Late T'ang Chinese - Part 8

Late T'ang Chinese - Part 8 The Fleet

As part of my building project I needed to source suitable models for the T'ang Fleet. There's a few makers out there who produce Junks including, Navwar, Langtons, Museum etc. The Tang fleet consists of four different types of vessels, 5 x War Junks, 2 x Horse Transports, 2 x Tower Ships and 1 x River Paddle-wheeler.

The war junks were the easiest to source as I used Grumpy's models as I already had a large bag of them in Project Lead Mountain. They are sold in the UK by East Riding Miniatures to special order as they are deleted from their current catalogue due to the Grumpy's moulds being at the end of their life and not everything is castable.

They are also available from Eureka in Australia casting code GRU-SHIP05

I decided that the fleet would be painted a uniform colour scheme based on traditional Chinese colours of Red and Yellow. 

Grumpy's Junk

Next up are the two horse transports. For these I purchased two large junks from EBay for next to nothing. They turned out to be Museum Miniatures casting code BO08.

Museum Miniatures Junk

The tower ships were problematic as no one makes anything suitable from historic ranges but I came across the now discontinued Spartan Games Ralgard starter fleet. 

Whilst these are designed for fantasy naval games they style is perfect for use as Chinese type ships. They are cannon armed but I can say that these represent the Greekfire weapons of the time instead. The model is right out of the box.

Ralgard Cruiser

The Chinese of this era used man-powered river paddlewheel galley type ships. Theres nothing at all like them available and I only had this line drawing to guide me. 

Since I had used two of the Ralgard cruisers I looked at the frigate models in the box and decided that I would convert one of them. The models sail was far too large so I took a pair of Grumpy's masts and sails to use on the hull. The stern rudder had to be removed so I could model a stern wheel and the model needed sponsons to house the paddlewheels that ran along the hull sides.

Converted Ralgard Frigate