This is as good a pre-existing thread as any - stumbled over the following.
Introduction: The Naval battles fought in the vicinity of Nashville are often overshadowed by the famous 2-day Battle of Nashville highlighted by heavy action at landmarks such as the Redoubts and Shy’s Hill. In this article, Nashville attorney John Allyn brings his research to bear on the military action along the Middle Tennessee rivers and gives the Naval conflicts their rightful place in the Civil War history of Nashville. John is a member of the Board of Director of BONPS and currently serves as president of The Nashville City Cemetery. His articles exploring military burials in and around Nashville can be found elsewhere on the BONPS Features page. BONPS was instrumental in the preservation of Kelley’s Point Battery. For more, see our Kelley’s Battery Page on the sidebar.
Sneak preview of the gunboat USS Springfield (Tinclad #22), which I've been picking AndyHall's brains on whilst building. Scale is 1:124th, with most of the salvaged parts from the Robert E Lee riverboat.
Sneak preview of the gunboat USS Springfield (Tinclad #22), which I've been picking AndyHall's brains on whilst building. Scale is 1:124th, with most of the salvaged parts from the Robert E Lee riverboat.
You flatter me, Sir, but thank you. I have one photo to work from and Andy's treatise on how these ships actually work.
What I've notice is that obscure model builds (where plans are absent or kitbashing has to be done) feel like a variation of Oscar Wilde's "Life imitates Art / Art imitates Life" quip. The original tinclads sound like they were cobbled together, the yards sort of working with what was on hand - which is what I'm doing above, but much smaller and in plastic.
I thought I recognized some of the parts (I built the Lee model a few years ago, and it perches on one of my bookshelves).
I did think a lot about tinclad conversions as I was building it. In fact, one of the reasons I did it to begin with was to become more familiar with the structure of an "unconverted" boat.
If you haven't encountered it yet, I highly recommend Myron J. "Jack" Smith, Jr.'s Tinclads in the Civil War: Union Light-Draught Gunboat Operations on Western Waters, 1862-1865 (Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland & Company, 2009. 431 pp). It's the only book I'm aware of that zeroes in specifically on the "tinclads."