Back to the Shipyard

Now that the Lepanto game is done, I'm getting back to work on my 15mm Age of Sail ships.

I've gotten some more work done on Thoroughbred cutter and gunboat, first reviewed in this post and shown assembled in this post. I searched around for historical paint schemes for these types of ships, but I couldn't find much on how small ships were painted. It mostly seemed like it was up to the captain and depended on whatever was available at the time.

With that in mind, I decided to give the cutter a black hull with a pale yellow stripe around the gunports and a red interior (although it turned out a bit blotchy in places). I think the colors give it a bit of a Royal Navy look. The deck was given a light sandstone color and still needs to have a wash put over it to bring out the lines in the deck.

Painted Thoroughbred cutter

A better view of the deck

As you can see from the photos, I haven't mounted all the cannon or the yards and sails, but you can see the gaff and boom. I plan on keeping the mast and sails removable to help show battle damage. I don't know if that will really work, but I'm going to give it a try.
For the gunboat I went with the basic black hull with a brown upper edge. The trim around the edges of the deck grating got a nice red color. The gunboat deck needs to be washed too and the mast was borrowed from the cutter (the rigging for the gunboat is similar to the cutter).

Paint Thoroughbred 2-gun gunboat

Finally, I wanted to show a size comparison between the two vessels. The cutter is just a little longer and wider than the gunboat. The cutter will be armed with ten 18 lb carronades and a pair of 12 lb long guns, while the gunboat has a pair of 24 lb long guns. 

Cutter and Gunboat size comparison

I expect the cutter would probably win any battle between these two. But, it could be an interesting fight to see what damage the gunboat could do before the cutter got close enough to use its carronades.

I'm looking forward to getting more done on the sailing ships, but I know there will be other stuff to distract me. Next weekend I'm helping to run an AirWar C21 game at Drumbeat and I'll post photos of the game when I get a chance.