L is for London, HMS London - Gallipoli and the Dardanelles

These all come from an old envelope with an Edwardian stamp and the faded message "Taken aboard HMS London" in pencil, although some of them have clearly been taken ashore at 'Anzac Cove'. My Grandfather, eventually Admiral Hall, was conscripted across from the Merchant Marine (in 1915 - I think?) and served on HMS London, from Wikipedia;

"HMS London was the lead ship of the London class of pre-dreadnought battleships built for the British Royal Navy. The Londons were near repeats of the preceding Formidable-class battleships, but with modified armour protection. The ship was laid down in December 1898, was launched in September 1899, and was completed in June 1902. Commissioned the same month, she served with the Mediterranean Fleet until early 1907. She was assigned to the Nore Division of the Home Fleet for nearly a year before transferring to the Channel Fleet. Rendered obsolete with the emergence of the new dreadnoughts in late 1906, she underwent an extensive refit in 1909, after which she served with the Atlantic Fleet. She was assigned to the Second Home Fleet in 1912 as part of the 5th Battle Squadron, and was temporarily fitted with a makeshift ramp for experiments with naval aircraft until 1913.

Following the outbreak of World War I, the squadron was attached to the Channel Fleet before London was detached in March 1915 to participate in the Dardanelles Campaign, supporting ANZAC forces as they landed at Gaba Tepe and Anzac Cove on 25 April 1915. She remained in the Mediterranean, supporting the Italian Royal Navy in the Adriatic Sea until October 1916. Returning to the United Kingdom, she was inactive until being converted to a minelayer in early 1918, which entailed the removal of her main armament. She served with the Grand Fleet's 1st Minelaying Squadron until the end of the war. Placed in reserve in 1919, she was eventually broken up for scrap in 1920."

The photographs appear to be 'official' or semi-official enough to assume there will be copies in national archives somewhere (IWM or NMM), and apart from the developers stamp and a penciled number (suggesting they are from a larger set) there is nothing else to date or place them, so I can only post them here with minimal blurb and the requested acknowledgement to Alfieri!

Convoying

Seems to be a ship's service with the ship's company to the left, a god-botherer and some officers in the middle and soldiers (presumably ANZAC's) to the right. I don't think this is on London - too many turrets?

Some soldiers getting a bit of sun on deck - note the shadows.

Bombardment in support of the landings?

Landing Fleet

On Board Ship

Summer dress.

Winter dress.

My brief research seems to say London only lost seven crew in the whole war, each death having a different date, so likely to be accidental or medical/natural causes rather than a major action; she had a 'quiet' war, however, there is a second series of Dardanelles shots, which I packed, sealed and took to storage before remembering I wanted to scan them as well (so we'll have them in a year or two now!), among which was a shot which appears to show one of the main six-inch guns blown-up (overheating, cooked-off round, lucky Turkish shot?), which - in doing so - appears to have damaged the pom-pom/12-pounder (?) in the center of the anchor-chain capstan (?) to the left here; that is not their normal configuration!

So; it may be that what we see here is someone getting an award for actions undertaken in that incident? Equally it could be something as boring as a pay-parade, they seem to be receiving something in their hats, and there's a queue behind the guy in the center.

ANZAC Positions

Remarkably similar to the scenes at the end of 'Gallipoli' the movie as Mel Gibson's 'Franc' is running through the line to try and get the message through.

One of those Light Horsemen?

A limber, a stack of bicycles (?) and landing barges in the background.

Relaxing on an unloading pontoon.

Look at the pile of stores at the foot of the scarp.

The previous shot must have been taken from the far pontoon, looking across the nearer pontoon toward where the photographer is standing in this picture, the stores now to the left.

A landing barge up against a pontoon

Eventually I will hand all this archival material to a museum, but this is only a fraction of what I've found, and while most of it is going to storage without being scanned, I will get it all up here over the next few years, god willing! There is a fascinating sequence taken off Murmansk/Archangel, obviously of the 1919 Anglo-American invasion of Russia (one of the last boxes we had to tick! There's only about 15 nations on the planet we haven't at least shot-at now!), which shows shell-damage (presumably from 'Red' shore-batteries), one hole being inspected by a member of the Queen Alexandra's Royal Naval Nursing Service, who was on-board ship! While the bulk of it is later inter-war or RIN/IN stuff.

