My two Schwarzenberg ironclad battleships

My design for the two ironclad battleships I wanted to model for my Schwarzenberg Navy is based on two related designs that were built by AG Vulcan of Stettin for the Imperial German and Imperial Chinese Navies.

The Sachsen-class ironclads consisted of four ships (Sachsen, Bayern, Württemberg, and Baden) and they were designed to form part of the coastal defences of Germany. They were expected to operate from fortified naval bases from which they would sally forth to break any naval blockade of the German coast or to counter any enemy landings.

The were well armed, and when build they had a main armament of six 10.2-inch/26cm guns in a paired barbette mounting forward and the remainder in a central casemate. They entered service in the late 1870s/early 1880s and were rebuilt in the 1890s when their armour was enhanced and their machinery replaced with more modern engines and improved boilers.

When the Imperial Chinese Navy decided to add some ironclads to its fleet, one of the designs it was offered was an improved version of the Sachsen-class. It was originally intended that there would be twelve ships in the Dingyuan-class, but only two (Dingyuan and Zhenyuan) were built.

They were well armed, and had a main armament of four 12-inch/30cm guns mounted in a pair of hooded barbettes that were situated en echelon forward. These hoods looked like turrets, but were in fact cylindrical shields with roofs.

During the Sino-Japanese War, both ships took part in the Battle of the Yalu River on 17th September 1894, where they suffered considerable damage. In early 1895 they were in action again against the Imperial Japanese fleet. On this occasion Dingyuan was hit by a torpedo, run aground to stop her sinking, and later blown up, and Zhenyuan surrendered. She was subsequently recommissioned into the Imperial Japanese Navy as Chin Yen and rearmed. As Chin Yen, she took part in the Russo-Japanese War as a second-class battleship and coastal defence ship. She was later used as a target and scrapped in 1912.

My design was based on the Dingyuan-class, but with a single hooded barbette forward, thus:

When foreshortened or 'cartooned', the design looked like this:

I have begun building my two models and hope to finish them in a couple of days.

COW2022: An announcement

COW 2022 will not be held at Knuston Hall, which is closed until the autumn (details below).

The COW organisers are committed to holding a WD event this summer - either a VCOW over the weekend 8th - 10th July or a face-to-face COW at an alternative venue and possibly over a different weekend.

We hope to make an announcement at the end of this month.

The details from the Knuston Hall website and Facebook page are as follows:

Knuston Hall is currently closed and courses are cancelled until Autumn 2022.

The Council is reviewing operations, including looking at improvements to the facilities and safety upgrades.

We understand this will be disappointing for our customers and hope to conclude the review as quickly as possible.

In the meantime we are not taking any bookings for future courses and any monies paid for courses in the cancellation period will be refunded. We will not be transferring money to future courses.

We will be working through cancellations in date order and will be in touch with you regarding your booking.

Please accept our sincere apologies for any inconvenience and disappointment this has caused.

Nugget 343

I will be collecting the latest issue of THE NUGGET later this morning, and I hope to post it out to members on Monday morning. In the meantime, members can read this issue online.

IMPORTANT: Please note that this is the seventh issue of THE NUGGET to be published for the 2021-2022 subscription year. If you have not yet re-subscribed, a reminder was sent to you some time ago. If you wish to re-subscribe using the PayPal option on the relevant page of the website, you can use the existing buttons as the subscription cost has not changed.

The Burgundian ironclad battleships

Yesterday, despite feeling a bit under the weather, I managed to finish painting my two model Burgundian ironclad battleships.

I kept the colour scheme simple; a black hull and ochre upperworks. This was the colour scheme used by the French Navy during La Belle Époque, and as the design of the models is based on the French Amiral Baudin-class ironclads and Burgundy is a simulacrum of France, this made sense.

I have now begun to design two ironclads for the Schwarzenberg Navy … and I’m looking at a couple of early German designs for my inspiration.

The Portable Wargame Compendium: The current state of play

I have been continuing to work on the PORTABLE WARGAME COMPENDIUM as and when I have felt well enough to do so, and I think that I have reached a stage where I will have completed the first draft by this time next week. At present, the contents look like this:

I do need to add a couple of battle reports and some biographical details for Mark Cordone, Marc Pavone, and Mike Taber, but once that is done, the draft will be complete and can go out for proofreading. Once that is done, I will publish the COMPENDIUM.

Nugget 343

The editor of THE NUGGET sent me the latest issue over the weekend, and I hope to pass it on to the printer today. If they turn around the printing as quickly as they usually do, it should be ready for collection by the end of this week, and I will then be able to post it out to members at some point over the weekend.

