Miniature Wargames with Battlegames Issue 373

The latest issue of MINIATURE WARGAMES WITH BATTLEGAMES magazine was delivered whilst I was on my recent cruise, and I have only just had a chance to have a serious look through it.

The articles included in this issue are:

• Briefing (i.e. the editorial) by Henry Hyde
• Forward observer by Neil Shuck
• Steaming ahead: The continuing tales of a wargames widow by Diane Sutherland
• Fantasy Facts: From Doggerland to Planet of the Apes by John Treadaway
• Threat generation: Active opposition for tabletop wargaming by Martin England
• Send three and fourpence by Conrad Kinch
• Ogre: Everything from Texas is bigger by Ashley Pollard
• Fighting for Featherstone: Tabletop fun in memory of a great gamer by Henry Hyde
• Keep lunch warm: The battle of Klissow 1702 by Nick Dorrell and Per Broden
• Command Challenge: Yakhroma 1941 by Andrew Rolph
• Recce
• Cavalier & Hammerhead: A tale of two shows by John Treadaway
• Salute 2014 snapshot
• The Battlegames Combat Stress Appeal report by Henry Hyde

I particularly liked the articles about how to build model river steamers and the Donald Featherstone Trophy.

I have been to ... Sir John Moore's tomb

I doubt if there are few wargamers or military historians with an interest in the events of the Napoleonic Wars who have not heard of Sir John Moore and his death during the retreat to Coruña. He was buried not far from the battlefield, and his body now lies in a tomb in the San Carlos Gardens situated near the Galician Captain-General's Headquarters.

The garden is maintained by the local municipality and every time I have been there it has been an oasis of quiet in an otherwise busy world.

The tomb is situated in the centre of the park, and every time that I have visited it (this was my third visit) there are always poppy wreaths adorning it.

Behind the tomb and overlooking the port, is an arch and viewpoint.

The arch has a plaque on either side of it has a quotation from Charles Wolfe's poem about the death of Sir John Moore. (See the full text of the poem below.) The left-hand plaque is in English, and the right-hand plaque is in Spanish.

Above the arch is a plaque that commemorates the creation of the park in its present form in 1927.

Besides the tomb, there are several other monuments and plaques, including one that has a quote from Wellington praising the troops from Galicia who served with his army ...

... and one that commemorates the sailors of HMS Serpent who died when their ship sank in 1890.

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The Burial of Sir John Moore after Corunna
By Charles Wolfe

Not a drum was heard, not a funeral note,
As his corse to the rampart we hurried;
Not a soldier discharged his farewell shot
O'er the grave where our hero we buried.

We buried him darkly at dead of night,
The sods with our bayonets turning,
By the struggling moonbeam's misty light
And the lanthorn dimly burning.

No useless coffin enclosed his breast,
Not in sheet or in shroud we wound him;
But he lay like a warrior taking his rest
With his martial cloak around him.

Few and short were the prayers we said,
And we spoke not a word of sorrow;
But we steadfastly gazed on the face that was dead,
And we bitterly thought of the morrow.

We thought, as we hollow'd his narrow bed
And smooth'd down his lonely pillow,
That the foe and the stranger would tread o'er his head,
And we far away on the billow!

Lightly they'll talk of the spirit that 's gone,
And o'er his cold ashes upbraid him –
But little he'll reck, if they let him sleep on
In the grave where a Briton has laid him.

But half of our heavy task was done
When the clock struck the hour for retiring;
And we heard the distant and random gun
That the foe was sullenly firing.

Slowly and sadly we laid him down,
From the field of his fame fresh and gory;
We carved not a line, and we raised not a stone,
But we left him alone with his glory.

The immediate future

My recent visit from the black dog, followed by the cruise my wife and I took to the Western Mediterranean, has given me the opportunity to think about my wargaming and my blogging. Since I got back from the cruise I have been blogging a lot less than I had previously (I was up to three blog entries a day at one point!) and have felt much better for it ... and so I am trying to discipline myself to writing no more than one blog entry per day. During the cruise I also read through quite a few of my previous blog entries, and noticed that I had set myself targets that I had not met ... and that I had then stressed myself trying to achieve them.

That will not be happening again.

So what will be happening in the immediate future?

Firstly I have two more blog entries to write about my recent cruise. One will be about Sir John Moore's tomb and its surrounding garden, which my wife and I visited whilst we were in La Coruña. The other will be about the small military museum that is situated in La Coruña.

Secondly I hope to be taking part next Sunday in a wargame that deals with the 1920 Battle for Warsaw. This is being organised by one of the members of the Jockey's Field Irregulars and will feature 15mm-scale figures, a large squared terrain board, and Richard Brooks's OP14 rules.

Over the next week or so I will be very busy on the Masonic front, and this is going to take up quite a bit of my time. In a week's time one of the Lodges to which I belong will be doing a Third Degree, and the rehearsal for that is taking place this evening at Freemason's Hall in central London. Tomorrow evening – and on the following Tuesday evening – I am taking part in a rehearsal for the Installation of the new Master into the Chair of my Mother Lodge ... and the actual ceremony will be taking place on the following Wednesday. Although I don't have a lot to say and do at either ceremony, I do need to practice ... and the only way that I can do that effectively is to go to the rehearsals.

