The Whydah Gally Tutorial Pt 1

Today is Juneteenth, a holiday commemorating African-American emancipation from slavery in the US.  I thought it would be fitting to give a sneak peak of my model of the Whydah Galley. The Whydah was a slave ship captured by the pirate Black Sam Bellamy in March of 1717 after a three day, three hundred mile chase through the seas between Cuba and Hispanola. While the Whydah's captain had already sold most of the African captives into slavery, when the pirates arrived there were still fifty slaves onboard (according to some sources). Every one of those African captives, when offered the choice, joined up with Bellamy's crew, which according the they Whydah Pirate Museum was among the most diverse and most democratic of pirate crews.

I've spent the last few weeks diligently working on this model of the Whydah. I hope to have it ready for my art show at the local branch of the library, which will be up for the month of July. I followed the same procedure I used in previous models, though I based it on paintings, engravings, and other models purporting to be of the Whydah, took my time and added a lot more details than I have before. 

Thats all for now, as I said, a quick sneak peak. Next  I'll paint the details, add the rigging and sail. Later, I'll share those updates as well as a full tutorial of how I build this.

Check out the Tutorial Pt 2 to see how I finished this model.

                Down with Slavery, and Up with Freedom!!!

Previous posts which mention the Whydah and Sam Bellamy.

Why Pirates of the Golden Age?

Scratchbuilding the sloop Marianne and the Sultana Galley (Tutorial)

Assault Guards and Civil Guards

This week, I took some photos of two of my Spanish Civil War security forces: Guardia de Asalto (Assault Guards) and Guardia Civil (Civil Guards). During the Spanish Civil War, Assault Guards and Civil Guards fought on both sides of the conflict. As the war went on, each side reorganized their security forces, sometimes updating the uniforms. I've painted my security forces in the pre-war uniforms which would have been worn in the first months of the war.

The first set of photos is of the Assault Guards. Before the war, this unit operated in urban areas, often repressing workers movements. It must have been strange for both the officers and the radical syndicalists to find themselves on the same side of the barricades in the summer of 1936.

These assault guards are from a variety of plastic sets. Some are from Barcelona Universal Models, but most are converted from WWI sets.

This MG teams was originally from the HAT Industrie Russian WWI heavy weapons set. Most of the riflemen around the MG crew are from BUM...

Such as this second MG, which were originally SCW soldiers before I gave them new heads.

I have a few Assault Guards on horseback, from BUM.

 I also made a group of seated Assault Guards out of WWI Russian artillery riders. They are seated on a removable platform, so they can be swapped out of the truck for various other factions, as the scenarios require.

The Assault Guard's command piece is from a plastic WWI set.

As are the most of artillery crew and the mortar team.

While most of the Assault Guards are converted pieces from WWI sets, it is not so easy to convert plastic sets into Civil Guards, due to their unique hats.

Civil Guards were the rural police of the Spanish government. Like the Asaltos, they found themselves on both sides of the war.

Almost all of my Civil Guards are from BUM sets, such as these riflemen by the pig pen. A lot of these are flimsy resin pieces, which often suffer broken gun barrels. 

These grenaders are of the same flimsy BUM resin. The SMG-carrying officers they are standing with, however, are nice metal pieces from Irregular Miniatures.

This group is of the same mix.

It was a happy coincidence that I arranged my security forces on either side of this farmers' pig pen.