HMS TRINCOMALEE

HMS Trincomalee is the oldest wooden warship still afloat in Europe, her keel being laid in Bombay in 1816. She is a teak built vessel, hence her longevity. Although teak doesn't splinter in the same way as oak or pine, sailors hated teak built ships because any wound caused by it had a tendency to fester. Last September, Jenny, my wonderful wife, took me up to Hartlepool for the weekend, partly to celebrate my birthday and partly to cheer me up after losing my Mum. She had been to see the Trincomalee years ago when she had been senior care worker at a housing project for adults with learning disabilities and knew that I would absolutely love it, especially as my family had been involved in ship-building for many generations, going back to wooden ships such as Trincomalee. We had a wonderful weekend, staying in Seaton Carew at a marvellous B and B. This post will initially be just photos, but I will add descriptions at some later date. There are quite a few of details such as the way guns were frapped un against the gunwales, the breaching ropes,and rigging of the steering.

There is another ship just along the quay from the Trincomalee and I would have loved to pay her a visit too. She is the Winfield Castle, one of the old Hull Ferry paddle steamers and she holds a special place in my heart. In my early years, we used to travel across the Humber aboard her on the way to my Grandparents on Tyneside and then later, in my teens when she no longer ran as a ferry, I used to go to "Riverboat Romps" or "Steamboat Shuffles on her, during which she would sail from New Holland Jetty up to Spurn Point and back. There would be a disco on deck and an amazing Dixieland jazz band down in the saloon. There used to be some really dodgy dancing by turn-around time -even in CALM weather!!

Sadly, no-one is allowed on her. She is rusting away because the Council can't afford to restore this beautiful and majestic vessel. I remember, as a child, standing and watching this magnificent, huge steam engine turning over and over so quietly and sharing mugs of scalding hot builders tea with condensed milk in you could practically stand a spoon in, sat around an enormous pot bellied stove in the Hull waiting room on a bitter December night with a screaming North Easter blowing in from Scandinavia. It's no longer there of course. It's a pub now -the "Minerva" and, like the old ferry, it has a window so you can see into the engine room, though in this case the "engine room is a brewery. 

PAINTING

Simple but effective painting

       Once your figures are undercoated, you are ready to begin putting down colour. We all find our own routines for this, but I prefer to start off with the main jacket colour using a thin wash of either liquid (transparent) acrylic or ordinary acrylic thinned down to a washing consistencey and with a touch of varnish added to help stabilize the colour. Don't be too precious about neatness here. Acrylics are very forgiving and overpaint very well.

      After the jacket, I usually block in the trouser colour, musket, pack, blanket roll, boots/gaiters and shako/helmet main colour.

       Allow the figures to dry well between each stage or force dry them in yoor hairdryer box. NB. alkydes and oils force dried tend to take on a high gloss finish that is quite difficuly to paint on top of. Alkyds in particular, treated this way, give a wonderful finish to large scale horses or those of generals.

       The next stage after the shako, is to paint in the face and hands before going over belts, facings etc. with white. At this point add the musket straps and those on the pack. Next add the facing colours any epaulettes and musket barrels, bayonets or swords.

       You can probably see here that rather than working from the inside outwards, I tend to paint from the largest areas of colour to the smallest.

        By this stage, the figure is just about there. You can now add any shako plates, buckles and musket bands but NOT chin straps.

        Make sure the figures are properly dry then either use a sepia coloured wash or a very thinned down brown paint stabilised with varnish and gently go over the face and hands, allowing the paint to slide off the high points and collect in hollows, You can treat other areas such as jackets in the same way, either giving the whole figure a wash of the sepia or using a deeper shade of the coat colour (or wherever).

          Allow to dry again, dry brush the face and hands very lightly with the base flesh colour, add hair colour/moustache if any, then add chinscales. Finally paint in the figures base.

Marshall Michel Ney "Bravest of the Brave."

