I’m sure that other 20mm Napoleonic
enthusiasts will have noticed some figures on eBay, listed by a French seller who
goes by the ID surfeur-fou. These are plastic 1/72
figures, and they are sometimes offered painted.
They look very attractive, and there is a good range of subjects. Having read
the seller’s notes about his products, and having failed to find any
identifiable matches on Plastic Soldier Review, I sent him a message via eBay
to express my admiration for the figures, and to ask him if he is
responsible for sculpting the masters. His reply (excuse my bumbling
translation), was:
Tout à fait, sauf que le véritable terme est
modelage et non sculpture. Les moules et les tirages sont également de
moi, tout est fait par moi à 100%. (Absolutely, though the correct term is
modelling rather than sculpture. I also do the moulds and production –
everything is 100% done by me.)
Quite apart from the mainstream
manufacturers, there are some wonderful talents producing 1/72 masterpieces at
present – Franznap, Massimo (whose work is displayed on History in 1/72 from
time to time) and quite a few others. The Surfer, whoever he is, might well be
another – has anyone bought any of his figures, or does anyone know more about
him and his work?
French limber team
Vivandiere
Lithuanian Tartars
These illustrations are all shamelessly pinched from eBay, without permission, and - as ever - I wish to make it clear that I have no connection with the seller. Just interested.
Once painted, these will be British 10 inch iron howitzers
Yesterday I finally got around to one of
those open-ended refurb projects that seem to hang about for years. There’s
always higher-priority stuff to be getting on with – you know the sort of
thing.
This follows from a sort of minor-league
New Year resolution I made, to get back to some Napoleonic siege games. There
are a number of things I need to do for this – one is to arrange for some more
satisfactory representation of trenches than my current unpainted wooden
blocks. The Really Good Excuse for not doing anything about this at present is
that I want to be sure the game is working properly before I commit to a mass
of specialized terrain equipment. OK – can’t do anything with that one – put a
sort of half-tick in the box.
Next thing I wanted was a hex-free table
for sieges (and other things) – well I’ve done that one – the reverse side of
my main warboards is now plain green, and sufficiently free of geometric cells
of any type to satisfy even the most contemptuous of my correspondents. Tick in
box – good.
The third, and most fiddly, thing is to
make some sense of the pile of artillery equipment I’ve picked up from eBay and
charitable donations, and either make it into proper batteries or get rid of
it. Yesterday’s target was a small stock of Hinchliffe 20mm scale British 10”
howitzers which I have managed to collect. Some were in poor shape as the
result of many years of lying around in someone’s spares boxes, some needed
attention because they were acquired from a well-known British eBay seller of whom
I haven’t seen any trace for a while, who used to be famous for offering some
real gun and wagon rarities, but always with the axles untrimmed (which gives
something of the appearance of a pre-war Morgan 3-wheeler), always buried
hub-deep in a bed of Evil Tetrion, and always finished in some astonishing
industrial varnish which could withstand nuclear attack.
I spent an amusing evening levering things
out of Tetrion, snipping and sawing axles to the right length, scraping grunge
off wheels, and replacing a few wheels from the spares box if they couldn’t be
rescued. A bit of superglue and we are making progress. Now they just need to
be painted correctly (iron barrels, please), but there’s no immediate rush for
that since I have to paint gun crews for them. Good so far, though – that’s
pretty much a tick as well.
The M1800 Bromefield 10” iron howitzer is a bit of a shadowy
fellow. If Frank Hinchliffe hadn’t included one in his celebrated 20mm
horse-&-musket period artillery equipment (you know – the range that
famously vanished – not only did they disappear, but some would have us
believe they had never existed) then we might all be happily unaware of the
things. Some years ago, with a bit of poking around, I learned that these guns
were used at the British siege of Flushing, and then went into store and never
saw the light of day until the Crimean War.
A shame for the 20mm Peninsular War
enthusiast who would like some for his siege train; it’s an interesting model,
with the gun mounted on what is obviously a garrison-type carriage with large
wheels mounted at the muzzle end for road travel. Apart from the 18pdr gun
available from Finescale Factory (now, heaven be praised, available from SHQ as
part of the Kennington range) and also as part of the current Hinchliffe 25mm
catalogue (explain the presence of an exact 1/72 model in this range, in your
own words…), there is not a lot available for people like me who are weird enough
towish to try tabletop sieges, so a
model of a 10” howitzer – albeit rarer than hen’s teeth – would be a real help.
Well, as a result of further poking about,
I have some good news on this front. They were
used in the Peninsular. So there. Only a bit, but they were there.
My sources are Major-General John T Jones’ Journal of Sieges (Vol.1) and the
appropriate volume of the Dickson
Manuscript – both of these gentlemen were present when the Allied siege train
at the (unsuccessful) first British siege of Badajoz in May 1811 included, I
believe, 4 of these howitzers.
