Modelmaking Misadventures: The Ascenscion Island Chronicles.

[mikedemana]

Looks great! I can envision lots of fun games using this ship as scenery/terrain...!

Mike Demana

[Andy in Germany]

Looks great! I can envision lots of fun games using this ship as scenery/terrain...!

Mike Demana

Thanks Mike. I have to keep an eye on that: I tend to make things much more than I end up playing the games with them...

[Andy in Germany]

I spent more time than is strictly healthy dithering about what the cabin should and could look like, not helped by my complete lack of knowledge about how Big Floaty Boxes work.



In the end, I decided to aim for a balance between what I think looks right and the needs of telling stories, although as usual I had my thumb on the scales in favour of the latter. I expect the ship breaks a dozen maritime laws already, and I doubt it will get any better. If anyone complains, I’ll just keep saying “alternative history” until they go away.



With such a tiny space available, I decided this section would only contain the crew mess and the captain’s tiny cabin, so I added the door under the steps to hopefully give the impression there were more below decks; (note to self: add portholes in the hull below the cabin).

After moving the chimney back and forth so often it was becoming a pendulum, I eventually decided it took up the least space at the front of the cabin, so this luxurious piece of real estate was allocated to the captain, with a bed and desk wrapped around the base. Due to a typical lack of planning, this also meant blocking two of the portholes I’d cut; never mind…



I’m aware that every character has to move around with a big circle of plastic on their feet, but that making every walkway and door wide enough for this would look terrible. I’m hoping that there are enough strategically placed spaces inside and out that characters can move around, although the captain’s cabin will get very crowded, very quickly.



Next is the roof, with some basic detail, then back to the rest of the ship which still needs a fair bit of detailing, masts, and anchor windlass, and some hatches over the hold access holes to stop characters falling in; or at least stop me dumping bits of card in them while I’m taking photographs…

[Sakuragi Miniatures]

Its looking good so far!

[Moriarty]

Here’s one that could have been made for you. ‘Q Planes’, 1939, Olivier, Richardson et al. Missing aircraft, plucky pilots, nefarious ship. So clipped, the Royal Mint would have them hanged for it.

[anevilgiraffe]

absolutely brilliant

[Andy in Germany]

absolutely brilliant

Thanks: it's proving lots of fun.

[Andy in Germany]

Here’s one that could have been made for you. ‘Q Planes’, 1939, Olivier, Richardson et al. Missing aircraft, plucky pilots, nefarious ship. So clipped, the Royal Mint would have them hanged for it.

I wasn't expecting much, but that was pretty good, thanks. I see the point about the "Viking" being similar to my ship. Maybe I'll make a set of "Viking" nameplates...

[Burgundavia]

That ship is ace. I like the mix of playability with realism.

[Andy in Germany]

This ship is similar to Ascension Island, in that anyone on board will want to escape at some point, and probably sooner rather than later. It will probably experience a variety of incidents, from fisticuffs up to pirates and explosions; the sort of thing that sensible people would prefer to avoid.

Plus, of course, it’s made of cardboard.



It turns out that after the loss of the Titanic in 1914, the first “Safety of Life At Sea” treaty stipulated the need for lifeboats on ships, so of course this one had to have enough to at least look law-abiding.

I chickened out of making the lifeboat hulls on the basis I’d end up with two boats that would look almost but not quite the same. Instead, I used a commercial model, and limited myself to making a card former then giving it a “tarpaulin” of loo roll soaked in wood glue. After this dried a bit, I sliced the excess off and superglued the remaining material to the boat, then painted a few coats of Shellac on the lot.



In the likely event of an emergency, the idea is apparently that some poor chap goes up to control the davits, the small crane like objects that swing the boats out and down to the deck level where everyone else jumps on and floats away to safety, while the aforementioned poor chap presumably either jumps into the water or goes down with the ship: there’s a reason this design is not used any more.

This discovery led to a certain amount of faffing while I considered different ways to make these rather distinctive items, before realising that in working in a bicycle workshop means I have access to a potentially unlimited number of discarded spokes. A bit of digging later I had a handful which I bent to shape on a piece of pipe, cut to size and added some rudimentary detail with bits from old ballpoint pens and paper straws.

Finally, because I felt like every available surface would be used on a boat like this, I made a water tank out of a till roll, and strapped it down with some old guitar strings.



Next job: anchors…

[Freddy]

As I wrote in the other topic, this ship turned out really great!

It turns out that after the loss of the Titanic in 1914, the first “Safety of Life At Sea” treaty stipulated the need for lifeboats on ships, so of course this one had to have enough to at least look law-abiding.

While SOLAS was really introduced in 1914 in response for the 11 Oscar movie, lifeboat regulations existed before, and the Titanic actually fulfilled, even overperformed them with some extra lifeboats. The problem was that the size of the ships grew really fast in that time, and the regulations did not follow that with upates. The biggest ship category in the regulation was the 10k tons and over, while the Titanic was 50k+ tons, so five times the size what the writers of the regulations could think of.

[Pattus Magnus]

Sounds like they used the wrong metric for calculating the required lifeboats when they linked it to the ship’s tonnage. They could have applied a sliding scale calibrated to the ship’s designed passenger occupancy plus crew. Granted, a lot of ships at the time carried both passengers and cargo, but the passenger number is the key one to consider for emergency evacuation… Hindsight and all that. 

[snitcythedog]

That steamer is looking quite snazzy!.  As always I am impressed with your work. 

[Freddy]

Sounds like they used the wrong metric for calculating the required lifeboats when they linked it to the ship’s tonnage. They could have applied a sliding scale calibrated to the ship’s designed passenger occupancy plus crew. Granted, a lot of ships at the time carried both passengers and cargo, but the passenger number is the key one to consider for emergency evacuation… Hindsight and all that. 

Yes, the two drawbacks of the pre-1914 regulation was the lack of updates for increasing size and linking the required number to the ship size instead of the passenger count (as ships transporting this huge amount of passengers was also a relatively new concept).

[marianas_gamer]

Coming along nicely! I am looking forward to your hatches for the caargo hold.