       You can see on the picture of Michel Ney where the coloured washes have been allowed to pool and been over-painted. After these washes are dry, I emphasised the changes in colour by ink lining round details such as cuffs, lacings and facings. These are what the various drawing pens are for. It's far easier to do this with a pen than a brush as the line is constant in thickness and depth of colour. Detail as far down as individual buttons can be brought out or even drawn in using this method. The pen should be used angled into the detail and should be of a size that doesn't make the shadow too wide.

PREPARATION

Preparation for painting.

     I wouldn't say I'm the world's greatest painter, but I can achieve a really good finish on 15-18mm figures - the size of all my Napoleonic  miniatures in a pretty quick time without having to resort to any fancy techniques or novel paint types. What I think I AM good at is mixing colours and working in a way that turns out good results without needing to be an expert. We all develop our own style and methods and this is mine for good gaming quality small scale figures.

Remember, it's important to have a good surface for painting on.
The first thing to do is get rid of any runners and flash. I use side cutters for the runners, a craft knife to pare down flash and either a file or Dremel to flatten off bases. If the figures have flags moulded on, I carefully remove these, drill a small hole in the standard bearers hand and replace the flag staff with wire. dress makers' pins are quite good for the job and don't bend. I have also "acquired" some of the head pins my wife uses in jewellery making, but don't tell her!

Once you've done this, give the figures a wash in soapy water, rinse well and dry. I've found the best way to do this is to put them in a shoe  box with a hole in it to take a hair dryer nozzle. This is also useful if you paint with enamels, or alkyd paints (synthetic oils.)or are just keen to press on. It doesn't work on proper oil paints.

          When painting cavalry, decide whether you want to paint them as one piece, in which case the riders will be glued onto their horses before undercoating.

 Painting in one or two pieces both have their advantages and drawbacks. One piece gives better adhesion, stopping the rider falling off, whilst painting separately makes it slightly easier to paint the horse and saddlery.

          I don't like to see all the horses in a cavalry regiment all exactly the same colour, so if the figures are in different poses, I like to paint the riders separately to give as much variation as possible.

          If, like me you are a bit of a devil for not using proprietary paint colours and you are going to be painting a large number of figures, mix up a batch of paint to the consistency you want in a large enough quantity for them all. I keep empty paint pots and clean them out ready for this. There's nothing worse than getting part way through a regiment and finding you can't quite match up a colour again!

Undercoating

         When the figures are dry, you are ready to start undercoating your figures. Over the years, I've tried all sorts of ways of undercoating -even spray painting, but I've found this to be too uneven, sometimes too thick and too expensive, Far better to use a couple of thin coats of watered down primer applied with a soft brush, allowing each coat to dry before putting on another. Tony Barton of AN fame recommends using matt white enamel and I find that works well, with the slight unevenness  from the brush strokes helping to act as a key. 

White undercoated French Guard Grenadiers

Many painting "experts" will tell you to mount each figure on a cork, wood block etc. which is all very well if you are painting large figures, character pieces or have more time than you know what to do with, but for the 15-20mm battalions, by far the best way is to mount the figures on strips of card wide enough to keep your fingers off the paint and flexible enough to bend.. It's amazing how much time you save just by not having to keep picking figures up and putting them back down. Paint all one side of a strip then flip it over and paint the other.

French Line Infantry ready for undercoating



Different painters have different ideas on undercoats. Most GW style painters will tell you to use a black undercoat, but this can give a muddy look to small scale figures. I find white gives the best results for dark uniformed figures and a light  to medium grey or pale blue best for white coated units. By all means use black, but before you do anything else, drybrush with the grey undercoat colour, then give a final coat, even more lightly dry brushed, of white as for the grey undercoated figures below

Grey undercoated Austrian Grenadiers

The Austrian Grenadiers with their final coat of white undercoat

       As you will see, the undercoating has given the Austrians a basic shaded effect, leaving them ready for colours adding..

The advantage of using white undercoat over the GW black is that you can use far thinner paint or several thin coats to guild up shade rather than thick coats to cover black.

Don't worry too much about neatness at this stage. You can always tidy up later on

The grenadiers with their basic colours added.



The finished units:-Grenadier Bttns of IRs 18 and 20

 

You can see the ink lining clearly on these figures

More thoughts on Campaign Games (#3)

More Thoughts on Campaign Games.

