General de Brigade

[baxterj]

Gents,

I am currently painting the delightful AB landing party set. For those who haven’t seen this, it consists of a resin ships boat with sailors rowing, seated marines/infantry, a carronade with crew in the bow and a man steering. The landing party itself has marines and 7-8 sailor variants, including an officer and midshipman.

Anyway I have painted the marines (using officers from the Brit Pen inf range) and have based them as standard line infantry on 2 x 4 figure bases. My question is how would you base the sailors? My thoughts are that they wouldn’t form up as drilled infantry and would be in a looser formation. I don’t know this for a fact, but would it be logical for each ships party to have the formed marines in the centre with sailors on each flank?

I wouldn’t think that the sailors would be in a close order – what about 4-5 figures loose over a 6 figure base?

Also how would you rate them in GdeB. I appreciate that they wouldn’t be much use in a set piece battle, but in a storming party or holding coastal defences as part of larger game, they add a nice touch. -1 for firing would be fair as they couldn’t trained as well as line infantry and would have a motley group of weapons, but +1 in melee and +1 for morale seems reasonable.

Thoughts?

John

[RAMCSEARCH]

All very personal decisions I would think, and most probably scenario specific ! They would be great for a small skirmish game

For the 28mm scale Britannia do a great range with ships !

http://www.britanniainkerman.com/brit/frontpage/siteintroindex.htm

click on 'products' and then Britannia rules the waves.
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Simon W

[Von Kleist]

John

Have read a fair bit of Napoleonic naval and in particular the life of Thomas Cochrane, who was the basis for Horatrio Hornblower, excellent story and highly recommend reading about him, and I would really only note a few things.

Firstly the numbers of crew and marines on ships was relatively low. At best you are looking at a battalion of 800-1000 sailors and only 100 marines, and this is for the 1st Rates, much less as the ship classes go down. This is also taking the entire crew off and leaving no one on board.

Secondly, historically they really never fought in standard actions so as for basing I'd say do the marines and sailors on skirmish bases and use them as a strong skirmish screen. +1 morale and +1 shooting for marines. Standard morale and +1 melee for sailors, shore parties often performed well but usually under the protection of their ship. Cochrane and his small frigate took the fort of Mongat with some Spanish guerillas and stopped the entire French army of Duhesme from advancing along the coast road but they had the protection of the Frigates' guns and the terrain was against the French.

So in all I'd say if you want historical accuracy make them strong skirmishers but if you want a bit more of a hollywood/tv type colourful unit for GdB then I'd say base it with the sailors in the centre companies and the marines providing the light and grenadier companies. Definitely run them as grand bande.

Hope this has helped
Martin

[baxterj]

Thanks gents.

Simon, I used the pic in the Front Rank site on which to base the ships boat paint job.

Martin, have read a bio of Cochrane plus a few others. I would only be looking at a couple of ships complements, say 8 Marines and 16 sailors = 24 all up = 480 men which you could probably translate as two-three frigate's contributions.

John