Cruising down the River....

CSS Atlanta - derived from the design of the unfinished CSS Mississippi

....on a Sunday afternoon....

Well not exactly, but I thought I had best mention the state of play in respect of my river based ACW scratch built collection. CSS Louisiana and Mississippi are now at the fitting out stage of funnels, hatches, pilot houses and gun ports. The Louisiana is in fact merely needing the 16 gunports to be ready so they are both very close to completion. Of the two ships I would say that I am on firmer ground with the Louisiana in respect of what she actually looked like - the Mississippi is very much a best guess although the design was later used for the CSS/USS Atlanta (yes, she was another ship that served 'under two flags') so that gives us a clue as to how she was configured. The picture above is of the Atlanta - the Mississippi has a lot more artillery (20 guns in fact!) with 3 guns facing forward and aft and 14 on the broadside (7 a side). She also has two funnels mounted in tandem.

I hope to have these two finished over the next few days and will then tackle the 3 cotton clad gunboats prior to the grand construction finale of the USS Tuscumbia and USS Chilicothe.