Casualty replacements.

In part 2, under "Forces" I gave quite a simple view on casualty replacement

"Many campaign rules intend for the initial forces to be just a start, with continual growth as new recruits are raised and reinforcements sent to the front. These campaign rules are unusual in that I've taken the opposite view -that the forces involved are assumed to represent the maximum force a nation can commit to a specific theatre. Unless all sides agree, this maximum cannot be exceeded.

This assumption leads to a situation where, instead of increasing, each players armies and resources are growing ever smaller and more precious and is intended to get players really thinking about their forces and trying to keep them intact rather than squandering them on what they think are heroic actions. Lines of communication and supply suddenly become very important as they maximise the chances of receiving reinforcements and minimizing desertion/losses."

On reading this through I feel as though it requires further explanation and, like other aspects of my rules, has developed.

Initially, no unit or formation could receive more than 90% replacement of casualties/stragglers etc, which meant that forces were ever smaller, with further reductions to the replacement rate based on situation -whether the force was in supply (linked to its magazines by a secure route) or out of supply, whether adverse weather (heat, cold, heavy rain etc) is affecting movement, whether the terrain is favourable to movement and the condition of the troops/horses themselves, in that tired/exhausted troops will be less likely to return to the colours than fresh ones. Furthermore, some armies -most notably the Spanish, had a most remarkable ability to recover troops swiftly after almost complete destruction/ dispersal.

This isn't to say that the troops who were defeated return to the colours without any loss of ability, just that their numbers are restored at a higher rate. This is because of  the Spanish people constantly feeding men into the military. Such units suffered a loss in quality as trained or experienced troops were replaced at least partially by raw, inexperienced or untrained recruits, so that any re-formed unit would be classed as at least 1 training/experience class lower than it had been before its dispersal. To simulate this, the Spanish forces should receive their complement of replacements in a shorter time than their opponents and at a higher rate. Similarly, armies such as the British in the Peninsula/Americas, French in Egypt/Indies should receive replacements at lower/slower rates due to distance from the field of conflict, whilst replacements to French/auxilliary forces in Spain would take perhaps twice as long to reach their destination.

So, does the army as a whole restore casualties at the same rate across the board, or does each unit that has taken casualties regain them at  a different rate?  Perhaps the best way would be to dice for each unit, with the highest training/experience groups (elites) dicing first for their part of the total replacement pot -upto the % replacement limit. After these would come the veterans, trained and raw units. this could lead to situations where the better class units take up all the replacement figures whilst those who would have been last to dice receive none. This reflects the greater likelihood of elite/veteran troops returning to the colours and that of the less well drilled and experienced to desert. In these cases, it should be assumed that the best troops from inferior units are reassigned to better ones, so that it is the worst units that shrink the fastest. I'm not going to suggest replacement percentages -we will all have our own ideas of what each circumstance would do to replacement levels.

The ONLY way to restore a unit to its full complement of troops in my mind is the amalgamation of battalions/squadrons/regiments that have fallen below viable numbers for purposes of the game, ie. too low in base morale. Amalgamated units -bataillons de march, provisional regiments, battalions of detachments &c are of necessity of lower class than the highest training class involved, ie. if a veteran and a trained unit amalgamate, the result would be a trained unit, if a 3rd, raw unit was added, the resulting unit would be "Raw." This allows for the amalgamated unit to need time to "gel" as a unit and for the better trained members to gain trust in their new, less well seasoned comrades. Again, I'm not going to suggest training levels for each variety of amalgamation (Yet?). It should be fairly obvious from the makeup of each battalion of detachments what their new training level should be. 

Amalgamated units regain training classes in the same way as any other unit, but do so at an enhanced rate. Usually, a unit will gain one class for every three battles in which they fight, but amalgamations progress after only two -Until they reach the training level of the highest rated element, after which progress is as normal. This system ensures that a given army doesn't simply improve until ALL non-elite units are "veteran" but that they always retain elements of untrustworthy "raw" troops.

I'd be interested in other peoples input on this.