El-Teb sugar refinery

I have been thinking about modelling the boiler for the derelict sugar refinery at El-Teb, which was fanatically defended by Mahdist warriors.

I am just about to use the last of a bottle of spectacles lens cleaner, and I think it may be just the right size to form the basis of the boiler. I bought a sheet of Slater’s Plasikard with embossed rivets, and now I am ready to give the model a go.

Lens cleaner bottle, a sheet of embossed rivets, and a determined Mahdist for scale.

For you all love the screw gun …

The mule train for the screw gun battery is finished, with the components loaded and organised in order of march: axel tree, wheels, carriage, breach, chase (barrel), and ammunition.

I have followed the same principle I established for the Royal Navy Gatling gun battery [link], that is to model one weapon in transit to represent the battery of two guns on the move.

The converted infantry driver figures turned out alright after all, I think.

By way of celebration, let’s have some Kipling – the refrain from Screw-Guns:

For you all love the screw-guns the screw-guns they all love you!

So when we call round with a few guns, o’ course you will know what to do – hoo! hoo!

Jest send in your Chief an’ surrender it’s worse if you fights or you runs:

You can go where you please, you can skid up the trees, but you don’t get away from the guns!

The loaded mules with their drivers.

Screw gun battery mules: all six

I have been working on these on-and-off throughout the week, and now they are complete.

Six mules carrying the gun chase, breach, carriage, wheels, axel tree, elevation mechanism, and ammunition. Next I have to work on the gun crew figures which will accompany these.

The disassembled gun and ammunition distributed across six mules.

Screw gun battery mules: the first three

Today I made a bit of progress with the first mules for the screw gun battery, with breech, gun chase, and wheel loads.

I used lead for straps, fuse wire for buckles, and ProCreate for the various covers designd to keep dust and debris out of the gun components. So far I am quite pleased with how these have turned out.

Breech, gun chase, and wheels loaded onto the first three mules.

The last of the Beja and Medical Staff Corps stretcher bearers vignette

Life has crashed across my hobby time these past weeks, in a good way for the most part, but totally derailed my painting effort.

Anyhow, here are the last of the Hadendowa, which will finish the enlargement of my bands of warriors … for now, and the Medical Staff Corps vignette.

I will return to the screw gun battery mules once the dust has settled on my life and home – the latter quite literally.

The last eight Hadendowa warriors, which will bring each band up to a strength of 18 figures, and the Medical Staff Corps vignette.

Screw gun battery: mule equipment

I had completely forgotten that some time ago I found a digital archive copy of a HMSO manual for the 2.5 inch screw gun.

Handbook for the 2.5-inch RML Steel (Jointed) Gun 1888 includes detailed drawings of the harness arrangements for carrying the gun components and ammunition on mules and camels.

These drawings will provide guidance for my modelling effort, but I now realise that I will have to change the ammunition boxes on the deployed models.

Plenty of detail here to guide my modelling effort. These drawings show the elevating gear carried with the wheels, so I will give that some thought. The ammunition boxes were made of leather, so I will have to make a couple for my deployed battery, too.

Screw gun battery mules

The Empress Miniatures’ Jazz Age Imperialism mountain battery has arrived, and it looks the part.

The gun components are moulded contiguously with the mules, which means there are some models that I will not be able to use. Nevertheless this set is an excellent start for this project.

According to Goodrich’s Report of the British Naval and Military Operations in Egypt, 1882, the RML 2.5 inch 7 pounder screw gun was dismantled, with leather caps and aprons attached to the barrel sections for protection, and carried by individual mules as follows:
– muzzle section
– breech section
– carriage
– axle, coupling block, trunnion guard, elevating gear
– wheels
– ammunition boxes

It seems unlikely that much changed between 1882 and 1884.

Top to bottom: Some of the mules from Empress Miniatures’ Jazz Age Imperialism mountain battery, and two spares from their water cart; pages from Goodrich’s Report of the British Naval and Military Operations in Egypt, 1882 illustrating how the dismantled screw gun was carried by six mules.