IMPORTANT: Please note that this is the seventh issue of THE NUGGET to be published for the 2021-2022 subscription year. If you have not yet re-subscribed, a reminder was sent to you some time ago. If you wish to re-subscribe using the PayPal option on the relevant page of the website, you can use the existing buttons as the subscription cost has not changed.

Clive Smithers: Collection for sale at auction

Although I never met Clive Smithers, we corresponded over the years via email, particularly about vintage and 'old school' wargaming. He was an avid collector, and when he died last year, he left behind a huge collection of 'old school' figures that numbered in the tens of thousands. (It is thought that there at least 33,000 figures in the collection!)

Clive's brother, Gavin, has asked Hanson's the auctioneers to sell the collection by auction on 27th May.

As yet no catalogue of the collection has been printed, but judging by Hanson's normal practice, it should be available online about a month before the auction takes place.

An old friend of Clive's – Bob Kett – has asked a lot of bloggers to mention this auction, and I for one will be scanning the catalogue with interest when it is published.

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Hanson's is owned by Charlie Hanson, a well-known auctioneer who has appeared many times on TV in such programmes as BARGAIN HUNT, FLOG IT!, and ANTIQUES ROAD TRIP. He has what can best be described as a very singular style of auctioneering, and always seems to be able to get the best price for the items he sells. It will be well worth attending the auction just to see him in action ... and to buy something from Clive's collection!

MRI scan

Yesterday I had an MRI (Magnetic Resonance Imaging) scan of my abdomen in the hope that it will identify the cause of my current problems. I know that is is related to my enlarged prostate, and the scan will help the consultant decide on the best course of treatment I need to undertake.

An MRI scanner at work. I went in feet first for my scan.

The whole thing took about forty minutes, and for most of that time I laid with the main part of my body inside the machine. I had to wear earplugs and a pair of headphones because the noise made by the scanner as it works can be quite deafening. In fact, it seems to spend most of its time making various loud 'beep, beep, boop, boop, bopp, bopp' noises or variations thereof, with sudden pauses in the soundtrack. It wasn't quite as disturbing as the sound made by the brainwashing tape in the IPCRESS FILE, neither was it soothing so that I could doze through the procedure.

The results should be with my consultant early next week ... and hopefully treatment will begin soon afterwards.

A bit of a mouthful

I began work on my FUNNY LITTLE WARS/PORTABLE WARGAME project just over a year ago, and since then I have created four armies. I am now beginning to put together some naval forces to go with them, and I have decided that my current working title for this project is just too long. I have therefore decided to change it to LA BELLE ÉPOQUE.

La Belle Époque can best be defined as the ten years before and after the beginning of the twentieth century (i.e.,1890 to 1910). It was a time of great change and saw economic prosperity, colonial expansion, and technological and scientific innovation. The latter included the development of the motor vehicle, the telephone, early aircraft, and medical advances in the fields of germ theory of disease, bacteriology, and X-ray photography.

It was also a period of military change. Magazine rifles with smokeless powder cartridges were introduced, growing use was made of effective recoil systems for artillery pieces, heavy, long-range artillery became more mobile, new, and more effective high explosives and propellent powders were developed, and automatic machine guns were produced and gradually adopted by most armies.

This is project has some way to go before it will even approach completion. In fact, I suspect that it has the potential to last me a very long time ... the longer, the better!

My two Burgundian ironclad battleships

The first step that I usually take when constructing a 'cartoon' version of a ship design is to take a side view (and if it is available, a plan view as well) of the original design and change the ratio between the length and height by a ratio of 1:2, thus:

I find that this exaggerates the main features of the original design and allows me to get some idea what the end result will look like. This gave me that starting point for the design of my two Burgundian ironclad battleships.

At this point I remembered that Fred Jane had included illustrations of the Amiral Baudin and Formidable in the very first issue of his All The Worlds Fighting Ships. I dug out my reproduction copy and found the images and description of the two ships to be a very useful sources of information.

Amiral Baudin.

Formidable.

I finished building my 'cartoon' versions of the two ships yesterday, and although they are by no means '100% accurate models of the original ships', I think that they do have a passing resemblance.

(I totally accept that I am biased in this view, but they are wargame models designed to be used, and not to be on display in a cabinet.)

I did try fitting shorter funnels, but for some reason they did not look right. The original ships had pronounced tumblehome sides, and I have tried to suggest this by adding 'bulges' to the waterline of the models.

The next step will be to give the two models a couple of coats of PVA to seal the wood. Once that is dry, I will apply a couple of coats of undercoat/primer before painting them in Burgundian livery ... which is likely to be similar to that used by the French Navy at the turn of the century, namely yellow ochre upperworks and a black hull.