I've realized that all my fussing over what 1/1200 scale ship I want to build is because I essentially want two different things.
I want a model to sit up there with my books, and I want a story. I can write a story about some Canadian-born ship Captain in the Napoleonic era any day, and I was honestly overthinking it, as it applied to the model.
So. I'm going to build a model ship. Possibly not a Canadian one, just one with clear, complete plans and instructions, and if I enjoy that, maybe I'll work on a slightly harder one. (Re: Prompte.)
This sort of overthinking is certainly a flaw of mine, but I see it in others, and even (especially?) in communities, as well.
Twenty years ago when I first got into Warhammer, a picture of a Skink or a gallery of Space Marine chapters with nothing but names was enough to inspire me and make me dream up endless stories. Now if I don't know the entire life story of every single member of that chapter, I feel like I can't tell an effective story. And, okay, with historical fiction you do need a bit more depth to your research. But in the end I just want a little toy ship that looks neat. No need to trying to wrangle how a Canadian-born captain in the Royal Navy went from a captured Dutch fourth-rate to a Bermuda sloop named after the former to a "Canadian-built" frigate.
I can just build the damn thing, slap a name on her hull, and let myself dream.
Wednesday 27 April 2016
Tuesday 26 April 2016
Tromp Card
Gonna build a sister-ship to the Tromp.
Dutch-built, in Rotterdam (my family's from... well near there), British-captured, 56 guns, fourth-rate. Perfect for my fantasy ship. I'll name mine after some other Dutch Admiral, and then cut that down like the British did, and then say she cruised off America during 1812. And of course saw other action in the Napoleonic Wars.
Plans exist for her, but I'm not sure they're complete. Either way, I can figure it out.
Plans exist for her, but I'm not sure they're complete. Either way, I can figure it out.
Prompte-ly Stalled
My ideas about building Prompte are stalling out, purely because I can't fit my idea into the setting.
The fact is, even is Prompte's frame just sat there in Montreal moldering it got broken up for firewood (which it could have - I still don't know) if it had been finished, the Royal Navy would have taken it and ex-Provincial Marine men wouldn't have set foot on her.
There's a little room for "woops another frigate was built on the lakes and has slipped through history", because frankly everyone involved did a lot of lying, but if there had been another frigate, then the fact is it never did anything.
So without doing an alternate history scenario, which I'm neither prepared to do or knowledgeable enough to make good enough, there's no real way to squeeze this fantasy Canadian ship of mine in.
(An alternate history WOULD be fun, though. Yeo was to be replaced by Edward Owen, an altogether better officer from what I can gather. And while Owen was certainly not rash, I doubt he would have been so useless as Yeo was, and would have made a proper war of Lake Ontario - or at least helped Drummond.
That's another thing - Yeo rarely ever helped the rest of the war. I don't see Drummond as being, shall we say, responsive, to sending some of his militiamen to serve as Marines on this fantasy ship.
But then, Owen definitely wouldn't have given a ship to a Provincial Marine man. Yeo might have, if only out of spite. Though I still highly doubt that.)
So the fact is, while I still love Prince Regent and Princess Charlotte, and while Pysche's plans are ripe for building Prompte, I'm just not sure that that is a direction I want to go, anymore.
It might be better to just make up a ship for the Atlantic theatre. There were privateers there, lots in fact, but I would probably rather have it a Royal Navy ship, with a Canadian-born captain.
If I do that, then I have a few more pieces of information I need, and a few decisions to make. Would I rather a captured ship, or one built in Canada? (That is, fictionally built in Canada.) If it's built in Canada, it obviously can't have been built in Upper Canada, since you couldn't get out of the Lakes in those days. So, where did the British build ships in North Amercia? Halifax seems a likely candidate, though I haven't yet found any evidence of shipbuilding going on there during the War of 1812. But then, since the ship I intend to build wouldn't have really existed, that's fine, isn't it?
Well, the North American station headquarters had left Halifax for Bermuda long before the War, so that may be a better birthplace for the ship... even though it's not Canadian. :'(
Bermuda seems to have had several naming schemes. Fish, then women, then flowers... and never built anything with more than 18 guns. Then again, Bermuda sloops were impressive little ships, for their purpose. No shame in commanding one.