U is for Unknown Paratrooper and Other Animals

Another lazy-post in that I don't need to do much more than post someone else's photographs, but of interest, if only in the hope that if anyone knows Lieutenant Cole, who served at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, probably in 1969, they might show him these (I can even let him have the originals) if he's still around, he'll be in his late 70's now, I guess.

Whether the snakes were unwelcome visitors to the base or a training area/range, or part of some survival course's training equipment . . . or menu (!) I don't know, but Lieutenant Cole seems pretty at ease handling them, although he's staying pretty alert in the second shot I feel?

Probably taken - as I say - in Fort Bragg or it's environs in 1969, but I don't know who by (so the LT may have had his own copies?), and showing - I think Eastern Diamond-Backed Rattle Snakes? In the first shot certainly, the other two . . . it's hard to tell in B&W! The shots could have been taken earlier, my father had several trips over there I think, helping Charlie Beckwith, so these shots could be from '66 or around thereabouts?

In 1969 Dad had a six month liaison-exchange at Ft. Bragg, and took Mum, they were billeted with a US army officer's family I believe, but my brother and I were left here, staying with friends . . . we got smart orange/black sneakers (early All Stars?) and army-green tank-tops with Staff Sergeants stripes out of the deal though!

As Mum had possession of these photographs; I'm guessing they are from that visit? Also as a young woman, she had had a pet Grass Snake (Jezebel) - which she wore round her neck - in London in the 1950's, so would have enjoyed seeing these.

That's it, a couple more curious 'tears in rain' among the many I've been unearthing . . . Gallipoli later.

T is for The Author - Circa 1979!

Someone posted this on Faceplant, after it's hiatus yesterday - never has so much outraged-panic been wasted on such a technical non event, by so many, for so little gain!

Me (right) with my two best mates, a disco queen from Sri Lanka, a Mod/Rude Boy from Greece, via-Brentwood and a scruffy little runt 'Greebo' from Hampshire, the three of us were pretty inseparable for two/two-and-a-half years, we never joined any of the cliques or 'gangs' so tended to hang-around together. You're looking at a shipping magnate, a Colonel in the Rifles and err . . . a toy Blogger! Is that a mullet? Christ, I look like a Redneck!

News, Views Etc . . . Links - My Modern Met

We may have had one or two of these before, but I've been putting them to one side since the start of the first lock-down, or the last link-post . . . whichever came last!

Babbacombe Model Village - Invasions

 

Hank Cheng - Dioramas

MMM - Art Toys

Anonymouse - Mini-mice World!

MMM - Humango Snow Globe

Gregory Grozos - Pocket Watches

Josua Smith - Urban Architecture

Josua Smith - Exhibition Curation (various artists)

Drew Leshko - Urban Architecture

Erin Sullivan - Preiser Again

Peeowhy Hymoaad - More Preiser

Tatsuya Tanaka - Preiser goes Covid!

Tatsuya Tanka - Star Wars

Gillian Corcoran - Lost Forest Wearable Miniatures

Andy Acres - Shadow Box Dioramas

Salavat Fidai - Carved Pencils

Salavat Fidai - GoT Pencils

Takanori Aiba - Fantasy Models

MMM - Six of the Above (or previously seen here) Artists with Video Links

News, Views Etc . . . more Giant and 6H-4!

I've posted a quickie over on the 'But is it Giant' Blog, not quite as complete as I'd like, as I've mislaid one of the samples! However, with a few links to previous posts here at Small Scale World, I've cobbled-together a post on  . . .

. . . the defence works of Giant, with the closer copies - there's tons else in other scales!

As there is an additional (to the above screencap) mention of Dragons' Teeth at the end of the post, I've used it as a thin excuse for a barley credible segue to another of Hugh's Handy Helpful Home Hobby Hints - No.4 no less!

Dragons' Teeth

Needed:

• ·         1x diamond-corrugated meat (or fish) pack from your local supermarket, corner shop, convenience store or Eastern import emporium!
• ·         1x washing-up liquid
• ·         1x washing-up brush
• ·         1x burst of elbow-grease
• ·         A pair of scissors or a craft-knife 

Instructions:

• ·         Eat, or otherwise dispose of the meat . . . or fish!
• ·         Clean the packaging
• ·         Dry the packaging
• ·         Cut the diamond-corrugated section away from the rest of the packaging
• ·         Et viola!

