WIP - Gunboat, Part 1

Last night I started on my small gunboat flotilla for my Capitania General de Florida mini-campaign.  The next battle will feature some naval action as well as land action.  This gunboat, and her two sisters, will be the Asturian (AKA Spanish) naval force that will be engaging a Britannian naval force.  This resin boat is an Old Glory Shipyard rowboat (GG-001) [link] with an added slide gun and four swivel guns.  I bought them on eBay several years ago, about the same time as the row-galley featured in the last two posts.

As usual, please click (or double-click) on the pictures for larger images.

I only mounted eight of the ten thole pins, four per side.  I drilled through the center of each thole pin and into the gunwhale of the boat, attached a piece of steel wire into the hole with superglue, and glued the thole pin onto the wire with superglue.  I was going to make the thole pins removable but decided against that.  The slide gun is also mounted on a piece of steel wire superglued into the foredeck.  It will probably be left loose so I can either show damage to it or remove it for a more lightly armed boat.  The swivel guns are placed into holes drilled into the gunwhales at each corner of the main deck.  They may also be left loose.

The oars are long (really more like sweeps) and will be shortened slightly.  The mast will eventually have a yard with a brailled up square sail on it.  I may shorten the mast.  Currently it is 6" long and is mounted into a hole drilled completely through the deck of the boat.  It will remain removable, as will the yard.  I will mount the boat on a plastic base that will be 10" (~25 cm) long and 7" (~18 cm) wide.  The sweeps will be glued into the thole pins and onto the base.  The base will be covered with a sea effects picture that I've used before on my 1:2400 pre-dreadnought ships and then textured with a wake and swirls left by the sweeps.

Stay tuned for additional WIP pictures.