They were not very successful. Their lack
of success was rather overshadowed by the failure of the vintage heavy brass
guns provided from Lisbon, which drooped badly when they were required to
provide continuous bombardment, but they failed nonetheless. Jones notes that
two of the howitzers were included in the batteries attacking the fort of San
Christobal, and two were in Battery no.5 (I think) attacking Badajoz Castle. He
explains that they were removed from the transport carriages when mounted in
battery, and were to be used at a maximum elevation of 30 degrees. He also
observes that the Portuguese officer in charge of the battery confronting the
castle failed to observe the maximum elevation instruction, as a result of
which the guns broke their carriages. They are recorded as “damaged by own
fire”.
Portuguese officer or not, they did not
make any further appearance during the Peninsular War as far as I can tell, so
presumably were stored away for 40 years until the Crimean War.
As you will see, I seem to have more of
these howitzers than did the Allied army in 1811, but that’s near enough for
me. If I am going to enact sieges which did not actually happen, it does not
constitute much more of an offence against authenticity if the besiegers have
equipment which they could have used if only they had chosen to do so.
You’ll see more of these once I have
painted them and recruited gunners.
Pictures from Dawson, Dawson & Summerfield's excellent "Napoleonic Artillery" (Crowood, 2007) of a 19th Century model of the 10-inch howitzer. The photos are used without permission - please buy the book!
The final couple of 1/76 buses for my
non-collection.
This Liverpool Corporation Leyland “Titan”
type PD2 is another common sight from my childhood. For some reason, LCPT is
one of the few bus operators for which I can’t find sensible fleet information on
the internet – I guess this model is of a mid-1950s vehicle.
The Birkenhead Corporation Guy “Arab” is
another personal nostalgia bomb. This is a relative oldie - the original vehicle which this depicts was
supplied to the Birkenhead fleet in 1946, and the old-style municipal paint job was
officially updated in 1951, but in reality a great many of the older buses were
left like this – a bit like military dress regulations, I suppose. Since it
remained in service until 1957, this would still have been trundling along the
New Chester Road and around Rock Ferry when I was a boy. Guy Motors were based in
Wolverhampton, and the wartime utility-style coachwork for this particular
vehicle was by Park Royal, of London. Once again, a bus that looks like a
proper bus – would anyone dream of naming a bus an Arab now, I wonder?
Unless I come across a Wallasey bus from the
right period in this scale, that’s all for now, folks.
I am quietly pleased to observe that the
number of hits on this blog has crept over 200,000 – I wasn’t going to mention
it, but felt it was only polite to thank anyone who has read any of my
ramblings during the last few years for their time and patience! So – thank you.
Even by my standards, this may turn out to
be an unusually pointless post. Starting from nowhere in particular, it is
likely to end somewhere similar, having passed through yet more of the same. If
you wish to read it I’ll be pleased to have your company, and would welcome any
thoughts you may have, but don’t say you haven’t been warned…
Yesterday I was idly reading over a forum thread to which I do not subscribe, and in which I have no special interest, but it got me thinking. Fleur d’Ennui, as Django’s tune is called.
The topic was What is Beauty? – with specific reference to landscapes. For some reason it
reminded me of an occasion, years ago, when I used to visit the Cotswolds on
business. I liked the Cotswolds, and it was not an area I was familiar with.
Though I was, in my own right, exactly the same pipsqueak that I have always
been, I represented a very heavyweight client of the people I was dealing with
at the time, and thus I was lucky enough to be taken out to some very pleasant eating places.
Some village or other - seems nice...
One sunny evening I was taken to a place
near the village of Bradford (which sticks in my mind because it was very
different from the large city with which it shares a name). We parked the car a
little distance from the hostelry we were visiting, and walked along the road to it.
On the way, I stopped and took a photograph (lost years ago), because I thought
the view was so lovely. A country road, curving in a gentle S-bend, over an
ancient bridge and then up a little hill into a wood, with a stone-built
coaching inn on the outside of the bend.
After I’d taken the photo, I started
wondering why this particular view appealed to me. Did it remind me of
somewhere? Was it like the illustrations in some picture book which I loved as
a child? Was there something instinctively attractive about it? Did it conform
to some learned standard of design? Did it seem like a pleasant place to live
(or dine, in this case)? What?
First thing about beauty, I guess, is that
you have to let it wash over you – just enjoy it. If you over-analyse it the
wheels fall off. Still, I was intrigued.
Trin Valley - seems nice...
I am also reminded of Billy Connolly’s fine
tale of taking his then-small children on holiday in the Scottish Highlands,
and trying to get them to be enthusiastic about the scenery. It strikes a chord
with all parents – past and present – but it also gets us back to this idea of
a received concept of beauty.
“This is a mountain”, said Billy, “isn’t it
lovely?”
His kids were unconvinced. A mountain is a
big lump of rock and stuff, folded up and maybe a bit battered, eroded by the
wind and the rain and covered in vegetation. That is the way the above-water
bits of the planet behave – a mountain is just a lump – there are lots of them.