Obviously you can then cut them into blocks or strips, or to fit round the corners of bunkers or ends of bridges &etc. I weight mine with blobs of Plasticine in the hollow underside before painting, but two-part epoxy might work, or basing will keep them firmer, you might also use the sheet to mass-produce plaster versions?

The example above produces slightly short, flat Dragons' Teeth (but big enough to 'ground' AFV's in 20mm, 1:76^th, 1:72^nd and 28mm war-gaming scales/sizes), but different food packers use different designs so there are others out there, these were found in a Polish/Turkish deli' (yes - of course Brwreakshit was a nonsense, but we're stuck with its bigotry for a while now!) a month or so ago, but I first made some in around 1980, which look almost the same!

News, Views Etc . . . Knights on Offer!

Latest press-release from Barney at Herald Toys and Models;

 "...for October only, to welcome Autumn, we have a specialist SALE of most of our Britains/Herald Swoppet knights, both mounted and on foot. In all there are over 30 sale items, with many dismounted figures, in complete near mint condition, now priced at £14.99 each (compared with £21.99 for the same figure via our eBay shop)."

U is for Uniform Info!

The title of a favorite page in the old Military Modelling magazine (which I believe has recently announced it's demise?), but absolutely fitting to this post.

I have found among my mothers possessions all sorts of things she never mentioned, one of which was this, which I initially assumed was Great Aunt Nina's (my mother's GA, I'm not sure what her relation to me is, great aunt once removed, great-great aunt?), better known as Helena Hall, an artist/designer who worked with Eric and Gordon Gill and others of that late Arts & Craft/ early Modernist movement in Sussex, but it's not really her style (I have a lot of her work from my Mother's late cousin Betty (of odd jobs in occupied Vietnam!)), so I suspect it's actually the work of John Henry Sheren Hall, one of my Grandfather's brothers.

He was a known naive artist (also of Suffolk) but these are quite different from his pastels and watercolours, so, because I'm not sure, and know nothing else about it, I'm just putting them up here for the figure modellers and painters, as they are clearly studies from the 1900-30's (some clues suggest pre-WWI and no later that 1922 - the amalgamation of the two Life Guard's regiments?) of uniforms, mostly colonial-ceremonial, but one or two fit WWI era regular barrack/parade-dress.

There are other things in the sketch book, none signed, which we will look at another day, and the book itself is tiny, an imperial size closest to modern A6 or A7 (or 'policeman's notebook') which made it easy to crop them all at the A4 setting, and is a 36 leaf George Rowney 'Cartridge Ring Bound' (No.7268) undated, but it might help date them.

The sketches are all pen & ink with some having added colour, probably watercolour, or thinned gouache? I hope you enjoy; I think they are rather lovely.

12th Lancers

7th Dragoon Guards (left), 60th (Royal American) Regiment of Foot (right)?

60th was AKA the Kings Royal Rifle Corps (KRRC)

Generic Line Infantry officer

Gordon Highlanders (left), 17th lancers (right)

8th Hussars (left), Gordon Highlanders (right)

Generic Infantry of the line private (left) - a popular pose at the time?

42nd Highlanders 'The Black Watch' (right)

 

I would say these two are better sketches - anatomically - than the rest and may be taken from statues, cigarette cards or something similar?

2nd Life Guards (left) - stable dress? 13th Hussars (right)

The 13th amalgamated with the 18th 'Royal' Hussars after WWI

Field Artillery (left), unknown Guardsman and mascot (right)

The artilleryman's uniform suggests either pre-WWI or Mesopotamian campaign?

 

Again these are superior draftsmanship and may be static studies against the from-life sketches of the majority, his legs and shoulders are distinctive in the majority of the drawings, here they look more 'professional'?

Horse Guards (left), 1st life Guards (right)

16th Lancers

2nd Life Guards

Unknown . . . infantry mess-dress?

Ditto

17th Lancers (left), Royal Canadian Dragoons (right)

Typical - most interesting sketch . . . no notes!

Got to be ANZAC?

Or Southern African units/native 'horse'/militias?

Coldstream Guards (left), RHA (right)

These two are still with us pretty-much unchanged.

P is for Premium Pirates

All change, all change, this is the end of the line!

And I failed! I've had to combine two posts and cancel a third! But it's still been the best ITLAPD so far, indeed I suspect I'll never match it! I've thirty two minutes to blurb-up six images and post them, so all a bit of a rush-job here!

