Ahoy there me hearties!

Faced with a flat growing ever more cramped thanks to my 28mm obsessions I decided to call a temporary halt to the Waterloo project and make some space. For ages I've had a shoebox full of the marvellous Abbots' naval range - half British and half French. I finally had to accept that, lovely fun figs that they are, they don't really fit into my great master plan so they would have to go.  However, in my limited experience of ebay, it seems that unpainted figs often don't do very well, so I decided to paint them. Here are my efforts with the British crews- I've divided them into 6 sets - each with a mix of sailors, guncrew, and marines, so I hope people might find them useful for skirmish games. The basing was a bit of a quandry - presumably a sandy base (which I'd been looking forward to doing) would look odd if the figs were on a ship, and similarly a "decking" base would look odd as they stormed onto the beach! So I've gone for a neutral brown base which could be adapted easily to their eventual owner's whim.

There's some weird white discolouring on some of the bases which I shall have to fix.

Here are all six crews together

It's been lovely to have a break from 1815 - really fun figs to paint - but I'll probably leave the French sailors and Marines for a while and get back to my main project. Hopefully these jack tars will bring in a few pieces of eight which can go towards more Victrix and Perry artillery and cavalry!

Camerons - finished! I promise!

Ok this is the last time I bore you with these guys - I spent the last few days basing them and adding the names of each man to the bases. Even having deducted those known to have been casualties at Quatre Bras there are still over a hundred individuals missing - something to come back to I hope.

Here they are company by company:

No. 1 Company - Commanded by Lt Ewan Cameron (both the senior officers had been wounded at Quatre Bras). (51% casualties)

No. 2 Company - Captain John Cameron has been fatally wounded at Quatre Bras. (50% casualties)

No.3 Company - Commanded by Captain Peter Innes. (49% casualties)

No. 4 Company - Commanded by Lt McPhee - he had been slightly wounded at Quatre Bras but took command at Waterloo. (53% casualties)

No.5 Company (Grenadiers) - Captain Neil Campbell had already been wounded at Quatre Bras and was then killed at Waterloo. (61% casualties)

N0. 6 Company - Commanded by Captain Robert Mackay at Quatre Bras until he was captured. Captain John Sinclair took command of the company at Waterloo and was killed. (46% casualties)

No.7 Company - Commanded by Captain James Campbell who was wounded at Waterloo. (52% casualties)

No.8 Company - commanded by Lt John Powling who died of his wounds in England in October. (44% casualties)

No.9 Company -  Suffered the heaviest casualties of any company at Waterloo. (72% casualties)

No. 10 Company (Light) - Company commander Captain William Marshall had lost an arm at Quatre Bras. (53% casualties)

Command base - flags still to be added. In foreground is Piper Kenneth McKay and Serjeant Major Masteron McIntosh.

Each individual is labelled on the base. Pink lettering = wounded, red = killed or died of wounds.

Not enough space for one long firing line so here they are in 3 lines.

All of the battalion's drummers (except those with the flank companies) stood together behind No.8 company.

Sorry for terrible pics - I wanted to get this done and couldn't wait for any decent light in London. Had the lights on since lunchtime so no chance of taking them outside!