W is for ♫♪♪♫ Well, There's a Small Boat, Made of China . . .

. . . and a silver one, covered in gold! ♪♫♪♪

 

It's chapter three of the 'Brown Water Navy'

 

Chapter one - https://smallscaleworld.blogspot.com/2018/09/b-is-for-brown-water-navy.html

Chapter two - https://smallscaleworld.blogspot.com/2020/04/g-is-for-growing-brown-water-navy.html

These are very different from the previous (and each other), yet strangely similar, the smaller being the sort of chopstick-rest, a smart Chinese restaurant will let you take, at the end of the meal, as a keepsake of your dining experience, and people collect the rest in their own right. A simple glazed porcelain, in 'Blue & White', it's similar to the boats in chapter one!

 

While the other was inherited from my late Mother, and follows a common pattern, so, while very-much a handmade and hand-finished item, certain of the components were 'mass-produced', along the lines of a factory process, but at a craft level where things changed from time to time, or varied between batches/regions. The best bit it the crewman, who's about 25mm!

 

There's also a lovely cloisonné turtle on the deck, I'm not sure if it is a mate of the pilot, or supper! I guess it depends whether it is on its back, or the right way up! It doesn't actually belong to the model, of course, and the stand is carved wood, I wondered at the crudity of the carving, but suspect a deliberate thought, to represent rough seas?

 

This is referred to as silver nef, but is very much the late 19th/20th century substitute for the real deal, a growing middle-class with disposable income wants what the truly-wealthy have, but can't afford a large three-mastered galleon on wheels, so settles for something like this, or a filigree gondola!

 

And, also, very much a tourist piece, but up-market tourism, of the colonial administrators returning to the motherland at the end of a posting, type thing, or presented to someone upon retirement, or posting-out, you get the idea. And it needs a really good clean, as it is silver and silver-gilt under all that oxidation and dust!

 

The basket for the fish, being protected by the 'top hat' outer, has kept the shine of the gilding a little better than the rest of the vessel! You can also see from this, that the ropes and ties on the vessel seem to be twisted copper wire, some of which hasn't taken the plating terribly well?

 

The Chinese Junk style sail on mine is a pressed pattern of woven palm-fronds, while a couple of similar raft-vessels I've found on the Internet have actual interwoven, fine silver ribbon, which must have taken someone, probably a kid, hours and hours!

 

Both vessels are of simpler construction (apart from the intricate sails), and have a lower freeboard than mine, but they are also 12-trunks across the deck, to the nine bamboo poles of mine. Although both seem to be incomplete, so it's not a fair comparison, and I only use them to confirm their ubiquity, out there, rather than work out the who's, why's and what for's, of things which would have been made in different places, maybe decades apart.

 

♪♪♫♫ Everywhere you go'ho'hoh, always take a navy, take a navy, with yoooou! ♪♪♫♪

G is for Growing . . . 'Brown Water Navy'!

In the bag that was part of Peter's latest parcel, were these three, which are a perfect addition to the fleet we saw here, although neither plastic toys, nor celluloid tourist trinkets, being manufactured of a base-metal or whitemetal, probably with a high lead-content?

Following the patterns of the celluloid keepsakes, these will probably be the next price-bracket up for tourism; ceramic and ivory being above these, silver-neff at the top? A bamboo-raft punter who looks like one of those fishermen who use trained ducks (. . . cormorants?), a small fishing vessel with three crew and a larger vessel with two crew - I'd like to know how they pulled-in that ton of fish without a winch!

From the other side; the five loin-clothed fishermen are all the same basic sculpt, the arms and legs bent to fit their final position/task, the punter seems to have been built in situ with a soldering iron, or at least - his legs/feet have been?

The 'real' Brown Water Navy liaise with a shore-patrol to check out two fishing boats, paying no heed to the old man on a raft . . . death can come quickly to the un-alert, but when your imperialist occupiers are supplied by Baravelli (figures) and Hong Kong (vessel), what can you expect!

B is for Brown-water Navy

Quite by accident and without noticing I seem to have built a small fleet of Vietnamese Resistance vessels, gun-smuggling, for the use of!

Top left is a Hong Kong-made cake decoration fisherman on his little boat, based on earlier lead models originally used to decorate bonsai or miniature rock-gardens. Bottom right we have the small vessel from the Atlantic 'Mao and the Chinese Revolution' sets while the other vessel in both shots is a celluloid 'ivorene' touristy keepsake thing (like the little wagons) which may be factory painted, but I suspect a war-gamer's brushwork; from the matt-finish and accuracy!

Seven pieces for the factory glued one, the other having five-pieces for self-assembly in a plastic which doesn't like gluing! The  first - fisherman's boat - is a single moulding with a wire rod, a second wire-rod for fixing in the gravel/cake has been removed.

And the ironic thing is, while I think of them/present them as Vietnamese, one's actually Hong Kong-Chinese, the others Japanese and the third an Italian rendition of a Chinese boat and all pretty fictional/out of scale with the real things; but they look the part!