Phoskitos (Spanish chocolate medallions like slices of 'Swiss-roll') premiums of pirates, each is a novelty with some form of action and there seem to be only five to collect

Her trick is a moving arm, to swash her buckle with a large cutlass!

While he is a bobbly-jiggler on a sprung ball-socket! The catch on the back of the barrel . . .

. . . enables a hiding pirate to pop-up when required!

While these chaps (from the Internet) seem to be a swivel-waist and a rowing-action chap who's more in common with the ferryman Charon than a pirate?

Two pictures were too short for a separate post, they would have worked as a series of three! Italian Kinder egg rival Dolci Preziosi produced these as a tie-in with the Pirates of the Caribbean movie!

Ahaaaaaaarrrr me-harties, that's yer lot, oi'l edet the mess lat'errrrr!

P è per Pirati dall'Italia!

So to Canè (Canine = 'dog') and their set; 1474 Pirates! I've wanted these for a while, and needed them on the card to get the 'ship' (read blob of vac-form!), so when I saw one going cheap (They're not that rare, but prices have risen a bit in recent years) I grabbed it with ITLAPD in mind.

Annoyingly, the set only has five poses which is a bit dim of them? Also - given the previous post - orange is worse that yellow to photograph . . . against just about any other colour!

The vac-formed ship replaces a simpler trench which the other sets in this line got, and is manufactured in the same way as Atlantic's, - maybe the same source - with the decoration screen printed onto the sheet before forming, so it gets further distorted (having been distorted as a design trying to anticipate the final shape), especially if it's slightly miss-registered!

The five new chaps, they are copies of the old Fontanini sculpts, almost certainly with permission and have a lot of the signature elements of sculptor Elio Simonetti who worked for Canè while at Fontanini.

We've seen the others before, the pale-blue variation of 'peg-leg' is manufactured from a soft eraser-rubber like material, and the 'Captain' above him is actually a musketeer; the foppish-chap on the other end of the row would also make a good musketeer!

So when you read "–PIRATES is only set that had 5 poses ,been one a “woman”?(pose with hands in heaps and not facial hair ) " you know you've come to the font of all shite! Shite which was translated from the facts in the book being plagiarised!! How many hands? How many heaps? Are they heaps of shite? They're not facial hair! Hahahahahaha! Actually the musketeers only have five poses too, but that makes for ten contemporary figures!

The ship! For imaginative play with younger owners it has some value, but really it's a leery-painted, blobby, simplified model of a wreak!

Yes; I took far too many photographs!

I also crewed it with the still-unknown, but probably cereal premium, might be Quaker, 1:76th scale pirates and they look quite at home!

I - obviously - took them off the card; as I say they aren't that rare, and as it was an earlier one with staples it was very easy, but I then had to clean five or six decades of grime of the card, which I did with a pre-prepared 'wipe', which can be seen on the right after it had done its job!

Which gave me a half-decent card to scan.

Right - that all took longer than necessary; I'd taken far too many photographs . . . I may not get all three remaining posts out, but one can be held back as it was supposed to lead in to a 'mini-season' the next day on another subject altogether, which I definitely haven't got time for at the moment, but there will be two quick posts before midnight, once I've fixed a pizza!

R is for Return - to 'Probably' Redbox?

I mentioned back in 2017 that I'd seen two versions of these some better-fed than others! And that is one reason they remain 'probably' Redbox, the other being that the only commitment to an absolute "Redbox" come from someone who A) I wouldn't trust to give me a weather-report if he'd just stuck his arm out of the window and B) he didn't make clear (or know) which lot he was dealing with?

These are the smaller ones, and have three different base-marks, rowed from the top;

• ·         CHINA
• ·         CHINA 1003
• ·         MADE IN CHINA

As you can see from the figure middle left, the figures are available in both colours, but all poses seem to be mark-specific, so the suggestion - for whatever reason - is that the marks are all on the same tool.

Apologies for the poor photography, but yellow-on-green is another of those colour-combinations I forget to remember don't work! The different marks caused me to look again at the larger ones (which we've seen before here once or twice) and found that they too have different markings!

These, in yellow or blue (so far!) are marked with a plain CHINA, but others are more interesting . . .

