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Friday 10 August 2012

Victorian and Edwardian Miscellany: Royal Navy: Paper Ships

During the Victorian and Edwardian period many children had to make use of paper model soldiers rather than metal ones. Printing paper soldiers (either coloured or black-and-white) was widespread, and they were also bought by adults who often cut them out and glued them into scrapbooks.

Some years ago my wife found – in an old craft shop – a single sheet of paper on which was printed images of different Royal Navy Victorian and Edwardian warships. She bought it for me ... and since then it has languished in one of my numerous cuttings files. I found it whilst looking for the original photographs I have used in recent blog entries about the Royal Navy, and I thought that it might be of interest to some of my regular blog readers.


I suspect that this particular sheet was designed to be used by adult scrapbookers, but the top three could certainly have been glued onto cardboard, suitably mounted so that they stood upright, and used by an aspiring young naval officer to 'sail' around on his playroom floor.

12 comments:

  1. I can't think of anyone who'd do such a thing....

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  2. These days you could scan the picture onto a picture file, mirror image the pic onto a second file, print and cut out and paste the images back to back, possibly with card between for added durability. You could do huge fleets that way. To get opposing fleets, they can be differenced by changed to the colours of the flags.

    It might be feasible to do something with some of the vessels in the main picture as well.

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  3. Far too nice to leave languishing in a file, you could get it framed and hang it in your wargames room.

    Best wishes, Brian

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  4. Or, you could customize and stick them to your rubber duckie and sail them round the bath...

    Regards

    ReplyDelete
  5. Junior General has lots more of this type of image specifically designed for for gaming.

    http://www.juniorgeneral.org/

    Lovely image. As Brian says, frame it for the games room.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Tim Gow,

    Not you ... but your identical twin brother might!

    All the best,

    Bob

    ReplyDelete
  7. Archduke Piccolo,

    Making the ship 'cut-outs' double sided would certainly not be a problem. Neither would it be very difficult to change the flags etc to create 'opponents'.

    This idea has possibilities ...

    All the best,

    Bob

    ReplyDelete
  8. Brian Carrick,

    If only I had enough wall space, I would do exactly as you suggest.

    All the best,

    Bob

    ReplyDelete
  9. Arthur,

    What a wonderful idea!

    All the best,

    Bob

    ReplyDelete
  10. Pat G,

    The Junior General website has a lot of very useful stuff on it ... and I regularly visit it to see what new stuff has been uploaded.

    All the best,

    Bob

    ReplyDelete

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