From PeterD English Ships from 1666 (1/2400)

To provide opposition to my recent Dutch ships I offer up four english ships of the same period.

The Royal Charles is a first rate of 86 guns and she has quite the history.  She was built under the Commonwealth as the Naseby with a figurehead of Cromwell striding over 6 nations.  She was renamed and sent to carry Charles II from the Netherlands back to reclaim his throne in 1660, Oliver being ceremonially burned along the way.  

She was fleet flagship through the Second Dutch War and served in all of the big actions.  At Lowestoft she bore the Royal Standard with the Lord High Admiral and Duke of York (the future James II) in command.  Charles benched James after he survived a near miss at Lowestoft that took out several of his entourage and left his clothes spattered with toady blood and brains.   In 1666 she mostly served with a tag team of the Duke of Albemarle and Prince Rupert as co-Generals at Sea.  The duo worked quite well together despite strong personalities and serving on different sides during the Civil Wars, possibly because they both were political survivors and knew how their bread was buttered and possibly cease the two old warhorses actually liked and respected each other.  Albemarle was in sole command at the Four Days Battle when Rupert was despatched to watch the French, but it was back to a pairs event at the St James Day battle.  

When the Dutch sailed up the Medway they burnt several major ships but were able to tow the Royal Charles back to the Netherlands as a prize.  They found that she drew too much water to get into any Dutch harbour so used her as an offshore tourist attraction for several years before having her broken up.  However the carvings from her stern galleries can be found on display in the Rijksmuseum.

Stern shot to show the galleries.  I need to redo Martin's as the yellow and blue bled together.  

Martin was a sixth rate and is based on a galley-frigate model with both oars and sails that came in the squadron pack from Tumbling Dice.  I carved the oar banks off of the model as the actual galley frigates were built after the Second Dutch War and were stationed in Tangiers not the North Sea.  Martin carried 14 guns and was initially described as a galley when but in 1652 but pictures show her under sail.

I also have finished off another two smaller craft.  Fanfan was prince Rupert's yacht and named for a mistress.  Roebuck carried 14 guns and served in the Navy in 1666-83.  The name is a nod to my father who served on the frigate HMS Roebuck (an WW2 destroyer conversion) in the 1950s.

From PeterD Dutch Ships from 1666 (1/2400)

I've been working away on these ships for a few weeks and finally got them finished last night.  I have 8 ships from the Dutch Admiralties from the Second Anglo-Dutch Wars.  These are 1/2400 castings from Tumbling Dice.  They are nice models, but pushed my limited assembly and painting skills considerably.

First up is the 80 gun of 1665 Zeven Provincien, which served as DeRuyter's flagship during the 2nd and 3rd Anglo-Dutch Wars, and the Franco-Dutch War.  DeRuyer was killed on her quarterdeck at Syracuse in 1676, but the shipped served until 1694 until she was so badly damaged at Barfleur that she was broken up.  She was operated by the Admiralty of the Maas (Rotterdam) although DeRuyter was a Zealander who served with the Admiralty of Amsterdam (confused yet?).  I've given her a probably anachronistic green and white Rotterdam flag.  

Next in line is the 60 gun Geloof from the Admiralty of Amsterdam with the triple X flag, which seems appropriate after watching Baptiste on Monsterpeice Mystery!  At the Four Days Battle in 1666 her gunfire sank the British ship Black Spread Eagle formerly the Friesland Admiralty ship Groningen captured at the Battle of Lowestoft in 1665).

A couple of smaller ships, both would be 5th rates in the English Navy but no rating system existed in the Netherlands at the time.  The Middelburg was an Amsterdam ship of 38 guns and was considered a fast ship.  The Harderwijk was from the Maas and carried 36 guns.  The Amsterdam Admiralty also had a similar sized ship named Harderwijk at the same time.  Got forbid they could make this easy!

Finally we have four smaller ships, three small ketches or cromsters plus a single masted yacht.  I've given them generic Dutch names so the they can serve as fireships, advice vessels or small merchants as required.  I tried rigging flags on one of them but gave up in the end!

Ships of tis age had elaborate decorations at the stern, those from the Dutch Admiralties normally included paintings of biblical scenes, or coats of arms related to the regional names they carried.  Luckily in 1/2400 one doesn't need to replicate these.  I went for the tried and true method of small multicoloured blobs that might represent these!

I've had a lot of fun researching this period and working on the ships. Assembling rigging is beyond my little sausage fingers and paint work is messy in places, but overall I'm good with he results and at 1/2400 the details all blur anyway.  I've got some English ships to post in the next day or so, and then hopefully a solo game will be underway.

From PeterD a Couple of Bridges in 28mm

Configuration one - a three span and a two span bridge.

