Rowing Boat with 13 men crew and 26 infantry passengers

Another humble contribution for our February show game in Hamburg was one of the rowing boats Perry Miniatures released last autumn. It a pretty piece sculpted by Alan Perry to represent a Napoleonic British rowing boat used for several landing operations during the campaigns in Flanders, Egypt, Denmark and Spain as well as in the whole Carribean area:

The boat itself is a two part resin kit with six rowing seamen attached already. In addition there's a supplemantary set of six further seaman and a coxswain giving it a crew of 13 Royal Navy seamen.

However the boats were meant to transport troops so troops were needed to man the 28mm equivalent as well. For this purpose Alan created two sets of sitting redcoats which fits perfectly on the boat's benches. One of the set comes with 18 soldiers joint to thress or fours while the other contains eight solitary figures to supply bow and stern with brave Brits. Altogether the boat has a complete 26 figure infantry unit in addition to the 13 men Navy crew!

Painting the boat was a rather unusual experience. The Navy figures were pretty much business as usual. Although seated the rowers were complete figure that I painted more or less like any other 28mm miniature. But the strung readcoats were a challenge. On the one hand the missing feet made the surface to paint smaller which should cause time saving. But on the other hands the details were much more difficult to reach causing loos of time. After all I presume painting these chaps caught sligtly less time then painting 18 standing figures.

The solitary figures of course went in the normal manner. Especially the officers are wonderful sculpts wearing the top hat which feeld iconic for the early campaign especially the campaign in Egypt. For that reason I decided to use the 'old' pre-1801 colours. It is doubtful whether the units at Aboukir carried these or whether they had received new colours with the Irish Saint Andrew's cross early enough. Since I wanted to use the wonderful colours by GMB again I opted for the oldish version since the newer (Peninsular) version is already bearing the battle honour for Egypt.

On our table we had three of these boats in addition to two further rowing boats by Britannia and a British gunboat I built from Laserdreamworks nice lasercut kit.

Unfortunately the boat itself isn't appropriate as an entry since I started working on it before the challenge started. During late summer last year I assembled and painted the hull but didn't manage to complete my work.

During challenge time I reworked the cabin, created the mast and painted three artillery pieces for it. At least the guns might find consideration here.

Well... That's it for now. Of course my share of the Curtgeld project which Michael A., Sander and I executed mutually is pending but this will be brought to your attention by our most appreciated fellow Michael. Yours truly is working on a couple (ten...) T-72 tanks in 15mm but they'll not be finished until our challenge time runs out.

My gallant crew... Good morning! - Royal Navy Captains finished

The painting challenge is on it's last days now and finally I managed to finished to miniatures to complete the first bunch of Napoleonic seamen:

When painting those gentlemen I always swayed between the Horatio Hornblower TV series and a recording of H.M.S. Pinafore by Gilbert and Sullivan. Although the play is set in a slightly later period these sturdy officers reminded me of sorely afflicted Captain Corcoran. Simultaneously especially the left chap has the strict but fair look of Robert Lindsay's wonderful recreation of Captain Pellew.

Hart of Oak are our Ships, jolly Tars are our men... - More 28mm sailors

As one of my ridiculously small projects this winter I tackled some British seamen for the Napoleonic era. Six of them were my lousy output for January and some others had to follow until late February when Tactica wargaming show was scheduled. As you see it's late February now and I'm lucky to present more tars now:

Unit from both batches

Altogether there were eight more navymen that I finished during the last weeks. Actually once again lousily few figures but somehow my life hasn't hobby convenient lately. Anyway the following chaps are once again from Brigade Games's excellent range. The sculpts were from Paul Hicks and as usual they are full of character and detail. Although it seems his virtuosity with face increased since he made those figures they are absolutely brilliant and top notch among all other 28mm figures tackling this topic.

In detail those are the men I painted:

Rather a mixed bag of weapons as you would expect from a quickly assembled boarding or landing party. Once again I tried to break uniformity slightly with varying the colours of the trousers. I painted to of the dark blue and used different shades of beige for the other ones.

Anyway there were two very characterful figures I wanted to bring out:

The seasoned one armed veteran and the chap who is wearing a headscarf caught my eye since I started to clean the castings. Thus they acquired striped trousers. No piece of art but I hope you like the touch.

Altogether there are 14 finished sailors now 12 of which hit the board on Tactica wargaming show last weekend. But more on that in a couple of days...

A British tar is a soaring soul... - 28mm seamen

During the last weeks it was rather quiet on my painting desk. Different things kept me away from paint and brushes and somehow I was lacking kind of 'painting mojo'. Last week I was lucky enough to have some free time and started painting a nice set of figures which I ordered last December from US manufacturer Brigade Games. Lon has a very nice of Napoleonic figures for different theatres of war starting with the very early Egypt Campaign but covering the Peninsular War and the War of 1812 as well. However there are some very nice sets of British seamen which were sculpted by master sculptor Paul Hicks. I wanted to have them for our upcoming participation game at Tactica Wargaming Show and of course for the 'Navy' bonus round of the painting challenge. Some more tars on my workbench make sure that I'll not miss the bonus round but after two weeks of absence I though a sign of life in the form of a sestet of those jolly good chaps might be appropriate:

The figures are from different packs of the range but I decided to paint more or less the command figures first. The centrepiece of this bunch are a dashing lieutenant and a seasoned boatswain.

Followed by two young and eager midshipmen:

This first batch is completed by two able seamen accompanying their leaders:

Altogether a nice range of highly detailed sculpts. The poses are very dynamic and realistic. On those chaps I tested the colour combinations and stayed to blue and white more or less. For the other 'common' seamen I'll alter this colour sheme slightly to depict the inconsistency of 19th century navy dress. Since the seamen were responsible for most of their clothing they had a really mixed bag of shirts and trousers. Merely for the jackets I'll stay with a uniform blue tone to create some cohesion in the unit.

However I hope you like the paintjob.

Naval November

On Wednesday evening I had very intense hobby session. Mrs Monty and the girls had gone to bad and our livingroom was deadly silent. Thus I took the nearly finished 1/1200 HMS Royal Sovereign and a skein of rayon threat and started to rig my first ship:

The ship is from Langton Models' excellent 1/1200 range. It comes with a hull of two or three parts and seperate masts and sails. I decided to take white metal sails which are thicker but easier to assemble than etched brass sails.

After assembling the small ship I painted the hull and the masts seperately and glued them together afterwards. As usual I used Vallejo Model Colours and some Armypainter washes.

Finally I covered the whole ship with matt varnish and made the rigging of rayon embroidery threat. Probably the rigging is not correct in the details but for a landlubber as I am it's satisfying I presume. Unfortunately I hit the main mast with my forearm yesterday so the rigging sags at some points. Clumsy me!

Typing these words I realize that I forgot to assemble the ratlines. I'll have to catch up on that this weekend.