But you know what, I might just make this fictional ship a captured Dutch ship built in Rotterdam.
Okay, now that my loggerhea is at an end, I guess I'll go look for plans of Dutch ships?
The fact is, even is Prompte's frame just sat there in Montreal moldering it got broken up for firewood (which it could have - I still don't know) if it had been finished, the Royal Navy would have taken it and ex-Provincial Marine men wouldn't have set foot on her.
There's a little room for "woops another frigate was built on the lakes and has slipped through history", because frankly everyone involved did a lot of lying, but if there had been another frigate, then the fact is it never did anything.
So without doing an alternate history scenario, which I'm neither prepared to do or knowledgeable enough to make good enough, there's no real way to squeeze this fantasy Canadian ship of mine in.
(An alternate history WOULD be fun, though. Yeo was to be replaced by Edward Owen, an altogether better officer from what I can gather. And while Owen was certainly not rash, I doubt he would have been so useless as Yeo was, and would have made a proper war of Lake Ontario - or at least helped Drummond.
That's another thing - Yeo rarely ever helped the rest of the war. I don't see Drummond as being, shall we say, responsive, to sending some of his militiamen to serve as Marines on this fantasy ship.
But then, Owen definitely wouldn't have given a ship to a Provincial Marine man. Yeo might have, if only out of spite. Though I still highly doubt that.)
So the fact is, while I still love Prince Regent and Princess Charlotte, and while Pysche's plans are ripe for building Prompte, I'm just not sure that that is a direction I want to go, anymore.
It might be better to just make up a ship for the Atlantic theatre. There were privateers there, lots in fact, but I would probably rather have it a Royal Navy ship, with a Canadian-born captain.
If I do that, then I have a few more pieces of information I need, and a few decisions to make. Would I rather a captured ship, or one built in Canada? (That is, fictionally built in Canada.) If it's built in Canada, it obviously can't have been built in Upper Canada, since you couldn't get out of the Lakes in those days. So, where did the British build ships in North Amercia? Halifax seems a likely candidate, though I haven't yet found any evidence of shipbuilding going on there during the War of 1812. But then, since the ship I intend to build wouldn't have really existed, that's fine, isn't it?
Well, the North American station headquarters had left Halifax for Bermuda long before the War, so that may be a better birthplace for the ship... even though it's not Canadian. :'(
Bermuda seems to have had several naming schemes. Fish, then women, then flowers... and never built anything with more than 18 guns. Then again, Bermuda sloops were impressive little ships, for their purpose. No shame in commanding one.
But you know what, I might just make this fictional ship a captured Dutch ship built in Rotterdam.
Okay, now that my loggerhea is at an end, I guess I'll go look for plans of Dutch ships?
Saturday 16 April 2016
A 1200th of an Idea
Not much to report, lately. Life's been busy, new job, not much hobby time.
A while ago, I read Jim Butcher's The Aeronaut's Windlass, and, while overall a very good book, the naval (so to speak) battles stuck in my head. After that I got into some "flintlock fantasy" - what if Napoleon had wizards, essentially - and then in my need for more naval battles, the Aubrey-Maturin series by Patrick O'Brian. And boy, ships are neat!
But, being the proud Canadian I am, I wanted to go looking for Canadian ships.
Turns out they pretty much stopped making ships like that by the time we were a country.
Still, some were BUILT here, at least. Unfortunately, no models exist of them - that is, no gaming-scale models. There's a few in museums.
I recalled having seen Age of Sail gaming, and so I went looking for custom ships. I came across Vol's Miniature's excellent work, and got inspired. Unfortunately, the ships I had in mind did not have complete deckplans available.
Enter the Psyche.
There ARE complete plans for this ship, which means I can build it. (Or try to, anyway.) Psyche missed the War of 1812, and only sailed in the Great Lakes. But what's of interest to me is her sister, Prompte, which never sailed at all.
During the War of 1812, the Admiralty eventually decided Canada couldn't/wasn't building ships very well, and indeed they weren't. There just wasn't the proper, dry lumber available. (Funny to think of Canada not having enough lumber, right?)
