Bat-oh!

Knocked up a mock up of a ‘bateau’ for the wars on the American Continent. This was a quick test to see if I could do something. The answer was ‘I can’ but there’s room for improvement.

Materials were an empty cereal packet, some cocktail sticks, paper and Blutak to hold stuff in place temporarily. And a sharp knife (after an abortive attempt with a blunt one).

The basic idea was to make something that can hold a base of my AWI chaps (2x3cm base). Functionality is more important than looks. At the back of my mind I had Dave Crook’s stylised ships for the late 29 18th century. What I’m basing the design on is a simple ‘bateau’ of the type used on the rivers and lakes of North America in the F&I wars, the AWI and War of 1812. Bateaux had pointy bits at both ends and were flat bottomed to aid portability across land. Some had sails as well as oars and varied greatly in size. They were used to move men, weapons and supplies. Some even seemed to have little ‘canon’.

The plan is to maybe make a fleet of 30ish for use in amphibious operations - prompted by my reading of ‘These Distinguished Corps’ by Don Hagist. The book is a history of flank battalion operations in the American Revolution. The Lights and Grenadiers seemed to do an awful lot of bobbing about in boats in the AWI, do I thought ‘why not?’

Now on to the critique:

The gunwales are too low for the figures. I need to up these from 5mm.

I need a good method of gluing the gunwales and pointy bits to each other. Not sure how.

Ditto the mast.

The oars and rudder handle could do with being thinner - maybe thick wire is the answer.

And maybe more of them.

And one or two ‘crew’.

Obviously it needs a paint job.

I might need bases for them (c 12x6cm) to protect them from handling.

But overall it looks workable!