A bit of blog admin, adding depth, and a screw gun battery

I turned my hand to tidying up some code (I had broken the British Empire army units page), adding a short interview with the legendary Spike Milligan to the Preservation page, and providing a bit more depth where appropriate.

To the latter end, I have added some links to external pages with more information about the people who feature on the Characters page.

I am planning to model a screw gun loaded on to mules. I have two spare mules from the Empress Miniatures’ water wagon (ZWB79), which seem to be the same basic scuplts used for their Jazz Age Imperialism mountain gun battery (JAZ13). So the latter may provide the basis for this, with any surplus mules sure to be utilised.

That’s it for the moment while I make progress with my Wars of the Roses project.

Empress Miniatures’ Jazz Age Imperialism mountain battery looks like a promising place to begin for my mule-bourne screw gun battery.

Three more leaders and some game markers

The Men Who Would be Kings ruleset requires that each unit has an identified leader. To this end I needed three more personalities to lead the Empire units.

Lieutenant-Colonel Alfred George Huyshe CB commands 1bn Princess Charlotte of Wales’s (Berkshire) Regiment, Colonel Sir Cromer Ashburnham KCB commands 3bn King’s Royal Rifle Corps, and Lieutenant-Colonel Albert Henry Ozzard commands the Royal Marine Light Infantry contingent in HMS Tyne.

The main additions are lanyards for the drawn pistols and characteristic moustache and sideburns for Ashburnham.

My Hadendowa are lead at rub level, with these leadership characteristics also applied to each band. Each band has an individual leader figure, so that an individual band can become leaderless.

Once I have completed the three British leaders all my units will have an individual leader figure. This makes leaderless units easy to mark. I am making some ‘pinned’ and ‘gone to ground’ markers; the former will be a shield on a small scenic base, with a tuft added for the latter.

Lieutenant-Colonel Albert Henry Ozzard, Colonel Sir Cromer Ashburnham KCB, Lieutenant-Colonel Alfred George Huyshe CB, and the first of the game markers.

Mount-up for a Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas to my followers and visitors. Remarkably the page views have passed 17,000 … which seems pretty amazing to me. I am pleased my musings seem to have some reach, and I hope I have inspired some of you to venture into the Sudan for an adventure like mine. Thank you everyone.

Today I glued the Bengal Cavalry riders to their mounts and attached half of the pennons to lances … and now I am quite excited about getting this unit based.

I trimmed the Empress Miniatures’ pennons to half their height, coloured the edges of the red swallow tail section, and gently curled them around my smallest painting brush. After checking each lance for fit to a rider’s hand, I super-glued the pennons to the shafts. The double thickness folded paper of the pennon results in an edge with enough area to give adequate adhesion. I think these will prove to be robust, especially since I avoid touching my figures directly – instead handling them by the bases they are attached to.

9th Bengal Cavalry and the first six lances with pennons.

9th Bengal Cavalry lance pennons

I have been thinking about how to go about the lance pennons since buying the miniatures and a set of Empress Miniatures’ pennons. 

It seems that the wargamer’s conventional approach is to wrap the pennon around the lance, which, while giving a sound fixing, isn’t really authentic. Today I made a search on The Miniatures Page, and found thisthread.

I then made an internet search and found this auction lot, which shows a metal strip attached to the side of a bamboo lance, with the pennon attached to that. While there is also evidence that pennons were tied to lances, this seems more practical from a modelling perspective, so I have decided to attempt this, probably by painting the metal strip on to the lance first. Let’s see …

Top: a Victorian era pennon attached to a metal strip on a bamboo lance. Above: a Perry Miniatures Bengal Cavalry sowar, lances, and the Empress Minniature’s pennons, which are clearly way too large.

Lieutenant Soltau’s pet dog

I have a set of Perry Miniatures’ plastic British Infantry in Afghanistan and Sudan 1877–85, and have been thinking about a way of using Bobby, the small dog. While reading around my current subject I discovered an account of an officer serving with the Berkshire Regiment in the Sudan who had a small dog with him.

Lieutenant Soltau was killed during the battle of Ginnis, 30 December 1885; the animal was probably a black Toy Spaniel, so I modified the miniature’s ears (see a previous post), and took some licence with its coat. I have now added the little chap to the Berkshire’s officer’s base.

