On this day 160 years ago the first shots of the US Civil War were fired at Fort Sumter near Charleston South Carolina by members of the South Carolina Militia.
(see Battle of Fort Sumter @ Wikipedia)
When a clean up leads to inspiration, and some un-based, yet already painted hoplites, archers and slingers, would make great crew for 15mm galleys.
Chapter 4 of Paul Hague’s, Sea Battles in Miniature, is devoted to Ancient Galley Warfare, and his simple scaled models (seen on both the cover and inside photo pages) are perfect for the right scale and the small number of vessels needed for City-State conflicts.
Instead of scratch building them with card and balsa as Paul obviously did, I decided on using 3D printing to turn out somewhat uniform ships in an efficient manner. This is my second attempt at a galley using SketchUp*, I deleted the first after I made a few workflow errors that played havoc with the geometry after I skewed the model to create the front and rear rakes. I have not yet printed it, since it seems a little large when I put it on my slicer bed. I basically had to align it at 45o, and with a length of 224mm I think it’s a little large? So I need to sort out a size that LAR and also detail the deck and provide a hole for the mast. I also want to add some options, in terms of prow and stern posts and I want to add steering oars that are removable.
Heading down the rabbit warren that is an internet search, I found a blog (small soldiers – stout hearts) talking about Old Glory 15mm Galley Wars. Unfortunately the Old Glory website does not mention dimensions or include a ruler in any of the photos for a size approximation, though using the fat finger fudge method of measurement on the photos on the Small Soldiers Blog showed they were 8.5-9 fingers in length. Given that each finger also approximately equals the height of the 15mm figure, gives the vessel a very guesstimate length of 135mm, far smaller than my 224mm.
I also found a very old “Angelfire” webpage where William Johnson, show his method of scratch building 15mm galleys that look very similar to the ones of the cover the book. On the page William says that his models are approximately 7″ in length, or just under 180mm. So clearly I am going to have to do some resizing either in the slicing software, or more preferred in SketchUp before I site mast holes.
Paul himself states his ships are approximately 6″ in length on page 33. So I think I will aim for approximately that length, which gives a working deck space of about 150mm making the overall length a little longer. Also in the book, the rules allow for detachable oars to simulate damage and battle loses to the rowers, which might be why Paul did not include the deck over the heads of the rowers as was typical in Bireme and Trireme construction. I think I will stick with his plan for the moment, and model the oar banks so I can use magnetic tape to hold them in place.
I also note from my first (well first in probably 20 years**) peruse of the rules that his distances are huge. Movement rates of 24″ or even 12″ will overwhelm the average home table far too quickly, so I will have to make some modification to those to make the rules work for my space. Given that my planned table is probably only 4-5′ across, slowing the forward action down will allow for some steerage and manoeuvring, but careful to avoid the endless trudge across the table, that sometimes results in such rule modifications.
* I really should take the time to learn Fusion 360, but I am really too lazy and I understand the workflow using SketchUp and can get a working digital model fairly quickly, even if the printing does take some time with a .2 head.
** This book was one that my local library had amongst it’s collection, and I recall during my wargaming larval stages (ages 14-18) borrowing it on a number of occasions just to be inspired, much the same with Bruce Quarries fabulous book, Napoleon’s Campaigns in Miniature, historical inaccuracies and over complex rules not withstanding.
Of course I am talking about the book by Brigadier Peter Young, a wonderfully dated anthology of wargaming different battles from X to X with each chapter written by a different personality of miniature wargaming history. I don’t recall when or even where I picked up my copy to add to the wargaming library. The tag tells me it only cost $15 at the time of purchase, and while that does not seem a lot it has sat on my shelves for 20+ years so I am sure it was considered a not small amount when I bought it.
I am not going to review the book, many others have done so far more eloquently than I, and in fact it sits on my shelf rarely looked at and probably even more rarely thought about until my perusal of back issues of Miniature Wargames (issue 409, May 2017) threw up the article “Roots” by Andy Copestake, and a mention was made of the Brigadier and his book.
This in turn got me a little lost in nostalgic recollections of past purchases. I recall buying this book when I was basically buying anything I could find related to wargaming, back when the Internet was still very much in it’s infancy and books were a major source of guidance and knowledge. One of the reasons I had purchased this particular copy was that it was signed by the author and included an inscription. I always wondered who Peter Stuart Sherrington* was to get a personal inscription signed by the author himself, was this simply the pithy inscription of a book signing, or was their’s a genuine connection and a real friendship?
Sadly of course the internet proved little help in satisfying my curiosity or rather the answer eluded my search efforts, as all the Peter Sherrington’s I seem to have found are probably far too young to be a friend of Peter Young in 1972.
* Interestingly while the inscription clearly shows the middle name as Stuart, an owners label in the front of the book says it once belonged to “Peter D. Sherrington”…adding to the mystery. Oh, and I am pretty certain that I purchased the book in Australia, so another twist in the story.
The Gun Bar 