1-Gun Gunboats: Langton Miniatures 1:1200

One of my gaming ambitions is to be able to fight out the Flying Colors Great Lakes campaign, and for that I am going to need a range of ships. I'll need a few 6th rates, some brigs and schooners, and especially a lot of gunboats. Both sides in the War of 1812 produced large numbers of gunboats - and why not? They were comparatively cheap, they were maneuverable, and doctrinally they were very much in fashion at the time. For better or worse...

Fortunately Langton Miniatures makes a great selection of these diminutive craft, offering a variety of rigs and armaments. Here are two, small one-gun craft, which come in the sailed and rowed variety. I've gone ahead and added a mast and spar to the rowed one as well, because I liked the look and so that it can also serve as a model of a sailed boat as well.

These are great little kits that don't require much assembly and, of course, paint up rather quickly. I've replaced the white metal masts that came in the kit with brass rod to improve strength, I've used nylon paintbrush bristles for the rigging, so that I didn't have to tie off and keep any tension in the line, and I've created a sea base around the rowed model, which has a little bit of a base cast as the same piece with the hull. I wanted it to sit on the same size base as the other, one that is large enough to pick up easily. The water for that one is just built up out of Elmers wood filler, notched and painted. It's a bit rough, but when it's one in a flotilla it won't stand out.

Scroll down to the bottom of the post for a size comparison shot to see how small these craft are.

Here for the sake of size comparison is a shot of the two gunboats next to a GHQ Miniatures 32 gun frigate, HMS Cleopatra.