Testing Lake Champlain

 

The Waters of Valcour Bay

 

Yesterday was the 244th anniversary of the Battle of Valcour Island, where Benedict Arnold led a small fleet of hastily built gunboats and ships against an also hastily built fleet of British vessels located on Lake Champlain between Vermont and New York.  While the battle ended in an American defeat, it also ended the 1776 campaign season for the British attempting to come down out of Canada to take Fort Ticonderoga and Mount Independence.

The anniversary reminded me of the Battle of Valcour Island game that I had been putting together last year.  In September, I build the American ship Enterprise.  I had so much fun with that build, that a couple of weeks later I assembled the HMS Inflexible.

Over the winter, I dabbled a bit with putting together the game.  War Artisan's Workshop has a great set of papercraft ships, covering the vessels that took part in the battle, as well as a free set of naval rules called Away Boarders!  My original intention was to build both the American and British Fleets, a game board, and some custom player sheets then play out the battle this year on or near the anniversary date.

Unfortunately, I didn't make much progress on this project.  I ordered a couple more ship kits, and started to assemble them, and played a bit with creating a board.  Away Boarders! uses a sort of grid system, with dots in triangular formations representing ship locations.  I wanted to create a board that both looked good, and was functional with the rules.  The above photo was the result of my one test.  A 2'x2' piece of hardboard was sprayed with a rattle can of greenish-blue texture paint that I had used on the bases of the two ships that I build.  I then used a white paint pen to add very small dots in the grid system used for the game.  Overall, I liked the look, however, that's all the progress I have.

With this project in mind again, maybe I'll add it to my winter project list and see about hosting a Valcour Island game on the 245th anniversary.

Year End - 2019

2019 saw my first full year of keeping this blog.  Posts are somewhat infrequent and scattered, but I've been able to stick with it.

On the reenacting front, I was able to attend 8 events in kit this year, and one as a spectator.  A couple of the gatherings were private get-togethers, and several were official Warner's Regiment events.  It's difficult to pick a favorite this year, though presenting a talk to the public while having a chicken standing on my head at Hubbardton does sort of stand out.

For sewing projects, I was able to complete an outfit for G to wear, though she keeps growing, so we'll need to do it again this year.  Another yearly ritual seems to be breeches.  This past year it was a pair for a friend.  This coming year I'll need to replace mine again.

On the gaming side of things, we have a few games of Wings of War, plus several board games, but no major games yet.  I did get a lot of painting done (for me), completing about 61 28mm figures, which is an increase from last year.  I also built a few small pieces of terrain.  This coming year I have a couple of focused projects to concentrate on.  The first is the Battle of Valcour Island, using paper-craft miniatures and rules from War Artisan, and the second is a go at a 6mm scale Battle of Hubbardton, at 1:1 figure scale (roughly 1,500 troops per side).  I've found a few guys who may be interested in playing some historical scenarios, so I'm going to put some effort into getting those games going.

Historical research this year was light.  Other than my usual general reading on various events and period crafts, I did get to visit the Vermont State Archives to look through Ira Allen's survey book.  That was a pretty cool moment.  Unfortunately I wasn't able to make it to the School of Instruction in Pennsylvania, hosted by the Department of the Geographer to the Army.  I'd really like to attend that one day, so I'm going to look into it again this year.

Overall, 2019 was a pretty good year, hobby-wise.  I'm looking forward to continuing in 2020.

HMS Inflexible

1:300 Scale - HMS Inflexible, Lake Champlain - 1776

I enjoyed building the Enterprise so much that I decided to take another ship in the same scale.  War Artisan's Workshop sells a whole fleet of ships that took part in the Battle of Valcour Island.  Each printable ship kit is currently available for $5.00.  I took the plunge and decided to tackle the largest of the British vessels that took part in the battle, the HMS Inflexible.

Inflexible with a U.S. Quarter for scale.

The Inflexible was a 180 ton, 80' long three-masted ship armed with eighteen 12 pound guns.  What amazes me is that she was not built on Lake Champlain, where she fought.  Instead, she was built in Quebec City, then moved in pieces to St. Johns, where she was reassembled and launched.

The Continental Sloop-of-War Enterprise tries to outrun the British.

The photo above gives some idea what the Continental Navy on Lake Champlain faced during the fight for control of Lake Champlain n 1776.  The Enterprise was one of the American's larger ships (a few were a couple of feet longer).

Completed Hull next to the finished Enterprise.

Constructing the hull of the ship was pretty straight forward.  The pieces were printed, folded, glued, and in my case, painted due to low ink on my printer.  I decided to use toothpick bits for cannon this time around, which looked a little large, but from a distance give the impression of a well-armed vessel.

Building one of the masts.

Building the masts and sails was also fairly simple.  The instructions that come with the kit list the sizes of the pieces you need, and each it cut from readily available material.  In this case, I used floral wire, toothpicks, and a bamboo skewer.  Rigging is black thread that's been run through some PVA glue and allowed to dry.

Bow Spirit, Main Mast, and Mizzen Mast in place.

Rigging the Inflexible was the most difficult part of this build.  First, there's a lot of lines!  Next, my thread wasn't really cooperating.  Third, my glue wasn't drying fast enough to keep things in place.  Overall, it took me about a week to complete the rigging, and I'm still not happy with it.  It's loose in places, but really, from a distance, it doesn't look too bad.

So, another build complete.  I'm really enjoying these tiny ships.  I think I'm going to purchase another one soon.

HMS Inflexible, port side.

Continental Ship Enterprise

Enterprise - 1:300 scale paper model.

Over the last couple of days, I made an attempt at trying something different for me.  Generally, I'm not much of a naval modeler, and I don't think I've ever made a paper model before.  Now I can successfully say that I've completed a naval paper model.

Port side, with Quarter for scale.

In May of 1775, Colonel Benedict Arnold and his men, during the opening months of the American Revolution, captured the Canadian port of St. Johns, and with it, the Sloop-of-War George.   The George was renamed Enterprise, and used by the Continental army to secure Lake Champlain.


On the 11th of October, 1776, the Enterprise, along with Arnold's small fleet of recently built ships and gunboats, took part in the Battle of Valcour Island.  The battle ended as a defeat for the Americans, with several vessels sunk, scuttled, or captured.  Enterprise, however, escaped, and made her way back to Crown Point, and later Ticonderoga.

In July of the next summer, with the British seizing Fort Ticonderoga and moving against the Continental Army, Enterprise was used to help evacuate the residents of the fort south to Skenesborough (now Whitehall, NY), while the main body of the army retreated across the Lake into what is now Vermont.  The evacuation fleet, unfortunately for the Americans, was overtaken by the British, and Enterprise was run aground on the 7th of July, 1777, to prevent her capture.

Posing with a Vermont commemorative coin.

The model that I built comes as a free printable download from War Artisan's Workshop.  This ship is part of the site's Great Lakes 1:300 Scale collection.  Having never built something of this scale before, and not knowing much about naval building and ships in general, I actually found this to be a pretty enjoyable build.  There are certainly some fiddly bits (tweezers would have come in handy), but taking is slow and careful resulted in a very nice model that looks cool on my desk, and seemslike it is actually robust enough to be used for wargaming.

Now, do I purchase the other models and refight Valcour Island?