"Fort Sumter has been fired upon......my regiment leaves at Dawn......" or something like that! Yes, the recent flurry of 1/2400th activity has seen me leaving my regular projects to the side, and concentrate on the flavour of the moment, here in the shape of a rough idea for a scratch-built Civil War Fort.
Probably more Fort Humpter than Sumter, I thought I'd sketch out a generic design based on the famous original, that might serve in some ship-to-shore action with the Tumbling Dice Ironclads.
A quick bit of internet searching found the U.S. National Parks Service site for the original, which has some very useful contemporary and modern views of the fort and its close compatriots, alongside some plan drawings:
A base width of 319 feet would see such a fort smaller in length than the large Kalamazoo Monitor seen in a previous post, so not much room for Columbiad guns, even if it is more to scale! As usual, therefore, I threw mathematics out the window, and went with what might look right.
I wanted to go the whole hog and have room for some scratch built artillery on the casemates, so I plumbed for a 120 x 120mm base card and freehanded a semblance of a fort as you see above.
Next up, some of that cell-centre packing card provided the start of walls, both internal and external:
and with the help of some blue-tac, we have, hey presto, the beginnings of something fairly suitable, I hope:
To give an idea of scale, I've thrown a TD Corvette and an ASV23 Stern Wheel Paddle Steamer into the photo, as it progresses, it should shape up to be quite a centrepiece for any Ironclad battle:
Alright, who am I kidding? It's not likely to go on when completed and win any model competition prizes, but will give a flavour of a contemporary fort for this new subsidiary project - obviously a long way to go yet, and I'm already distracting myself by sketching out some earthen batteries / artillery emplacements as we speak; but not bad so far for only twenty minutes or so of fiddling around - definitely more to come on this soon, so stay tuned!
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