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 ...