. . . these have the same CHINA mark, but an additional letter underneath which in this case and from the left read; I, C, K, D, E & H. There is an additional polymer colour too; silver, and duplicates tie the three colours to all poses with the letter-codes, but no un-coded silvers have turned up (so far!). With 12 (or 14?) poses we could be looking at a sequence going up to L or N?

Yes, Yellow's not much better on black! The chap on the far left came-in recently in a mixed lot and seems to be one of the figures from the mould-your-own plaster fort kit/set I shelfied years ago and thought I'd put on the blog, but I can't find it (it did go to Plastic Warrior) so I've just (16.23) added it below!

As to the others, it's all still speculation, but I think the smaller ones are true fakes, trying to be the 'believed to be Redbox', while those larger ones had at least two contracts, one with the letter-codes, one without. Toy Major often have - usually longer - codes on the stuff they market to the Industry, so they might be in the frame, while Redbox might have used the plain CHINA ones, but the only piratey thing I've seen from them is the ship I shelfied in TKMaxx and that had action figures!

Those 4M pirates, the pose I've found may be a copy (reversed pose, detail loss), or the box art may have a reversed image of a master/test-shot? There are eight poses in the image, and if they were two tools, may only come in one colour each . . . do you have any and what color are yours?

We'll know for next year, I've just bought a mint-one, half-price on feebleBay! And I'll work on . . . or work-on working on, on . . . the 'believed' to be Redbox, to finalise the codes of the larger, and the number of poses, colours and origins of all, hopefully for next year, too.

T is for Piratical Two - Resin Rascals

A notification of a few typo's in the second post today were awaiting me when I finally surfaced this morning - cheers Paul! But nothing has had a final check in 'preview', due to the time constraints and busy weekend, however I managed by 2am to get stuff scheduled 'till 1.30pm today (ten minutes time!), so this is aiming for 2pm/14:00hrs, and along with the other six will probably slip-back, but hopefully I'll get them all done before midnight, so keep popping-back! I'll deal with typo's tomorrow!

This is another post with stuff pulled from the Intro, and deals with the growing pile of poured resin, which I used to have a dim view of; like poured whitemetal it's a cheap technology , however - and unlike hot lead - hasn't become so expensive only executives can indulge in collecting it!

One of my great bugbears (as you will know) is dimwitted stupidity, and you do get it among eBay sellers, particularly those who are not from the hobby! Someone was selling these, they obviously had a stock box full, but had listed three (including the lady-pirate in yellow jacket) as a single lot, while they also had single figure/multiple stock listings, and there was a pair with a more-than-one listing, too, but not including the missing figure!

"Fair-enough" I hear you say; "trying different sales-models to shift them"? But the prices were also all over the place, and the listings were mixed-in with hundreds of lots of household tat and old clothes you had to trawl through! It was far cheaper to get the three (the only one listing the lady pirate) and wait for the other to turn-up cheaper another day . . .

. . . so I paid for the three and waited, what then turned-up was a three without the lady pirate! I was going to give the seller grief, but couldn't be arsed to start a fight with someone who just hadn't thought!

I then spent a few months looking out for the missing figure without much enthusiasm, only to forget it. But when I put all the pirates away the other month and expanded their boxes, there she was! Possibly from Peter Evans at some point (he's helped greatly in the growth of the resin pile!), or from a charity shop, or mixed lot?

Anyway, the point is; four of a known four? Above, by a circuitous route!

Packaging matches other single gift-bag resins seen in The Works (and seen here at Small Scale World); fairies, wild & woodland animals, Christmas stuff (?), but not under Alator as far as I can recall? And it's typical tourist fare isn't it, could be from any gift-shop, from any seaside-town, anywhere/when?

Meanwhile, this had come in, and got itself included in the - previously mention here - Faceplant group discussion on Chinese resin, it's a plain/blank mailer for a set of 12 resin pirates, we have looked at before as part sets. Missing figure from the tray is the rather svelte pirate, top-left in the following image;

Which gives this line-up as a running total with alternate bases and the odd paint shade variation. The point is; if the Chinese can supply this for seaside's, for Turkey, as ceremonials (there are knights to look at another day), why don't we do it here!

They should be cheaper and we wouldn't be propping-up a fascist dictatorship busy with a 'final solution' to it's Uyghurs, or bullying it's neighbours? And it ought then to be even cheaper? It wouldn't be of course, capitalism would price-match to the imports!