The sad story of this little dog is told by Lt-Gen Sir William Butler in his autobiography Sir William Butler: An Autobiography:

We lost only one officer killed—Lieutenant Soltau of the Berkshire Regiment. He was shot through the head a minute or two after we gained the razor-back ridge. He was a splendid specimen of youthful manhood as he stood behind the men of his company, who were lying against the top of the ridge ; nor did he look one whit less splendid when, a moment later, he lay stretched on his back on the rocky desert with his sword still held firm in his hand. We buried him in the desert outside Ginniss. A touching thing happened at that simple funeral. Soltau had a pet dog, which he took with him wherever he went. It was a tiny thing, of the toy spaniel type, but, small as that animal was, it had the biggest heart of any dog I had ever seen. This was what happened. The body of the dead officer was carried on a stretcher behind the Berkshire Regiment as we marched from the ridge, and the stretcher, covered by a Union Jack, was put in a tent for a couple of hours while a grave was being dug in the desert. When all was ready, we followed the body to its last rest. The stretcher was laid on the ground a few feet from the grave, and the Union Jack lifted. The body, still in uniform, was then raised by four men and lowered into the grave ; but, cowering on one side of the blood-stained stretcher, in smaller shape than ever before, was the tiny dog. I have never forgotten the way in which that black atom dragged itself, crouching, from the stretcher along the few feet of sand to the edge of the pit, and lay there with its head hanging down into the grave. When some one lifted it away, it hung like a little dead thing, a sight sufficient to make strong men turn aside.

Lieutenant Soltau, perhaps, and the little dog.

New recruits: KRRC and The Black Watch

Figures representing 3bn King’s Royal Rifle Corps and 1bn The Black Watch are now ready for undercoating. The KRRC is a standard 24 figure unit, while The Black Watch is 36 figures.

This begins to reflect the numbers of men in theatre (eg 320 KRRC and 750 Black Watch at second El Teb). I plan to base coat all the kilts and then finish them in small groups while working on the KRRC and then 9th Bengal Cavalry; doubtless there will be a diversion or three along the way.

Realistically, I don’t expect to have the Scots finished until the Spring.

Top–to–bottom

The kneeling infantry figures were cast without bayonet scabbards, so I have added these.

24 figure KRRC.

Preparing the Scotsmen took patience, care, and time. I was determined to remove the fillet of metal obscuring the tunic and ammo pouch, which also spoiled the shape of the rifle stock. Once painted these will look fine, I think.

36 figures will look pretty imposing.

The first of the palm trees

I was keen to see how the cheap plastic palms might turn out, so in-between painting a small host of Beja and varnishing my first British army infantry unit, I worked on a base of three trees.

These are made of polythene, so cleaning up the mould lines required a new scalpel blade, definite, clean cuts, and patience.

Once cleaned up I washed the parts in warm soapy water and left them to dry. A coat of varnish and they were ready for painting. I used Vallejo Tan Earth, followed by a wash of Army Painter Strong Tone, with details picked out quite quickly in Iraqi Sand.

Using wood glue I sandwiched two layers of 2mm MDF off-cuts to a 60mm circular 2mm base. Once set I drilled these right through, ensuring that the resulting holes would give a very tight fit for the spigots moulded on the end of each trunk. After inserting the trunks I trimmed off any excess. Vallejo Sandy Paste, paint, sand, and detailing, and the result is way better than I was expecting.

The first of the palm trees … not too shabby.

Palm trees and a ruin

I’ve had a couple of scenic features in mind for a while: palm trees (since seeing a Facebook post by Perry Miniatures about their Partizan 2019 demonstration game); and the ruined sugar mill at El Teb. 

There are a host of plastic palm trees available on Amazon, but selecting a set that have reasonable detail requires that the images are scrutinised before purchase. In the end I got 30 in five sizes for about eight quid. Made of polythene, these will need mould seams removing before preparing for painting. I think they will turn out just fine.

