"Some British naval scenery for the tabletop" Topic

Several years ago I made a set of 8 modular terrain boards in 2 x 4 foot size to use in different combinations for a 4 x 6 table.

Four of the boards have water features, two with rivers and two with coasts/shorelines.

When I envisioned having forces for AWI games, I also envisioned having some sort of interesting background scenery that might also lend itself to potential scenarios. I always wanted some kind of naval presence on the tabletop.

In the end I decided on British ships that were anchored just off coast, with transport boats bringing troops and supplies to shore. Would make for a nice backdrop to a game.

I chose a couple smaller ships from Firelock Games' "Blood and Plunder" ranges, the Sloop and the Brigantine. I also picked up one of their longboats to be used as a supply boat.

My thought when getting the two larger ships was they were going to be more impressionistic than strictly realistic. I wanted at least one of them to look like bigger ships of the line or frigates, so I modified the Brigantine so that it had more of the standard square sails on the masts. This was at least an attempt at the ILLUSION that it's a larger ship parked off-shore without it being a larger ship, lol.

Plus they work for the limits of the space and table size I have.

After receiving an enormous amount of excellent information about how sails work and all sorts of technical info. on how they might look when furled vs. unfurled, I went with the furled version of the sails as if the ships were anchored.

I bought a piece of cloth from a hobby site that was labeled simply as "sail cloth" and when I got it realized that essentially it was just a cut piece of generic cotton fabric, maybe muslin I'm not sure. But in any event for a furled sail all it needs to do is look off-whitish and "cloth-like."

Going with the historical advice that sails in the 18th Century would be bundled or gathered rather than rolled, which apparently is a more modern way of furling sails, I just took rectangular pieces of the fabric and folded them back on themselves and glued each layer down as I folded. Ended up with accordion-like bundles that seemed to be convincing enough.

Then I took jute cord and wrapped it around both the sails themselves as well as a couple more around both the mast and the "cross-support" (don't know what the nautical term for those are).

I think they look pretty good for what they're meant to represent.

I kept the paint jobs very low-key. I just wanted them to look like weathered ships that have seen a lot of voyages. I might go back and give more color to the hull but they're pretty good as is for now.

Overall I'm pretty happy with how they turned out. Not highly realistic but visually pleasing enough.

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The ships are really nice, but they do look a bit odd floating on what looks like a sea of grass.

@MajorB,

They're Davinci's "Land Turtles", lol.

The ships are really nice, but they do look a bit odd floating on what looks like a sea of grass.

The rowboats, OTOH, look just fine. This is a very common sight in Africa.

Real cloth for the sails is a nice touch that is also nice to the touch.

Ok guys, ha ha…I don't have the water boards set up yet. :)

I like the gray/brown color (or probably, drybrush pattern?). It looks really weathered. Well done.

If you do decide you want to do more to break up the monotony of the wood color, the easiest things to do are add a hint of white bottom, and paint the upperworks on the outside black. If you want to get fancier, add more wood colors.

Ships always had some sort of anti-fouling measure applied below the waterline. British warships started installing copper sheathing in the 1770s, but this was expensive and didn't spread to other countries until later. Most ships between 1500 and 1800 had some kind of whitish paint instead, painted up to just above the waterline. In calm flat water (such as these models look on the table) there would be a hint of white at the center broadside, and curving up a bit toward the bow and stern.

It would be pretty easy to paint the background behind all the swirly designs black. That was a common thing to do.

The decks of sailing ships were cleaned by literally sanding them, so tended to be a lighter wood color – not fresh-cut timber color, but not dark and gray either. Any "deck tan" color will work. This is easier to do as the first color rather than adding it later, but in 28mm scale it shouldn't be too hard.

It also looks neat and appropriate to have the masts and spars a different color than the hull. They were a different type of wood than the hull, and tended to start a "new wood" tan and darken over time with repeated varnish coats and weathering, so you can pick any color you want from tan to near-black. I don't think I'd try this after gluing everything together and installing sails and rigging, though. Your masts look great with all the stuff tied on.

Firelock Games' own pictures of their brigantine model show all these things: link

@Yellow Admiral,

Thanks for the paint scheme info, that's very valuable and helpful to me!

I was doing some basic research and one article I saw had references alluding to that there were no national or official colors of ships for various nations.

It mentions the "strakes being painted black" while the rest of the hull was the color of whatever type of wood was used to build the ship, with varnish over it.

So what exactly are the strakes? Are they those thin, raised horizontal timbers running along the length of the hull?

Ah, yes indeed I didn't even notice when I was buying these online that the painted Brigantine example does indeed have that exact white paint at the water line!

I also saw references saying that other colors were more expensive and so they were used less often. However, there was a type of yellow that British captains sometimes used which was apparently a dirty, pukey type yellow?

There's so much info to absorb! But I think I learned enough thanks to you and from what I've read online.

This is a cool picture showing that anti-fouling white paint revealing just how much of the hull would be painted if you saw it out of water:

So it seems from what I understand so far that it's probably best to go low-key. I already painted some of the areas you suggested and painted the upper works behind the white swirl carvings in black. Would that black also extend further down than that? Like around the windows looking out of the stern?

For the decks I took your suggestion of a light, deck tan color and went with a Vallejo tan heavy drybrush of the decks which came out a little softer and more natural than if I had just painted them with solid paint.

I'll do the anti-fouling white on the bottom of the hull tonight.

Just learned about some of the color schemes used around and between the gunports.

Seems that this paint scheme, the "Nelson Chequer" wasn't actually done until well after the AWI, being more a very late 18th/early 19th Century thing.

But I did see mentions of yellow and black, as well as red possibly being used on British ships during the AWI in various schemes. However no particular pattern or consistent scheme.

Taking Yellow Admiral's advice, I added a few painting additions to my two British ships.

I did a tan drybrush to the decks to make them look more like they were sanded. I added a reddish dry brush to the exterior of the hulls and upper structures to make it look like they were possibly painted or that it was just the darkened version of the original wood after it had been varnished/oiled or whatever they did to the hulls.

I also added the white anti-fouling paint to the lower hull of the larger ship so that it just shows up above the water line.

Overall it makes the ships look a lot more like genuine naval ships as opposed to just "weathered, old ships."

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Brilliant! Simple improvements, but they did wonders. Those look really good.

To answer your much earlier question: yes, the wales are those raised horizontal boards along the length of each side. The big ships tend to have multiple wales. They did indeed get painted quite often, especially in the era of your uniformed figures.

- Ix

PS: Nice job on the water too.

@Yellow Admiral,

Thanks, much appreciated! Thanks for the great info!