All Above Board

The ship building continues on apiece and it's certainly been a productive weekend! Armed with model knife, saw and a big pile of balsa wood, I have been busy building up the fo'c'sle and forward decks.

Thanks to some nice thin sheets of balsa wood, I managed to follow the line of the ship and get a nice curve. This was then strengthened by adding a series of posts to the inside and outside of the fo'c'sle.

Inside the fo'c'sle I've added a series of raised fighting platforms to allow archers and other crew to engage the enemy.

You may have noticed that I've also enlarged the Crow's Nest - more on that later.

Happily I managed to retain one of the trapdoors that leads down inside, when I cut a section out of the middle to shorten the ship.

I plan to leave the top of the ship detachable so that I can access the lower deck and in particular the gun deck. I'll be adding in coffee stirrer planking and raising the firing position for the two guns so they can poke out of the gun ports. The Captain's cabin will need some sprucing up to!

The bowsprit is the flag pole taken from one of the masts that I didn't need - I was quite tempted to add a figurehead of some kind but I decided to stay accurate to the source material and leave it plain.

As well as raised fighting platforms, I've also succeeded in squeezing in the pen for War Tortoise Ajax! The lower spar you can see attached to the mast (the longer one) is destined to become the crane that will lift Ajax out of his pen to deploy him for landing on islands.

All modcons are provided for Ajax - including plenty of fresh leaves to munch!

Ajax's pen is positioned so that the armoured howdah, and more importantly, the two swivel guns have good fields of fire. 



By the sounds of it my Gobbo's might need some anti-aircraft support if the rumours of Bretonnian Pegasus and Sea Elf Eagle carriers are true...

I had hoped to do a nice circular crow's nest like the one from the film, however I was running out of room for the lifting gear needed to hoist Ajax off the ship.

So as well as a bolt thrower, I've installed a winch up there will be attached to the crane's boom via various chains and ropes eventually.

View of the fighting decks from the poop -

Next job is to build up the house like structure that sits on the poop deck - 

I think it's coming together nicely and hopefully should be fairly recognisable when I'm done...