Model by Franco Fusco
Naval riverine support to land forces dates back to ancient history. Ancient Egyptians had patrolled the Nile with their warships since always, the Romans used rivers to support the legions and constantly patrolled main rivers with Liburnae.
In Victorian campaigns the gunboats played a vital role to ensure British Control over the Nile basin.
During the 1896-98 campaign the purpose-built gunboats were manned by British Officers and Petty Officers and a British and native (Egyptian or Sudanese) crew. Command was awarded to experienced Officers, among whom Lieutenant David Beatty and Lieutenant the Honourable Horace Hood.
This model is based on the Thorneycroft Sultan-class, twin-screw gunboats design of 1896, that benefitted of the lesson learned during the previous campaign. Well protected from incoming rifle fire, heavily armed with two 12-pdr (3in) Quick-Firing guns and six .303 Maxim machine guns and driven by a powerful propulsion plant, they represent the apex of the evolution of the Nile gunboat.
The Bundle will allow you to have on your table the ultimate Nile Gunboat in 28mm scale and her crew, wonderfully illustrated by Peter Dennis and consisting of British and
Egyptian sailors in 21 different poses. The crew can also be supplemented with sailors, marines and soldiers form the “Empire of Dust” and “Sand of the Prophet” British and Egyptian bundles.
This is not a scale model. Given the difference between the scale of the game and that of the miniatures, it has been designed to take up as little space as possible on your wargame table while maintaining an imposing look and a resemblance of the original.
Decks were designed to accommodate figures and details were kept to a minimum.
Other constrain to the design were to have a model that could stand the battle wear on the wargame table while being printable at home on A4 sheets.
Notes
The bundle (52.4 MB) consists of 16 sheets, to be printed on 100 g/sm, 120 g/sm and 160 g/sm (suggested) paper, and 1 PDF of 20 sheets for the instructions.
Once downloaded, the sheets can be printed as often as you like, which means you can build any number of Gunboats very cheaply.
- You will need 4 or 5 A4 1mm card (I recommend finnboard/wood pulp board), but it would be easier to use 1 A3 1mm card for the base and main deck.
- 1 x 4mm dowel or round wooden BBQ skewer for the mast and 1 x 3mm for the yard.
- A roll of 1mm (or so) black cord.
You will also need scissors, a craft knife, a metal ruler, glue, cereal box type card, light card, cocktail sticks, pins and brush pens of various colours (sepia, grey, etc…) to touch up the parts. Fast drying, strong PVA glue, slow setting repositionable liquid glue or glue stick.
The sheets are laid down in A4 format. Print your sheets at “fit to page” setting (Adobe Acrobat) onto A4 paper and US legal sized paper, on US letter size will print at 93%.
You can, of course, print the Gunboat and its crew in any scale you choose, making it extremely flexible in this respect.
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