The sugar mill at El Teb was more than just the boiler, obviously. I’m planning a model with abandoned machinery, components, and pipes, in addition to a boiler. The ruin is a rather fine resin piece from Battlescale. Looking at the size of the bricks it’s probably intended as a northern European piece. I have added a lintel over the doorway, and a couple of beam ends to correspond with the beams moulded with the floor section, to give it more of the look of the Renedra mud brick buildings I have.

Eight quids worth of Chinese palm trees, and a rather fine set of castings from Battlescale, with a couple of minor additions.

The Royal Navy ratings were magnificent

As Queen Elizabeth II is laid to rest amidst the kind of pageantry at which Britain excels, the role of the Royal Navy was fascinating to observe.

Drawing the gun carriage with the Queen’s coffin draped in the Royal Standard, topped by the Imperial State Crown, Orb and Sceptre, their discipline and strength took me back to the descriptions of their antecedent’s travails in the Sudan:

I have never witnessed such a sight as the sailors drawing their machine guns. The pluck they showed and the work and labour required to drag those guns along for more than twenty miles was very great. I am sure if I had not seen it, I would not have believed it.

Royal Marine Artillery Gunner JT Wilkinson quoted in Richard Brooks’ The Long Arm of Empire: Naval Brigades from the Crimea to the Boxer Rebellion

Jack Tars hard at work 138 years ago.

Naval Brigade towed Gatling gun and limber

Finishing the towed limber and gun brings to completion my Royal Navy contingent, compising two companies of ratings, a Gatling gun battery, a company of Royal Marine Light Infantry, and Vice Admiral Hewett’s command group.

I first suggested that I might make a towed limber twenty-one months ago [link], to represent the entire battery on the move in the manner described in Richard Brooks’ The Long Arm of Empire: Naval Brigades from the Crimea to the Boxer Rebellion, where he quotes Royal Marine Artillery Gunner JT Wilkinson (p185):

I have never witnessed such a sight as the sailors drawing their machine guns. The pluck they showed and the work and labour required to drag those guns along for more than twenty miles was very great. I am sure if I had not seen it, I would not have believed it.

Blue jackets labour to bring up a Gatling gun, while a couple of additions to Hewett’s HQ look on … suitably impressed, one imagines.

Painting and varnishing during the heatwave

The current heatwave hasn’t been condusive to painting, so I have tended to do a couple of hours before the sun comes around on the south side, while my wet palette has been an essential companion.

I am now ready to apply the final coat of varnish (Daler Rowney Acrylic mediums soluable matt varnish – the nearest to Testors Dullcote available, I reckon), then it will be ready for assembly, and the tricky task of threading the drag ropes.

The Gatling gun, limber and the Jack Tars destined to tow the ensemble, with a couple of extra figures and an additional officer for the brigade HQ. That’s an unpainted Broadwell magazine in the middle, which will hang from the limber’s axel tree, and the completed deployed limber.

Private Thomas Edwards and Naval Brigade Gatling gun battery

Private Thomas Edwards was seconded from his unit, 1 battalion The Black Watch, to the Naval Brigade as a mule driver. From the moment I read an account of his actions at Tamai I had a vignette in mind.

During the furious fight he defended the Gatling guns after members of the naval crew had been killed or wounded. Despite being wounded himself he remained with the guns throughout the action. Edwards was awarded a Victoria Cross, and here is his citation in The London Gazette.

Top to bottom: a period post card celebrating Edwards’ actions at Tamai; my vignette of a Perry Miniatures’ Black Watch figure and Empress Miniatures’ ammunition mules; Edwards with the Naval Brigade battery; and finally, more progress with the towed Gatling gun and limber.

Towed Gatling gun limber ready for priming

I’ve been thinking about modelling a Gatling gun and limber hauled by Jack Tars since the beginning of this project. I finished the deployed limber just over a year ago [link] and I’ve been itching to model the towed version ever since.

I’ve now prepared the main components and made minor modifications to the crew figures. These were the addition of right hands for four of the running at trail figures (which are cast with separate hands holding rifles), with those on the outside drilled to receive wire drag ropes during final assembly. I have made some small changes to a couple of figures which will push on the horizontal pole, making it a six-figure effort to shift the limber and gun. Two further figures running alongside will complete the vignette.

All the components of the towed Gatling gun and limber.