French and Indian War ship and landing boats

As part of my preparations for a French and Indian War (FIW) campaign, I have made a two-dimensional ship using leftover MDF sheets from a shelving project. I cut the basic hull shape from two MDF pieces and glued them together. After attaching the masts, I cut out some furled sails from a thin 3mm MDF board, which I typically use for model bases. Finally, I painted the ship.

A landing party.

The ship was intentionally designed in two dimensions (or perhaps 2.5, as it has some depth) to keep to a minimum the tabletop space occupied by a river or the sea in any given scenario. So the model had to fit on a 6-inch strip of blue felt without looking like it had become beached. After completing the ship, I thought it would add to the look by adding a couple of landing boats. The same space constraints applied, the boats were also kept relatively flat and were also scaled down for perspective.

Additional troops are brought ashore.

To create the landing boats, I took a screenshot from a painting titled “The Taking of Quebec” from the National Army Museum's online collection. I focused in on one of the boats unloading troops in the picture. Then imported the image into Google Slides, made a copy and flipped it, before aligning the two halves in a mirror image.

The two halves of the same picture lined up as mirror images.

The image is then folded and sandwiched around some thin card.

After printing, I folded the images and glued them around a piece of cardboard to add strength. Once the glue was dry, I trimmed around the image and attached two 3mm MDF pieces to either side, shaping them to match the boat.

After cutting out the image. Two bits of 3mm MDF were cut and shaped to match the boat. Very fiddly!

It was tempting to leave the boat as just a printed image, but my printer is not that good at printing colour, it all looks a bit faded. So, I decided to brighten up the crew with some paint, almost like colouring by numbers, but in a loose painting style.

A comparison between the painted and printed versions.

The final steps involved using a grey felt-tip pen to go around the edges so they were not white and tidy up any rough areas of the painting. I then added some round plastic rods for the oars and applied a layer of PVA glue to seal everything and give it a nice glossy finish.

Some final touches and oars were added.

Landing parties being taken ashore.

I might use the ship and boats in a scenario before starting the campaign.