Monday, February 8, 2016

10 Gun Schooner - 1:1200 Langton Miniatures

Here is yet another model of a ten gun schooner, though a larger one than the last. This is from Langton Miniatures' regular Napoleonic line of 1:1200 model ships, as opposed to the Great Lakes line - the members of the latter being rather smaller in size. See the last photo for a size comparison shot.

Schooners of every type were very common ships in the period, and vessels such as this one could have been seen anywhere the navies of the European powers sailed. With their fore-and-aft rig they would not have made as much speed as a square rigger in certain wind orientations, but they could sail faster closer to the wind, and required less crew.

To tweak this model to my liking I've sanded down the hull a lot to make it sit lower in the water, built masts and bowsprit from brass rods, and rigged with nylon paintbrush bristles. Ratlines and sea base are Langton products too.












To compare sizes, here the model is seen in between Langton's 10 gun Great Lakes schooner in the front (a very small ship indeed) and GHQ's 32 gun frigate HMS Cleopatra behind.


3 comments:

  1. I really like your schooners. I have only tried the one Langton 28 so far. Fun to build but not sure the rigging's correct. It's hard to find info on different rigs other than the standard ship rig. Where do you get your info my friend?

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    1. Thanks very much Vol. Usually when I'm trying to figure out how to rig these things I go looking on model ship forums, and try to find lots of high resolution photos of larger scale models. The detail on them is fantastic, and it's a great resource. But it's probably also worth bearing in mind that the smaller details of a rig could vary somewhat from ship to ship, so there won't necessarily be one single way it has to be done.

      I went back to your Meshuda post, which is a great looking model. I had looked at the pictures before, but neglected the history included in the post. What a hell of story that is!!

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