I have been a fan of Antoine Vanner's novels about Nicholas Dawlish - a later nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Royal Navy officer- since the first was published back in 2013. Since then he has published a new novel every year in the run up to Christmas.
Antoine has recently announced that the next book - the thirteenth in the series - will be published in December, but he has not yet disclosed the titled. However, he has made it known that the following (imaginary) British warships will be featured:
This looks like it is going to be yet another great read, and I highly recommend this series of books to anyone with an interest in the exploits of the Royal Navy during the second half of the nineteenth century and the early years of the twentieth century.
The twelve books in the series that have been published to date are (in chronological order):
- BRITANNIA’S INNOCENT: THE DAWLISH CHRONICLES: FEBRUARY 1864 – MAY 1864
- BRITANNIA’S INTERESTS: THE DAWLISH CHRONICLES: JULY 1866 – NOVEMBER 1866
- BRITANNIA’S GUILE: THE DAWLISH CHRONICLES: JANUARY 1877 – AUGUST 1877
- BRITANNIA'S WOLF: THE DAWLISH CHRONICLES: SEPTEMBER 1877 – FEBRUARY 1878
- BRITANNIA'S REACH: THE DAWLISH CHRONICLES: NOVEMBER 1879 – APRIL 1880
- BRITANNIA'S SHARK: THE DAWLISH CHRONICLES: APRIL 1881 – SEPTEMBER 1881
- BRITANNIA'S SPARTAN: THE DAWLISH CHRONICLES: JUNE 1859 AND APRIL 1882 – AUGUST 1882
- BRITANNIA'S AMAZON: THE DAWLISH CHRONICLES: APRIL 1882 – AUGUST 1882
- BRITANNIA'S MISSION: THE DAWLISH CHRONICLES: AUGUST 1883 – FEBRUARY 1884
- BRITANNIA'S GAMBLE: THE DAWLISH CHRONICLES: MARCH 1884 – FEBRUARY 1885
- BRITANNIA’S MORASS: THE DAWLISH CHRONICLES: SEPTEMBER 1884 – DECEMBER 1884
- BRITANNIA’S RULE: THE DAWLISH CHRONICLES: SEPTEMBER 1886 – APRIL 1888
Bob -
ReplyDeleteI must get hold of at least one of these books, and check it out.
Thanks for those diagrams, by the way. My protected cruiser RMS Endymion (Capt H. Trumpeter) purported to be an 'Edgar' class vessel. Clearly I got quite a few things wrong. Building models from extremely spare diagrams and photos via the internet - and my own lack of knowledge of naval architecture - doesn't make for accuracy! Well... what might pass for accuracy...
I simply HAVE to include a couple of 'turtleback destroyers'. As I plan to add a third three-vessel flotilla to the Ruberian fleet, a couple of them will do nicely. I am supposing the stern 6prQF is the one on the centre line, the other four flanking the big gun and a line between the leading funnels.
My 'S' and 'R' serials are based on alphabetic 'class'; my 'S' class serving as flotilla leaders. Can you tell me what 'class' is 'Fieldfare'? Absent information, I'll probably give them 'T' serials, but will still be led by a 'S' flotilla leader.
Cheers,
Ion
Archduke Piccolo (Ion),
DeleteI seem to remember that all the more recent books have included similar drawings and might well be worth looking at for design information.
It’s actually quite difficult to get hold of plan drawings of warships of the period (except for Parkes’ excellent ones of British Battleships!) and one tends to end up having to guesstimate quite a lot. Personally, I think that your model looks fine.
Perhaps you could have one each of the turtleback destroyer classes. They were grouped together by the number of funnels they had; A-class had 2, B-class had 3, and C-class had 4. Thus Fieldfare is a B-class ship. I will be writing blog posts about each of the ship classes featured above over the next few days.
All the best,
Bob
Bob -
DeleteToo late: I have built one already, and the other is in train. Three funnellers, so I'll give them 'C' numbers. I am reminded that my 'R' torpedo boat destroyers are based on the 'River' class, but I'm choosing not to name my TBDs, but give them serials instead - a letter and a number. I am aware that my 'S' class TBD flotilla leaders are actually anachronistic (1917 design), but then so is Lemnos ...
Once the TBDs are all done, that will be 'it' for the Ruberian navy - 9 battleships, 2 cruisers and 9 TBDs. (The Merchant Cruiser and light cruiser that will make a cameo appearance in Operation Archduke are actually generic vessels that might take up roles in any navy as commerce raiders, convoy escorts and the like)
Cheers,
Ion
That is not counting vessels in other scales that might be found in distant theatres (gotta have RMS 'Shoofly' plying the Pardis River in Medifluvia...)
Archduke Piccolo (Ion),
ReplyDeleteNever mind. I’m sure that your turtleback destroyers will do a great job of representing the type, regardless of the number of funnels they have!
You have built some very impressive ships for your fleets and I have the feeling that in the future the numbers will continue to grow. I certainly hope so, as I think that you’ve done a wonderful job of creating representative models which convey the essence of the ships they represent.
Back when Eric Knowles was fighting the naval battles that formed part of the Madasahatta campaign, we used all sorts of 1:1200-th scale models ranging from the very modern (in game terms) Fuso to early ironclads for the Turks. That’s why the Fuso was able to smash a combined German-Turkish force of pre-dreadnoughts and ironclads in a matter of less than a dozen salvoes!
All the best,
Bob