Chubby Marine Ship-building

Whilst the narrative of the Norromandy Landings - Operation Archduke - is only gradually advancing, I have been somewhat distracted by the desire to round off my Chromatic Wars navies, especially those of Ruberia (RED) and Azuria (BLUE). They have finally been completed, apart from a little bit of cosmetic work. I thought I would include some 'work in progress' pictures - not by way of a tutorial, you understand, but more to illustrate how the ships are put together.

Azurian Armoured Cruiser Dupuy de Lome
escorting a tanker. The book seems to be a suitable 
'studio'...

In the Dockyard - HMS Centurion

Preliminary sketches for the three pre-dreadnought
ships to be added to the fleet.

In the above picture you will see a plan of SMS Radetzky, and Austrian pre-dreadnought of c.WW1 vintage. The thing was deliberately distorted to 112mm length and 46mm overall beam dimensions - scales roughly 1:1200 length and 1:600 beam. However the  superstructures, gun turrets and guns had to be 'restretched' in the construction for 'the look of the thing'.

SMS Radetzky as built. It is now the flagship
of the Izumrud-Zeleniya Navy (GREEN).

Work beginning on HMS Centurion. The hulls for Majestic and Canopus marked out on 6mm thick balsa sheet. Note that, unlike the Radetzky, I have not traced out the hulls as continuous curves, being straight amidships for up to half the ship's length. The decision was entirely arbitrary, just to keep things simple. The bow is pointier than the stern, the curve to the bow and stern beginning 30mm and 20mm respectively. I actually leave a slight transom in the stern that gets rounded off in final sanding or filing.

Superstructure and guns added. The main superstructure is from 5mm balsa sheet. These pieces of balsa were, by the way, gifted to me by a certain 'Evil Uncle Brian' before he left for a dream job in the Other Island. Had it not been so, these navies would probably never have been built.



The main turrets are carved out from 6mm sheet, the turreted secondaries from cardboard drinking straw capped with thin card cutout, and the sponsons from semi-round balsa beading. The main guns are plastic tube from hoarded used cotton buds (I have had chronically itchy ears for over half a bally century! You didn't need to know that, did you?).  The lesser guns are bits of toothpick.

The final gun layout. I usually dry-run the placement of the guns to check on their placement/ arrangement before finally gluing then into place. Lifeboats and fighting tops await their turn.

More superstructure, lifeboats added, beginning of the bridge tower(?). Toothpick masts sorted with fighting tops and slender top masts added. They will wait until the fore and aft command towers have been emplaced (I don't know the correct nomenclature for these elements).




Gradually building up the superstructure, their appearance based upon my impressions of the real thing from pictures. I've placed the funnels upon a small plinth to be placed athwartships behind the main command tower.







The final touches. The forward mast is really too tall, and the fighting top ought to be below the height of the funnels, but I have decided to leave it the way it is.

Finishing off the fleets...

Azurian battleships Suffren (left) and Republique, construction complete, and with their dockyard undercoat finish. Close by, two recently built 'C'-class '30-knotter' destroyer torpedo boats from the Ruberian Navy. Below, the reverse angle.

Below, the finished units.

ANS Suffren 

ANS Republique. The rearward mast seems to have been knocked.

Probably the Republique is more cognate to Liberté, having 10x7.6-inch broadside guns, rather than 18x6-inch. Under the Portable Gridded Wargames I use, Republique is a very formidable unit indeed - a match for HMSS Agamemnon or Commonwealth in my Ruberian navy. Had I used the historical ships' displacements as a measure of flotation strength, this would not be the case. But these navies, though owing a great deal to history, aren't really historical.

Ruberian Torpedo Boat Destroyers

Ruberian Navy: 17th Destroyer Flotilla.
2 'C' class 30 knotters and a Destroyer leader
based in 1893-built HMS Havock.

The craft that make up this 3-boat flotilla have been much more carefully designed from the historical precedents. For that I have to thank the fine diagram posted in Bob Cordery's blog about a week or so ago. The torpedo tubes I've had to shorten to ridiculous 'lengths`, but otherwise they look more or less OK. 

H17 (Havock)

Now, the 'C' class vessels are a little anachronistic for my 'period', being of 1913 vintage. But I haven't worried overmuch about 'chronisticism' in these navies. But I wanted a 'Destroyer Leader', and HMS Havock was an early example. But I discovered that my scale convention would have made Havock - or H17 as it was to become - would have made the leader smaller than the vessels it was supposed to lead. So I adjusted the scale: 1:960 length; 1:480 beam. Instead of 48mm length, I made it 60mm.



Incidentally, these small vessels don't look as 'cartoonish' as the big units. But that is due to the pencil slenderosity of the originals. Reducing the length:beam ratio from 10:1 to 5:1 leaves a reasonably realistic looking craft.

C22 and C26

Ruberian Navy

Finally, the last three Ruberian capital ships built a week or so ago:
starboard to larboard as you see them:
HMSS Majestic, Canopus and Centurion

I an unable to explain why, but somehow these vessels look a deal more ... I don't know - dramatic? than my previous efforts so far. Mayhap it has something to do with inconsistency in my designs.