NZ Wars - the Royal Navy (2)

I had intended to post some more maori today, but I realised I'd only photographed half the pack, so those will have to wait until the weekend.  So time for some Brits instead!  Empress have released several packs of Royal Navy types for the New Zealand Wars.  I painted up a rocket crew last year (and some Indian Mutiny types I used as stand-ins) and have now finished the 3 packs of tars on foot, one of which is a command/characters pack (see left).   These are crisp figures, pretty easy to paint.  Information readily available in print or on the internet as to  the precise uniform of the RN in the 1840s seemed pretty thin.  There's some useful information in the old Osprey MAA "The Royal Navy" and Roly Hermans has a lot of good stuff here.  Unlike Roly, I chickened out of the light blue collars and decided to add some variety to the colour of the scarves as well.  I suspect that the scarves were black, but I wanted to have a non-uniform "been out on campaign for years" look and so gave some figures red and light blue scarves.  A couple of the sailors also have off-grey shirts to add more variety.  The lieutenant and petty officers are in regulation dress, though - black scarves all round.   The blue used is the Foundry "British Royal Blue 74" palette.  Once varnished, this goes quite dark and the highlights becomes pretty subtle, which works well for RN uniforms.

These are useful figures.  I'm sure they could be used for the First Carlist War, which saw British sailors deployed on land several times, and probably most periods from 1820 to the late 1850s.   In the 1840s NZ Wars, sailors hauled cannon off their ships to be used in sieges of pas, but they also fought as infantry (in effect), particularly in the defence of Kororareka and the attack on Ruapekapeka.  The latter battle involved some 340 men drawn from four Royal Navy ships and one vessel from the East India Company's fleet.

Twelve figures. Painted March 2015