1:4800 Age of Sail Questions (Aesthetics, really)

[Ahistorian]

Hullo all,

I am planning to pick up some Tumbling Dice 1:4800 ships to try out my new quick-play fleet action rules, and I had a few questions:
- Should I base them on hexes or rectangles? I have both available and think either could look nice. Due to conflicting opinions in the literature I am as yet unsure whether to give broadsides a 120o or "straight out" arc of fire - or maybe change it from one to the other depending on the era of gunnery?
- High or low bases? They are so tiny that I am considering leaning in to the "playing piece" aspect and putting them on either 3mm MDF or slotta-base hexes so I can paint a national flag at the back and maybe add other information (names, number of guns &c)
- At such a small scale, do you think the available Napoleonic silhouettes could pass for ships from the SYW and/or Anglo-Dutch War? I want to try and cover 1630-1830, so it would be great to keep it all in the same scale.

Cheers,
M

EDIT: Some rather nice pictures available here - http://steelonsand.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/1%2F4800th

Also, I am currently leaning towards lipped hexes, since I remembered I have a bunch of 30mm mecha bases that want using and further investigation of the Tumbling Dice website reveals that the ships are designed to fit in them!