Project | Battle of Lake Erie (Part 1)

As I'm sure you all can see, I've been obsessed with little ships lately. When it comes to painting, I've just been going along, painting an English ship, then a French, a Spanish, an American, and then a grab bag. Not that there's anything wrong with that style, per se, but I wanted to try something a little different. I took some inspiration from JJ over at JJ's Wargames, where he picks a particular battle, then gathers all of the ships involved, models and paints them, and finally creates a suitable scenario.

The last project he chose was the Battle of Camperdown, which is a sizable battle. I, however, am a simple minded man with not enough patience for that (yet). So I've decided to go small-er. Not so small as single ship actions, mind, because that's way too easy to do. Instead I'm taking a look at the War of 1812, specifically the Battle of Lake Erie.

I chose this battle because it's one of the rare fleet engagements in the War of 1812, which is a conflict famous for its single-ship frigate actions. It also helps that all of the ships involved were un-rated (ie small) and are therefore much easier and quicker to paint. Eventually, I'd like to play this as a proper game with additional house rules for flavoring. For now though, we'll focus on the part I can do: the models. And that part requires a little bit of research and a number of compromises.

National Park Service

As far as models go, I'm trying to stay within the Black Seas range of models, and don't feel particularly enthused about finding 3D prints to match the exact ship types and cannons. I don't want to have ship models so specific that someone is asking me what the Niagara is doing outside of the Great Lakes. I want to be able to use these models in other games without issue. With that in mind, I took a trip over to Wikipedia to start laying a foundation. 

So on the United States side of things:

Lawrence (Brig)

Niagara (Brig)

Caledonia (Small Brig)

Scorpion (Schooner)

Ariel (Schooner)

Somers (Schooner)

Porcupine (Schooner)

Tigress (Schooner)

Trippe (Sloop)

For the Lawrence and Niagara I plan to use the standard Black Seas Brig, without any modifications. The Caledonia will use the hull of the Brigantine that I converted, but with the standard Brig masts and sails. Although all of the schooners were not equals, I'm modeling them all with the Schooner kits with no modifications. And finally, the Trippe, listed as a sloop. A sloop covers a wide variety of ships, and although Warlord does produce a Sloop model, I don't think it's the right one for the job. I did think of using one of their gunboats, but figured that was too small. So I settled on a Cutter. 

On the Royal Navy side we have:

Detroit (Sloop-of-war)

Queen Charlotte (Sloop-of-war)

General Hunter (Brig)

Lady Prevost (Schooner)

Chippeway (Schooner)

Little Belt (Sloop)

Both the Detroit and Queen Charlotte will use the converted Sloop-of-War that I made. General Hunter will be a standard Brig. From here things get a little tricky. Post-battle, Perry is famous for the following dispatch:

"We have met the enemy and they are ours. Two ships, two brigs, one schooner, and one sloop."

Which really confuses the issue, as the image above shows Lady Prevost and Little Belt as a brig, Hunter as a schooner, and Chippeway as a sloop, so the numbers don't match. Teddy Roosevelt (yes, the president), has the ships as shown below:

The Naval War of 1812, Theodore Roosevelt

This has the Hunter as a brig, Prevost and Chippeway as schooners, and Little Belt as a sloop, which matches my earlier list but not Perry's quote. So for now, I'm going to stick with the Teddy Roosevelt listing. The image at the very top are the models I've selected for this effort, minus the small brig who was on a paint handle getting worked on. 

The Detroit, Hunter, and Lawrence I already have ready to go using ships I've painted in the past. The two new additions after starting this project are the Little Belt, and literally any of the five American schooners. 

The HMS Little Belt uses the non-armed cutter model from Warlord Games. I added a pair of 12pdr cannons, one on each side. The paint scheme was actually quite fun to do, as I based it on the Friends Good Will, a replica of the vessel that was taken by the British and renamed Little Belt. Nice to move away from primarily yellow. 

The schooner uses my standard US Navy colors. I'll have to add some identification flags to these guys, as otherwise it'll be a pain to know who's who. There'll be seven total schooners in this project by the time I'm done, which necessitated purchasing another box as they come in batches of six. It'll be an interesting challenge painting them up to all be different from each other. I may use some Pirates CSG models as inspiration for colors, as I don't want all of the them to look exactly the same. 

Well that's it for this first round. I won't be exclusively working on this project, as I'm sure I'll need a pallet cleanser after all of the schooners, but going forward I'll be putting the majority of my focus on this project. 

-The Space Dinosaur