting (to me) 'cunning plan'. I'll do the lot.

All of the naval actions of the French Revolutionary-Napoleonic wars. I have begun to make my list, going through Troude and James. I am making a few notes about each action and page references for when I go back looking for the details. Most of the early encounters were small; ship to ship 'duels' or a few ships against one, or small numbers on each side. Predominantly involving frigates, sometimes even smaller craft.

The first action will be the 'Battle of Tellicherry', 19th November 1791 off the south-west coast of India. It was a peace-time attack by two English frigates on the French frigate Résolue. Perhaps 'phoney war' is a better description for the 'peace' of the time, as the French were escorting goods into Mangalore for the Kingdom of Mysore that was in conflict with the British East India company. Needless to say, the attack on a ship in peace-time caused quite a stir, but the burgeoning British Empire and naissant French Republic were soon at war.

Serendipitously, the fact that the actions were all small ones, prior to May-June 1794, makes them ideal for testing out the rules and developing an approach for handling larger affairs. It also means that, once they are painted, I can add rigging to the ships on an 'as needs' basis.