Over the past few weeks I have also done some thinking about the various projects that I have yet to finish or make some progress with. Since getting back I have tried to paint some of my L-shaped built-up areas … and fell foul of the recent changes Games Workshop have made to their range of paints. As their paints are the only ones that I can find on sale in my area, I have – over recent years – used them for most of my modelling … but I doubt that I will be doing so again in the future. They are now so thin that it takes several coats to cover something adequately, and even then the paint seems to give an uneven finish. They are probably ideal for painting figures where you are going to want to shade and highlight everything, but not for the ‘gorilla with a six-inch paintbrush’-style of painting that I am capable of.

I have decided that I do want to make some progress with my Eastern Front/Great Patriotic War project … and the inspiration for this has come – in part – from the recent blog entries on Conrad Kinch’s blog. He has been fighting a Battle of Kursk campaign using Richard Borg’s MEMOIR ’44 rules, and it looked like the sort of wargame that I want to fight with my 20mm-scale collection. I have therefore taken the plunge and ordered a copy of the MEMOIR ’44: OPERATION OVERLORD set, which contains enough additional cards and dice for me to run games for several players. Being the sort of cussed person that I am, I will probably end up using my own rules rather than the MEMOIR ’44 ones (MOBAT [MEMOIR OF MODERN BATTLE] and/or Ross Macfarlane’s 20TH CENTURY SQUARE BRIGADIER immediately spring to mind), but the option of ‘borrowing’ ideas from Richard Borg’s rules is something that I would be a fool to miss out on.

As to building up my collection of 25mm/28mm-scale Napoleonic figures … well that is going to be a long-term dip-in-and-out project. I realised that this was a project that I did not want to rush, and by doing it as and when I feel the need to do something different I will be able to take my time with it.

I have been to … the Barcelona Maritime Museum

During our recent visit to Barcelona we made a special point of visiting the Museu Maritim de Barcelona (Barcelona Maritime Museum). It is located on the roundabout at the seaward end of Las Ramblas.

Museum Courtyard Entrance
The entrance courtyard to the Museum contained some unusual objects of maritime interest including a replica of the submarine Ictineo 1 (the original submarine was designed in 1859 by Narcis Monturiel), …

… an old dockside crane, …

… and the bridge of the trawler Saylemar, …

… which was originally operated from Cartagena.

Inside the Museum Entrance
The entrance foyer of the Museum contained a number of ship models of SS City of Paris, …

…the SS Pommeranian, …

… as well as a sectional model of the SS Ciudad de Sevilla.

There was also a model of the Barcelona seashore as it would have looked during the fifteenth century.

The Museum is housed in the buildings that were formerly used to construct galleys, and there are also several models in the entrance foyer that show its layout.

The Viking Exhibition
The exhibition began with a large tongue-in-cheek diorama of a ‘typical’ Viking village … made from Playmobil!

In fact the exhibition itself was extremely good, with excellent signage, a wonderful and wide-ranging collection of exhibits, and a magnificent layout.

My favourite exhibits were a carved stone that depicted the journey to Valhalla, …

… the iron rivets used to hold the bow of an excavated Viking ship together, displayed in the relative positions they were found in, …

… and a Viking helmet.

Renaissance Galley and Spanish boat collection
One section of the old galley building shed was taken up with a very impressive full-size replica of a Renaissance galley.

The rest of the building shed housed a collection of typical Spanish boats.

Antarctic Research
The museum contained a small exhibit devoted to Spanish exploration and research in the Antarctic.

A Voyage Overseas
Viatge mar enllà (A Voyage Overseas) was an exhibition that contained a number of vignettes that investigated what it meant to travel by ship through the ages.

It began with a number of models that showed the development of merchant ship. The first two were models of the fifteenth century merchant ships Coca de Mataró …

… and Niña.

These were followed by models of the Museum’s own schooner, Santa Eulàlia …

… and the SS Ana de Sala.

The exhibition included a model that showed how a sailing ship was careened (i.e. had barnacles and other marine growth removed from its bottom).

One painting depicted the use of a steamship to transport Catalan volunteers to Cuba to fight.

Some of the details in the painting were of particular interest.

A model of the flagship used by Don Juan of Austrian at the Battle of Lepanto was very impressive.

The modern age of steam was illustrated by a large model of the SS Infanta Isobel de Borbón …

… and an early locomotive-style ship’s boiler.

The use of ships in war was not ignored, and the exhibition included a model of the Spanish frigate Hijas da Pineda, …

… a painting of the Battle of Lepanto, …

… and a model HMS Victory.

After a break for a drink in the Museum’s café, we made our way down to the Old Port, where we were able to see the museum’s preserved schooner, Santa Eulàlia.

If you are going to Barcelona in the future, and have sufficient time, this Museum is worth visiting.