The Magnificent Seven....ACW Painting Part 18

Pook's finest - City class gunboats on patrol

Above are the seven completed City class ironclads for my ACW collection. They have now joined up with their squadron mates - Benton and Essex and are poised at the ready to wrest control of 'the great Father of waters' from the accursed Rebels.

The funnels bands were printed on sticky labels and then applied by hand with a coat of matt varnish to help seal them in. The Baron de Kalb was first known as the St. Louis but when the US Navy took control of the river fleet she had to have a new name as a St. Louis already existed with the fleet.

The Cairo was sunk by a mine but was raised in the early 1960's and is on display in Vicksburg.

USS Cairo in her final resting place.

Carondelet was the vessel that successfully ran the Confederate guns on Island Number 10 at night.

USS Carondelet

I am pleased with the way these have come out as they were built in three batches because first of all I was only going to build 3, then I added another (to accompany Benton and Essex) and finally built the remaining three when I decided that the whole collection needed expanding (and with a view on my future river-based campaigns).

That concludes the pure ironclad phase of the project as the remaining 32 vessels are a mixture of cotton, timber and tin clad vessels with three semi-ironclads thrown in for good measure. The next batch will be of 16 models - 8 for each side - and comprises a mix of rams and gunboats. The final batch will contain the 'walking beam' types (4 of those), the Union timberclads and semi-ironclads and whatever else is left.

I need to think about the land stuff to go with this little lot as well....;-)