SiFi & Fantasy = Steam Punk

[bubbajoe]

Aug 4, 2015 0:16:46 GMT -5 wardster said:

Here's a few pics of some of my "steamie" subjects, from the last few years:

First up, a halfway-serious version of something I called the Steam Atragon ... but which was mostly just a "slightly stretched, reality-wise" version of an actual early real-world Ironclad, called the CSS Manassas. This one was featured in the first volume of the Steampunk Modeller special issues, by the publishers of "Sci-Fi & Fantasy Modeller" out of England.











I'll try to dig up some pics of at least one other steampunk project I'd done, a few years ago. I have some, somewhere ... just not ready-to-go, at this time.

I love the lines on this ...is this a kit? or scratch built...its very nice

[wardster]

Thanks, BubbaJoe!

It's all scratch-built. (But I'd love it, if it was an everyday injected plastic kit, at a half-way affordable price.)

For those who may want to see more of it, there's a bunch more photos of it -- (and hand-drawn blueprints, etc.) -- on PhotoBucket:

s181.photobucket.com/user/Wardster_builds/library/Steam?sort=9&page=1

Believe it or not, even as crazy-looking as this thing is, it's sorta-kinda-mostly "historical". By which I mean, something fairly close to it actually did exist, about 150 years ago. The real thing wouldn't have had the silly face painted on it; or the turret in back; and the bow arguably wasn't that shape -- (although it WAS made for ramming other vessels; and one drawing from 1861 DID show the bow looking exactly like that, from the side view) -- but aside from a few intentional embellishments to sci-fi it up: in many or most respects, what I built above was a very close copy of historical drawings done about 1861 or so; by people who really saw it.

What I'd love to see happen is the real thing get dug up. Historians have known the (approx, within a few miles) last resting place of the CSS Manassas for a century and a half; but no one has made any huge effort to dig it up, and conserve it. Clive Cussler talks about it, in one of his "Sea Hunter" books. He claims it's on a specific river bank (which is what historical accounts of the last battle always indicated) and he gives the exact location where he believes it is sitting. (Within a few miles of a school!) The river's course apparently changed, in that century-and-a-half; and it's now at least mostly sitting on land. Unfortunately, it's on land that's under a levee which is meant to protect citizens from a recurrence of something like Hurricane Katrina. Between that, and the idea that this was a radical invention by the Confederates, it's not exactly the sort of thing politicians want to get involved with, and have their names associated with. But in terms of historical interest, and preservation, I think it ought to be dug up and studied.

In short, this one vessel is more or less the single "missing link" between all-wooden ships, and the later "all metal" ships. Naval gunnery at the time this thing was invented was becoming so powerful that they could shoot red-hot cannonballs at one another (called "hot shot") or they could shoot exploding bombs at one another (called "shells") or they could shoot what we think of as "normal" cannonballs (called "shot") or any other types of nastiness that people in wars do to one another. Someone, somewhere, HAD to make one or more radical-for-the-time inventions, to try to make navel vessels more bomb and shot-proof. And this is what they came up with.

One of the coolest bits of info, to me, is that this thing started out as a tug or towboat called the "Enoch Train". A utility vessel, with no armament. I've always liked tugboats, anyway; so that makes the "real thing" extra cool, to me. They put a foot thick of oak, according to some historical accounts, over the Enoch Train's back; and covered that with a bunch of iron straps. That and the compound angles of what stuck up above the water, made it virtually impossible to "kill" without having the world's best cannons.

In real life, this crazy thing chased off an entire wooden-hulled fleet, in the first fight it was in. And basically traumatized the large wooden heavily-gunned ship it rammed, in that first fight. The entire wooden fleet ran from it! In the second fight it was in, it was essentially scuttled by it's own crew rather than sunk by enemy fire.

There's other crazy stuff out there, lurking in the historical record. Other vessels that almost no one knows about, but which did in fact exist, were the northern navy's first-ever submarine, called the USS Alligator. Green-lighted back in President Lincoln's day!?! They were making it to counter things like the Confederate Navy's building of various submarines, including the CSS Pioneer (sort of "version one" of what later became the CSS Hunley: which was sort of "version three" of that team's submarine-building efforts).

The russians of that same period also had some crazy stuff, too. They build something that looks a lot like a modern day flying saucer (in a way). And the amount of crazy stuff on drawing boards, at that mid-1800's period, was nothing short of astounding.

Anyway ... I'll shut up about it! But I did want to mention, to those who love the look of Victorian-era "fantasy" pieces, that crazier stuff than we're ever likely to dream up (without serious effort, anyway) has been lurking in the "build me!" piles of history for generations. Things like the internet are sort of re-popularizing that stuff; and getting it out of the tiny niches it has been in; as far as people who knew that stuff like this really existed, once upon a time.

[wardster]

Since pictures are worth oodles of words, here's a link to the images that got me interested in the CSS Manassas:

www.crt.state.la.us/louisiana-state-museum/online-exhibits/civil-war-era-submarine/identity/

As you can see from that page on a web site run by the Louisiana State Museum, we steampunk modellers are generally tame, idea-wise, by comparison to the people from the mid-1800s! They were trying to build stuff, in real life, that was like NOTHING that came before it!

Too bad our history books don't include more stuff like that! Maybe kids wouldn't hate having to study history, if they saw more ...?

[kooltoon]

It's just amazing the things that were thought of in the 1800's.

Thanks Ward for posting & for the web site. KOOL slick sub ya got there.

AND YES, TUGS ARE VERY KOOL!!!!!!!!

[bubbajoe]

i checked out your build photos wardster...i'm absolutely amazed at the amount of work that went in to that build!!! how long did it take you start to finish? i'm betting months?... questions for you.. what is the purpose of the paper models you made of it?..the skeleton of the ship? what did you use to cover the top hull with? it looks like a simple build but once you look closer at it and start to pick out all the subtle details and the structure as a whole..this is really one hell of a complicated build!!the symmetry of that beast is amazing and all those small individual pieces you attached to the top!!! just superb.is there a thread here on it?