Campaign readiness - armoured cruiser

 The spring weather has arrived at FLW HQ, and the fleets are ready. The armoured cruiser has been rebuilt over the winter in a very rough homage to the New York, and is now ready to go  ...

The ship's company have now joined, and are set for the first encounter ...

The armoured cruiser can also be deployed with higher funnels - making it more like the Brooklyn.

North American Station - the refitted Barbette battleship

 Spring has arrived at FLW HQ, and the restored battleship is completed.  This ship is designed as an Edwardian Colonial coastal battleship - and again produced in comic scale, for use with 25mm figures.  The fleets are now nearly ready; just one more turret ship to be completed - and a balloon barge. It will then be time to go on campaign again.

Types of barbette ship

The ship is finished in the black hull, white superstructure and canary funnel.

The fleet at Halifax, Nova Scotia

North American Station - battleship - on the slipway

 The British/Canadian fleet needs a battleship for the eventual campaign, so a little rebuilding has been required.  The former Swedish (imaginary) turret ship the Gustav 4th has been refitted ...

here she is in action, sinking, in her last outing of the Herring War against JW's Norwegians.

Abandon ship!

Prior to her Swedish service, she was under the Danish flag as a Torpedo Ram - the weapon of the future.  Pictured here at the top of the photo, in 2013.

Again, she would be sunk, by the Norwegians under the command of TG!

Pictured here, at dusk as the Danes made a desperate attempt to break the blockade.

The latest version of this long serving ship will be as a Colonial coastal battleship.  There are high hopes of success this time, as the American accuracy - in their last outing at Santiago Bay - was rated at 1 - 3% of shots on target!

North American Station - British Squadron - scout cruiser

 The newly built Canadian Naval Service scout cruiser is launched and ready for action.  She is pictured here on her first outing.  The aim is to create an Edwardian toy ship effect, and the fittings' and fixtures are 28mm - the hull is considerably smaller.

The British squadron will be on the defensive, and the flagship will be a Colonial style barbette ship - based on HMVS Cerberus. The turrets have been swapped for the heavy Armstrong cannon.

Two torpedo boats and a couple of smaller axillaries make up the squadron.  

North American Station - shipyards and scales

 Well, winter quarters has arrived with the light failing before 18h in the metro 'FLW HQ'.  The coming campaign is a typically Wellsian imaginary scenario, set around the coastal waters of Nova Scotia.  It will be played with Edwardian style toy ships, and proper toys soldiers. 

Naval wargaming has always held a great fascination for me, and there are many different scales available.  For FLW, it is sadly impossible to go for 1/32 with ships, so a compromise has been to use a rough 28mm scale - for the figures. Even in this scale the ships would be impossibly long, so our dear friend TG came up with 'comic scale' - which gives all the attributes of the vessel type but in a stylised way.  This style really suits pre dreadnoughts and monitors &c.

As it is winter quarters, here is one of the Edwardian style ships at the yard.  It will be (roughly) the light cruiser HMCS Rainbow, of the new Canadian naval service ...

The model will require two funnels, and a pointed bow - and two main deck guns.

To begin, a suitable shape is required;

The hull will be formed from a wooden container, with an art board base to give that light cruiser ram bow.

Plastic card is now added to make the hull shape.

Deck and bridge structures are added.  The paint scheme will be a wartime dark grey - and this adds to the period feel of some ships in the Victorian/Edwardian white and buff and others in grey.  The Torpedo boats are always black.

The North American Campaign 190? - the Great White Fleet v Britannia

 

Readers of Funny Little Wars and Garden Campaigns will be well aware that there has always been a 'naval' component to the garden game.  This fascination with pre-dreadnoughts began for me in the 1970's - with 1/1200 scale models and the discovery of the Fred T Jane naval wargame, which is the contemporary game to HG's Little Wars.

This aspect of FLW really took off in 2003 when I played 'Baltic Battles' with the naval wargames writer, Ken Fisher.  Most appropriately these early games were played in Dover Castle.  The imaginary 'Herring War' series of battles took this concept into the garden, with 28mm ships, tarpaulin seas, 1/32 forts and a fusion of rules that included FT Jane's, Ken Fisher's and the lovely Boilers and Breechloaders system from Patrick Wilson - the first publisher of FLW.

The games then moved to the Spanish American War and the Russo Japanese War. 

This 'winter quarters' will be dedicated to a FLW naval campaign based in North America in 190?   It will be feature a fascinating connection between FT Jane and Canada, the Great White Fleet of Teddy Roosevelt and it may lead to the publication of 'Funny Little Fleets' - if everything goes to plan ...

The Armstrong Cannon in North America

 A Victorian siege game has to feature the remarkable Armstrong cannon.  The Victorian giant, Sir William Armstrong of Elswick, developed this new type of cannon in the 1850's. It would be prove to be an iconic cannon of the era, and I have enjoyed finding them in all sorts of places ...

like here, on the Citadel of Quebec City, last year.

And here in the garden, during the recent siege game.

And this was an interesting find.  The United States Navy sailor and artist, David McNeely Stauffer, serving on the Mississippi in 1864 imagined the Armstrong gun to be like this.   His imagination of the British uniforms is rather charming ... 

the new 600 Pdr English Armstrong Gun, 'Big Will'

Was the artist worried that the Confederates would get one?

"A Monster Gun: Trial of Sir William Armstrong's six-hundred pounder," 

New York Times, December 5, 1863, p. 1. 

Sir William Armstrong tested for the first time his new 600 pounder cannon on the English coast at Shoeburyness.  The twenty-two ton weapon was designed to fire a 13.2 inch shell over a distance of  six miles. During the test, the range was set at around 4000 yards and the giant cannon, served by twenty men, performed well, firing both shot and shell.