I've been doing a few projects during the quarantine lockdown, some new and and finishing up of half-completed work from before.  This time up I've got a couple of bridges in 28mm (Beau and Jeff?) from Sarissa Precission.  Sarissa sells these mdf kits in various combinations and I don't recall exactly what combination I ordered.  However the end result is that I have two sets of on and off ramps plus three centre spans, enough to give me two bridges of various lengths depending on the combination of spans that I select.  Bridges feature in a lot of historical battles and make for good missions is a Table Top Teaser action.

Going for maximum length here.

To make these bits fully morphable, I painted these all in the same basic pseudo-Sienna stone for that I used for my Italian Wars buildings posted during Challenge X. These were started early in Challenge X but just finished recently.  

Auvergne regiment crosses the span.  The ruler shows that it nearly a 12" feature.

Normally I find Sarissa kits easy to assemble, but I had trouble with the roadbed on a couple of the ramps and made a bit of a hash of them.  If the ends don't meet up as cleanly as they should, this is also down to me not the kit.

In simplest form a single span bridge.

I kept terraforming down to a minimum.  I put gravel at the edges of the road work and various tufts and clumps to represent vegetation, including trying to get the impression of flowering vines.  For the mid-stream spans I hemmed and hawed between painting the bases to represent water or greenery.  In the end I opted for greenery so that they could stand on midstream islands if required and also to represent weeds and such growing on the bridge piers.  

From PeterD SYW Auvergne Regiment in 28mm

Bad photo but i shows the full regiment ready for battle.

It's been a while since I've posted.  I've been very busy with the  end of semester for the last few weeks and I was sick as a dog all last weekend.  Today is the first Saturday in May and the wonderful day when I wake up and check what course prep I have for the week to come and then realize that there isn't any as I have no classes until after Labour Day!

I did use a couple of evenings each week to get some rehab painting in and finished up the 24 man French Auvergne Regiment from my Seven Years War  project.  As noted in prior posts I tend to do my foot regiments in units of 24, finished in three batches of eight.  Often I have two or three batches underway at once at different stages of progress.  This year I've been saving up my work until I have the full unit.  I then base them at the same time and post the full unit.

I only took pictures from the front but the white on the back of the bases are unit tables including the name a a jpg of the Ordonnance colour to help keep organization straight.  Crusader NCO is second from the right.

Figures are mostly Crusader with Front Rank figures being used for the officer and standard bearers.  I find the the Crusader packs have enough subtle variation in marching pose to give cohesion without being monopose.  I included 4 grenadiers and a few with coats without turn backs to add variety.  Of course the grenadiers are over represented, bu the caps look nice.  I like the Crusader drummers and the sergeant with partizan (long pokey stick) but I'm not a huge fan of the Crusader officers so sub in the Front Rank figures.  There is a size difference between ranges but it seems to work.

I normally manage to get better variety on the my bases but these guys all seem distracted by something off screen on our right.  I really like the grenadier drummer casting.

When you do a "French" Infantry regiment for King Louis' army, you're got a limited choice of facing colours mostly blue, red or none on grey uniforms to choose from (foreign regiments let you add blue or red coats).  At least it's not the snooze fest of Napoleonic French or Russian where every damn unit wears the same damn facings.  So the chance to do a regiment with Violet facings makes for more variety on table.  Plus Auvergne had some chops to stand on, notably a piquet company saved the day at Clostercamp by alerting the army to the Erbprinz' dawn attack.

The two middle figures are Front Rank and they fit in with the rankers just fine.  The chap on the right has left his coat unbuttoned.  The Ordonnance is black and violet quarters but they look alike in the lighting.

The flags were "borrowed" from the wonderful work of David over at Not By Appointment.  A quick download, resizing and real life cut and paste was all that was required

From PeterD Anglo-Dutch Wars Dutch Ships

I had these painted up a week ago and planned to post this soon after my English squadron but you know how it goes....

With COVID19 my university lectures got moved to Zoom lectures which took a lot more time planning than my normal stand in front os white board blather on and do examples lectures.  Maybe it's not such a bad thing long term, but my oldometer may be limiting my ability to learn new tricks.  Lectures are now over but I've got two take home final exams to prep a bunch of term projects to mark.  

I've got the following ships ready for posting.  And we will sail on to the sea of Arcania and the Five (yes FIVE) Admiralties that co-existed in  the Dutch Republic until 1795 (when they lost their fleet to French Hussards).  I expect that our Dutch friends will be watching for my inevitable mistakes as I navigate these shoals.

