#1
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CSS Montgomery gunboat 1/250 scale
I was reading an old blog post on Civil War Talk and came across a great article by John Wallis. It included a tidbit of information and a good drawing by Ben Shuman of this little gem, the Montgomery. John wrote the following..."The second of three ironclads known to have been constructed at Montgomery, this vessel was a large riverboat conversion. Reported by a Union spy to be at Mobile in late 1864, as armed and armored at least on the casemate. Never commissioned, she may have reverted to mercantile use after the war. Final fate unknown."
I have the basic model more or less done and will now start the flattening and so on. I have not heard of this guy, but it is interesting. She was a bit over 200 feet long and 34 feet in beam, with a draft of more or less of 8 feet. John was guessing at four inch armor, and it was said to have six guns. With those flat side wall and the gun lay out I guess it would be a head on fight if the captain had his choice in the matter. In the Wallis/Shuman drawing their is no aft port or starboard gun ports. Rather this was an oversight, or machinery made such gun ports impractical, I left them off the model as well. I hope John approves of this attempt to bring one of his boats alive!
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#2
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Nice find. I really like the lines of this one. It would make a nice Christmas present for my brother (who is a Civil War buff). Thanks for the show.
John |
#3
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Looks good, Corey!
Wyvern |
#4
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Thanks guys! This model will be in the usual 1/250 scale and will be both a waterline as well as a full hull model (with luck.) It will not have a detailed inside other then the guns and a simulated decking. Johns plans didn't call for any gun port shutters but as this reminds us both of a paddle wheel Arkansas, well, I will give it the option of two part square shutters.
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#5
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Nice to see you putting out a new design. Looking forward to getting a copy of it.
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#6
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Got some more work done. I decided to add a middle box inside the casemat for support and did some basic coloring and texturing. I do not think anything but a little decking and the guns will be visible so I didn't go overboard with internal details. I also added highly detailed guns as an option. Such little things are beyond my building skills however some of you have managed to build these 1/250 scale guns before so I am including them as an option to the rolled tunes. Also included will be detailed paddle wheels for the full hull model. On we go!
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#7
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Corey, that looks great. The Montgomery was one of the mystery ships. For years I had in my interesting but unproven list, then put two or three sets of apparently unrelated notes together and realised that they added up. I couldn't put my finger on why the shape was familiar and it took my good friend Charlie Robbins prompting to realise that John T Shirley was in Montgomery ( in fact he was in the Mobile area too) at the appropriate time - hence the paddle wheel Arkansas - take the wheels away and you will see what I mean.
We think the arrangement of machinery was such that they couldn't mount guns aft of the wheels which are well aft of amidships. Four inch armour was more or less standard, although being superceded by six inch on the big ships at the time. The original crude sketch was done by someone in Mobile who obviously saw the vessel. |
#8
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Further to my previous reply, both this vessel and CSS Powell, a paddle wheel "Bigbee boat" were not commissioned in fact, but it seems could not be crewed. the CSN having run out of sailors at Mobile.
As Powell was neither armed nor armored, it is possible that Montgomery was armed ( she has guns in the sketch) but not armored when the artist saw her, a possible explanation for the wide gun ports. I'll leave it to you Corey if you want to show her with Arkansas style gun ports. |
#9
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BTW Corey's kits are easy to scale down, i've converted mine to 1/600 - I've run out of room.
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#10
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Thanks John! I would like to do the Powell too! I can hardly wait for your book to come out.
1/600? Too small for my eyes! I have trouble building at 1/250 scale!
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