A couple of years back, Warlord Games announced they had acquired the rights for a game called Victory at Sea and were planning to re-release the game as part of their World War II stable of products.
Revenge was laid down in December 1913 by Vickers in Barrow-in-Furness. She would serve in both world wars before being broken up at Inverkeithing in 1948.
For reasons I can't quite put my finger on, the miniatures and the game really appealed to me and I've wound up picking up quite a few ships from the US fleet along with some merchant vessels (and naturally all of thrm are safely tucked away in a storage box assembled but unpainted!).
What's a World War II game got to do with World War I warships though? Well, thanks to Victory at Sea, I stumbled across the stunning sculpting work done by a chap called Lee McColl. Not content with just making ships that fought between 1939 and 1945, Lee has branched out to explore both earlier and later eras of naval combat, creating miniatures of ships from the very dawn of modern battleships in the 1890s as well as the much later Cold-War era and even a few Steampunk and Void vessels too - you can check out the full range here: Thousand Worlds.
The Second World War quite understably garners a lot of focus from hobbyists and the world at large, but I find the late 19th and early 20th century (along with other historical periods as well) to be equally fascinating, so I found myself drawn to the 'super-dreadnoughts' that were built at the dawn of 'modern' naval warfare.
Lee produces miniatures in a variety of scales, from 1/1800 all the way down to 1/6000, but it's the bigger scale stuff that interests me to be honest as it's small enough not to take up a lot of space, but big enough that I can lavish some attention on the details - and these miniatures are incredibly detailed. If you compare the miniature and the profile drawing in the images below you can see just how much Lee has been able to incorporate into the sculpts.
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| By Emoscopes - Own work using: Corel PhotoPaint +Conforms in most respects to the drawings of the sister ship Resolution in Burt, R.A. (2012) British Battleships of World War One ; slight differences (including the takeoff ramps for aircraft) in accordance with alterations described in the same source., CC BY 2.5, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1057338 |
Now, I must make a wee confession here - I actually ordered HMS Renown - (which you can see in the background in the next image - I'll be painting her up soon) but unfortunately there some technical issues with printing it, but Lee very kindly popped a print of HMS Revenge in the package as a wee surprise which is how I found myself as the proud owner of one Revenge-class Battleship. A few weeks later, completely out of the blue, another package arrived - which completely confused me as I didn't remember ordering anything - within which was another Revenge-class Battleship with integrally printed fire control directors, along with a sprue of turrets with the barrels raised in combat configuration.
Having the combat configuration turrets is a real bonus for collectors, painters and gamers who want to build more than one ship of the same class as it means you can add some variety to your fleet - though it's worth noting that only the 1/1800, 1/2400 and 1/3000 scale models come as the ship with the turrets on separate sprues - the smaller ones come in one piece with certain details bulked up to ensure they print correctly.
Now in possession of a pair of Revenge-class ships (sometimes referred to as the Royal Sovereign or R class), I decided that one would represent HMS Revenge - lead ship of the class, while the other would represent HMS Royal Oak one of her sister ships that was also in the Royal Navy's order of battle during the Battle of Jutland in 1916. During the engagement, both Revenge and Royal Oak engaged Kaiserliche Marine battlecruisers with Revenge damaging two of them—SMS Derfflinger and SMS Von der Tann—while Royal Oak scored a hit on a third—SMS Seydlitz. Both ships would survive the battle intact, though the battle was at best indecisive as while the Royal Navy suffered heavier losses, they retained strategic control of the North Sea.
HMS Revenge (06)
HMS Royal Oak (08)
Royal Oak was laid down in November 1913 at HM Dockyard in Devonport. Surviving the First World War, she was sunk by a German U-boat at Scapa Flow in 1939, with the loss of 835 hands.
I've used a little bit of artistic license in painting the pinnaces on the boat decks of both ships - in the reference photos I was able to find online, the hulls were navy grey but I went with a slightly brighter off-white so that the miniatures are a bit more visually interesting. I've also tried to emulate the teak decking with reasonable success, though for future projects at this scale, I think a little more highlighting might go a long way!
Despite these minor points, I'm really pleased with how both vessels have come out and the learning from painting the pair of them will be applied to HMS Renown when I get her on the painting table... I may have also just placed an order for HMS Dreadnought as well...
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