To remedy this, the Royal Navy built ship "kits" out of fir in Britain, where of course there was an abundance of ship-building industry. Unfortunately, the news didn't reach the colony, and Kingston set to work on several more ships of their own. Two ingenious frigates and then a first-rate ship of the line.
Despite these ships being incredibly clever, they were poorly built from inferior materials, and the general feeling was they would only have a short life. The frigates, Prince Regent and Princess Charlotte, only engaged in one action, and the first-rate, St Lawrence, never fired her guns in anger.
But, the kits from Britain, two frigates and two smaller ships, had reached Montreal by then. That was as far as they could go, and no plans had been made to take them overland. Eventually, though, one of the frigate kits reached Kingston, about the time St Lawrence was finished, and she was assembled.
HMS Psyche was laid on Halloween, launched on Christmas, and missed the war entirely.
As to her sister, the ironically named Prompte, I can find no information after the kit reached Montreal.
To that end, I intend to make a model, using Psyche's plans since the two ships were of a like, of the Prompte. The little bit of story behind it will be that a Canadian in the Royal Navy, following the War of 1812, purchased the kit, saw it finished, crewed it with men from the defunct Provincial Marine (a colonial navy that existed on the Great Lakes from about the 1790s to the War of 1812, whenupon it was replaced by the Royal navy), and sailed as a privateer for Britain.
Not altogether realistic, but not entirely impossible, either.
A while ago, I read Jim Butcher's The Aeronaut's Windlass, and, while overall a very good book, the naval (so to speak) battles stuck in my head. After that I got into some "flintlock fantasy" - what if Napoleon had wizards, essentially - and then in my need for more naval battles, the Aubrey-Maturin series by Patrick O'Brian. And boy, ships are neat!
But, being the proud Canadian I am, I wanted to go looking for Canadian ships.
Turns out they pretty much stopped making ships like that by the time we were a country.
Still, some were BUILT here, at least. Unfortunately, no models exist of them - that is, no gaming-scale models. There's a few in museums.
I recalled having seen Age of Sail gaming, and so I went looking for custom ships. I came across Vol's Miniature's excellent work, and got inspired. Unfortunately, the ships I had in mind did not have complete deckplans available.
Enter the Psyche.
There ARE complete plans for this ship, which means I can build it. (Or try to, anyway.) Psyche missed the War of 1812, and only sailed in the Great Lakes. But what's of interest to me is her sister, Prompte, which never sailed at all.
During the War of 1812, the Admiralty eventually decided Canada couldn't/wasn't building ships very well, and indeed they weren't. There just wasn't the proper, dry lumber available. (Funny to think of Canada not having enough lumber, right?)
To remedy this, the Royal Navy built ship "kits" out of fir in Britain, where of course there was an abundance of ship-building industry. Unfortunately, the news didn't reach the colony, and Kingston set to work on several more ships of their own. Two ingenious frigates and then a first-rate ship of the line.
Despite these ships being incredibly clever, they were poorly built from inferior materials, and the general feeling was they would only have a short life. The frigates, Prince Regent and Princess Charlotte, only engaged in one action, and the first-rate, St Lawrence, never fired her guns in anger.
But, the kits from Britain, two frigates and two smaller ships, had reached Montreal by then. That was as far as they could go, and no plans had been made to take them overland. Eventually, though, one of the frigate kits reached Kingston, about the time St Lawrence was finished, and she was assembled.
HMS Psyche was laid on Halloween, launched on Christmas, and missed the war entirely.
As to her sister, the ironically named Prompte, I can find no information after the kit reached Montreal.
To that end, I intend to make a model, using Psyche's plans since the two ships were of a like, of the Prompte. The little bit of story behind it will be that a Canadian in the Royal Navy, following the War of 1812, purchased the kit, saw it finished, crewed it with men from the defunct Provincial Marine (a colonial navy that existed on the Great Lakes from about the 1790s to the War of 1812, whenupon it was replaced by the Royal navy), and sailed as a privateer for Britain.
Not altogether realistic, but not entirely impossible, either.
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