Leading the squadron is the Speigel from the Admiralty of Amsterdam.  She was built in 1663 carried 70 guns and was DeRuyter's flagship for the squadron that DeRuyter took to West Africa and North America just before the start of the Second Dutch War.  She was in thick of the fighting on the first two days of he Four Days' Battle and got sent home in a badly damaged state after the second day. I've given her a (probably) anachronistic triple-X Amsterdam flag at her mainmast.

Next in line is the Noorderkwartier from the Admiralty of the Noorderkwartier (North Quarter) aka the Admiralty of West Friesland based in Hoorn.  She carried 60 guns and was brand new when she served as part of the squadron that DeRuyter took to West Africa and America.   She fought in the Second and Third Wars.  I've given her a West Friesland flag (blue with lions) at her mainmast.

Last we hav two ketches (I think these would be hoeckers in Dutch) Zwolle and Goede Hoop from the Admiralty of the Maas (Rotterdam).  The Goede Hoop was made into a fireship.

The ships are once again Tumbling Die 1/2400 and very nice when assembled.

There was a fair bit of rivalry between the various Admiralties and Dutch fleets tended to have scads of "flag offices" as each Admiralty wanted to make sure that their men got roles.  And of course, the actual squadrons were made up of ships from several Admiralties not serrated into regional fleets.  Quite apart from his tactical brilliance, DeRuyter's other major plus was that he was so well respected that all the factions shut up and listened to him. 

You can see the variety of flags used in the stern view.  I have to touch up some around the edges with finalize black marker.

I've played a little fast and loose on the flags.  The 5 admiralties typically used combinations of the Princes' flag (sideways tricolour) and Triple Princes flag (same thing only  3 times as many stripes) as ensign and jack.  I'm substituting regional flags for each of the five admiralties, some which probably weren't used in the seventeenth century.

From PeterD Anglo Dutch Wars Squadron c1666

I am a bit late off the starting gun with my first post but here goes.  I've got some Tumbling Dice 1/2400 scale ships from their Anglo Dutch Wars range.  This project was meant to be one of my big focuses for the regular challenge but I had issues gluing sails to masts and then got distracted by other projects that weren't as fiddly to assemble.  I think I finally figured out how to assemble these little ships reasonably and hopefully will have more to come in the Quarantine Challenge.

Assembly issues aside (all of which lie between the seat pad and the cutting mat) these are lovely little ships with a nice amount of detail and paint up nicely with a gentle hand.  You can get away with more basic modelling skills vis a vis larger scales and don't need to rigging if you don't want to.  I've been inspired by Barry Hilton's work over at his blog (oh sod that I flat out blame Barry for getting me interested in this period).  Go get lost there to see ships with very nice paint work and rigging.

First up a set of English ships.  Two of these appeared in my later flurry on the last day of the regular challenge, but they've been touched up a bit and given names and flags.

• On the far right leading the line is the second rate Royal Oak, named for Charles II's place of refuge after the battle of Worcester.   She was completed in 1665, heavily engaged as a flagship during the three major battles of the Second Dutch War and then burnt by the Dutch at the Medway fiasco in 1667.
• Next in line is the third rate Monck one of the last tips built under the Commonwealth.  She was named for Cromwell's General at Sea George Monck who basically handed Charles II his throne and become Duke of Albemarle as a result.  Albemarle tag teamed command of the fleet through most of the Second Dutch war with Prince Rupert.  Monck the ship served through the Second and Third Dutch Wars, the Nine Years war and part of the War of Spanish Succession before being rebuilt in 1707.
• Next is the fourth rate Ruby built in 1651 under the Commonwealth to a design that was resumed many times in the English navy.  She served 50 years and fought in 16 major fleet actions.
• Behind Ruby is the fifth rate Colchestor built in 1654 and lost in 1667 fighting the French in Martinique.
• There are also two ketches Nonsuch and Lizard.  Nonsuch is a famous ship in Canada as in 1668 she was sold to Prince Rupert for the expedition that created the Hudson's Bay Company.  Lizard was used a fireship in the action known as Holmes' Bonfire.

Stern view.  I tried to show the detailed galleries but it's a bad photo and angle.

Sailing off to adventure and battle.

I played a little loose with flags on these ships trying to balance historical accuracy, game play and my limited  fine motor skills.  These larger ships were all in the Red Squadron so where red ensigns at the stern, if somewhat oversized.  (My dad could tell you the arcane rules of using of red/blue/white ensigns in modern times but in 1666 it was much easier!)  I've added a Union Jack (again oversize) at the main, apparently this was first used in Charles II reign.  Royal Oak gets an additional red ensign to denote her flag role at her foremast.  The labels include the ship's name, a Union Jack to show nationality and red ensign to show that they are part of the red squadron.