I've been looking for pictures to use as painting reference material for the 1/2400th scale Prussian and Danish warships when I found these paintings by the Austrian artist Alexander Kircher. He was a very successful naval artist and painted a wide selection of scenes depicting Austrian, Prussian and German warships from the 1860's through to the First World War. I'd seen his painting of the Battle of Jasmund before and his depiction of the Battle of Lissa, but not the one with the Prussian paddle steamer and shore landing party, which has given me all sorts of ideas for scenarios.
Tumbling Dice make a nice set of long boats with crew in their 1/2400th scale Napoleonic range, so that would be a simple addition to the 1864 project. A little background research also revealed that in 1856, the Prussian paddle corvette SMS Danzig actually landed a punitive shore party on the Moroccan coast near Melilla, in order to supress a nest of pirates that had been attacking merchant shipping. This led to a skirmish in which seven men were killed and several wounded, including Prince Adalbert of Prussia, the supreme commander and founder of the Prussian Navy itself. This is apparently the scene depicted in the painting.
Now there's a scenario!
Now there's a scenario!
Beautiful paintings! The shore party scenario begs to be gamed.
ReplyDeleteNot sure what scale you would do it in but 15mm or 28mm would be effective, with smaller scale ship model off shore?
ReplyDeleteI think so. 28mm would do the trick, perhaps using Sharpe Practice rules which covers the period up to the ACW.
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