Turkish Gunboat

[Mustasha Pasha]

Hi and thanks for all the advice and info on Turkish sailors. As I've just about finished repainting the Mexicans I'll probably stick with them for the time being.

There's a photo on page 27 of the Osprey on Megiddo which shows a Turkish Naval officer with a short-peaked cap similar to what Plynkes mentions. This is very like the Mexican hat (not sombrero!).

To the Emir:

At least the Sultan has seen combat - HMS Viper is still skulking in harbour!!

[argsilverson]

Hi and thanks for all the advice and info on Turkish sailors. As I've just about finished repainting the Mexicans I'll probably stick with them for the time being.

There's a photo on page 27 of the Osprey on Megiddo which shows a Turkish Naval officer with a short-peaked cap similar to what Plynkes mentions. This is very like the Mexican hat (not sombrero!).

To the Emir:

At least the Sultan has seen combat - HMS Viper is still skulking in harbour!!

I found an interesting spanish site with lots of photos from balkan wars.

There are a lot of turkish navy photos with sailors and officers  plus interesting photos of greek and bulgarian navies, too.

have a look!
http://www.fotosmilitares.org/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=388

[Plynkes]

Oh bravo, "Arg." Some absolutely smashing photos there. Well worth a look. Well done. A real treasure trove.


More Evzones. Why do the Greeks hate their soldiers so much to make them wear those clothes? They look like they were dressed up by their big sister and her friends before being sent to war. Did they actually fight dressed like this?



And the navy didn't fare much better...


This photo was taken from the time when the Greek Navy took up selling ice cream. 

(Sorry for mocking the Greeks, but you know I don't mean it with any spite.  )

[Argonor]

and the main mast is a kebab stick.

How fitting !!  

Nice work. All you guys posting scratch-built boats and ships really make me wonder if I could pull something like that off....

[argsilverson]

Dear Plynkes,
Jokes accepted! No offence whats=so-ever! I like jokes.

But I will add some remarks, for history's sake:

evzones: is the traditional dress for southern greece and peloponese, in general. In fact is a pleated kilt. girls never wear such dress usually theywear long dresses with aprons.
If someone wears the evzonic dress -fustanella- means to be tall and brave.
Nowdays there is no evzones in the army =apart the presidential guard. The reason is that during the german occupation during WWII, the germans orgabised some batallions of collaborators, hence after the reorganisation of the regular army there is no regiments of evzones.

evzone [literally means "good belted ones" maybe because they carried a whole arsenal in their belts???] were first introduced in regular army around 1830, immediately after independence. supposed to be elite units, sharpshooters, highlanders and light infantry.

navy: those sailors in straw hats- like ice cream sellers- are a direct copy of the british navy uniform of the time.  if you see in the website it is in the balkan wars section. In fact during first balkan war, straw hats along with other surplus were distributed among the new recruits to form a new division . they were nicknamed "marines" , but had nothing to do with amphibious elite soldiers. they were ordinary untrained infantry carrying old fashioned rifles and navy cutlasses.
As far as I know after the first Balkan war , there was no further use of them.
In fact as the balkan war started on 05.10.1912 the navy carried the winter uniform which had not the straw hats.
My long late grandmother, living in Mytilene (island of lesvos), was at the age of 12 when the liberation was effcted (08.11.1912) told me that she remembered having seen only a small landing party of sailors in blues and straw hats. The rest were carrying normal navy caps.

kebab masts: yes they are. Note british made! the greek navy bought almost the entire fleet from british shipbuilders.

errors: I have noticed that some photos of the greek army were included in the serbian section. The website says serbian infantry guarding prisoners, but have kepis. the serbian infantry had side caps.

website: the website is a very interesting small site. it has lots of photos of other conflicts, including SCW, paraguay war etc
Worth searching it. As for Spanish, I think it is easy to understand at least the general idea.

It is now time to stop writing, but I'll keep waiting to see the improvement of the the Turkish gunboat and her crew!

[Emir of Askaristan]

Gentlemen, may I present HMS Adder, currently moored in Askaristan and awaiting her full compliment of crew.

I had two attempts at building her. The first turned out rather short and looked rather top heavy, so I built another longer version. 3mm plasticard was used for the hull and deck, whilst 1.5mm was used for the cabin.

I tried a higher railing, but it didn't look right and somehow no railing made the ship look a little bare, so this smaller than scale one ended up being applied.

The awning was made from the heavy metal foil from wine bottles, it seems to be an integral part of vessels in the middle east.

The overall idea was to build something like the gun boats that sailed the Tigris in WW1- not an ocean going vessel by any means and definately not pretty - but im sure she'll rules the waves on any body of water she steams on.

[argsilverson]

Very nice!

[odd duck]

I think both models are excellent and definately capture the look and feel of the period!!And if you're looking for ventilators try herehttp://www.tin-soldier.com/cgi-bin/ustorekeeper.pl they also have good selection of deck guns. I look forward to seeing more of this stuff

[Emir of Askaristan]

Thanks for the tip. Recently a new model shop opened in the area and offers all the miniature chandlery we needed...after the boats were built of course.

I'm sure you'll see shots of them in action very soon.

[argsilverson]

Thanks for the tip. Recently a new model shop opened in the area and offers all the miniature chandlery we needed...after the boats were built of course.

I'm sure you'll see shots of them in action very soon.

Can't wait to see them!

[odd duck]

Always good to hear of a model shop opening too often you hear of good ones closing!