Why should it be lovely? Why should this one be any lovelier than, say, that
one? Billy’s kids thought the whole experience was less lovely, and much less
interesting, than Sesame Street on
their camper van’s portable TV.
Were they wrong? It’s a funny one – some
things please me – some images can almost reduce me to tears, but I don’t
understand why. All right – show me a photo of my own children, especially when
they were little, and my pupils will dilate (or whatever) and I get a lump in
my throat, but that’s largely hormones and things. Why the reaction to pictures
of places? I seem to have a fondness for views with water in them, and there
are probably certain other repeating characteristics, but where does it come
from, especially as a reaction to places which I do not know and which mean
nothing to me? Are we born with these feelings? Is it learned? – for that
matter, and more sinisterly, is it taught?
Verwallsee, Tyrol - seems nice...
If we widen out the topic, we get into all
sorts of consideration of why we all like what we like (scientific overtones),
and the whole issue of “taste” (which introduces less palatable issues like
background and upbringing, and the dreaded whiff of snobbery).
In truth, I suspect that if I understood
more about this I might not be a happier person – I fear that I might not enjoy
what I had learned, especially about myself. It does interest me though, if
only in those safe moments when I know that there is no risk of my finding out any more
about it.
Best strategy is probably just to enjoy
what you enjoy, and don’t worry about it too much. So I’ll just try to do that.
Five new regiments of foot arrived back from Lee's House of Painting Miracles - once again, I am humbled by the quality. Thank you, Lee.
Three units of Lowland Covenanters, to help the Parliamentarian cause. These are the regiments of the Earl of Loudon (Glasgow), Colonel James Rae (Edinburgh) and Viscount Maitland (Midlothian), looking suitably belligerent. Shades of Sauchiehall Street on a Saturday night. They will, of course, change their identity as appropriate to fit the scenario.
For the Royalists, there are two new units from the North of England, fighting with the Marquis of Newcastle's whitecoats; here are the regiments of Sir Wm Lambton and Colonel John Lamplugh. Like the Covenanters, these figures are mostly Tumbling Dice, with a few Kennington/SHQ chaps drafted in for a bit of variety. I really like these TD figures, but I have to say I'm getting very fed up with cleaning up and gluing heads, though the results appear worth the effort.
Lastly, here's a fine Puritan preacher, calling down appropriate vengeance (as one does). This is from the old Warrior range - not the present one - and is quite a rarity. I haven't quite decided how to use him yet, but here he is, practising, just in case.
08:19, 21st January, East Lothian, Scotland. Apollo awakes.
I understand that yesterday - 20th January - is generally accepted as the Most Depressing Day of the year in the United Kingdom. I'm not sure who said so, but intuitively that makes some sense - winter fuel bills, a bit of overspend at Christmas, lack of sunshine (and whatever vitamin that means), cold, blustery weather, and nothing much to look forward to but a couple more months of the same.
Well - ever the rebel - I found yesterday splendid. After a few days of pretty severe storms and horizontal rain, suddenly it was dead calm, and it was sunny. I got a lot of tidying up done in the garden - sorted out the woodshed, restacked all the logs. I got rid of the Christmas tree, which had been blowing around the front lawn like an idiot. Refilled all the bird feeders, which were going like a circus all day - I even filled the big seed feeders at the edge of the wood at the bottom of the garden, and one tiny coal tit spent the morning flying backwards and forward between them, unable to believe his good fortune. I know how he felt - the calm and quiet were the biggest surprise; the day before, Sunday, normal conversation in our garden had been very difficult, because of the noise of the waves beating on the east-facing beach at Scoughall - more than a mile away.
Leaves were swept, ivy cut back - I even ventured into the wood to deal with some enormous brambles, which were attempting to push the roof off my garage. If I'd had an elephant, I would have washed it - that is the sort of day it was. This morning I may go for a short walk to inspect my born-again woodshed, to enjoy the clean floor and the faint echo, which hasn't been present since - ooh - maybe this time last year.
Last night had a bright moon, and the owls were in evidence. This morning the sun came up again - that's twice in a row…
My photo (from the upstairs bathroom window) shows Apollo just revving up his chariot somewhere behind the Lammermuirs - the town of Dunbar is about 10 miles away, beyond the left edge of the picture - more like a million miles. OK, it's just the dawn, and I'm normally too preoccupied or too grumpy to pay attention, but I am grateful.
If today is like yesterday, that will be terrific. If this is 2014, then bring it on.
My thanks to Rod, who brightened my morning by drawing my attention to these fellows, who are featured on Uwe's splendid History in 1/72 blog - here. Peninsular War riflemen in 1/72, but such as I have never seen in metal in this scale. Even those of us who already have too many riflemen will be hoping that Hagen Miniatures can get these on the market soon. My compliments and best wishes to Massimo, the sculptor.
There's more pictures on the original blog - if you aren't a regular visitor, get along there and join up - there's links to Hagen's shop and all sorts of goodies.
