Saturday 23 May 2015

"Betties Grace"

Quite a few of the rivers in Bodstonia are quite shallow and wide. Not shallow enough to be forded on horse.  This poses no problems for canoes or rafts but for the larger types of boats,   even ones with shallow keels, These rivers are virtually untraversable.
Not only this but Inland the wind is not regularily strong enough to power craft with sails and boats so equipped have proven quite unrealiable.
To overcome this Problem the Good folk of Bodstonia have built themselves several Horse powered flat bed paddle boats.

They are propelled along thanks to the power provided by two horses. Very Little effort is required  from them as the power from the horse driven turntable is transmitted to the paddles by some clever internal gears.

As the rivers upon which These paddle boats are employed are quite shallow, steering is done by the means of Punting poles, which again, requires Little effort from the punters, the boats being flat bedded in design.

Here we can see one of the Bodstonian paddle-boats, the "Bettie´s Grace" as it ferries a Pair of  hunters back from thier day out..it was successfull, they have a brace of rabbits with them.
Also onboard are  Jedediah and Jonathan Johanssen. Maybe they are going into Bodston town to buy some small bits and pieces.

"Bettie´s Grace" is owned and run by the Edgewell Brothers, Bobby and Billy.
"Bettie´s Grace" is one of the larger Paddle Boats and is capable of carrying a full  Company of the  Bodston Fusiliers and all thier baggage mules.

4 comments:

  1. Great and creative design!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Merci. The one Thing that annoys me with it..it doesn´t actually work! I´m convinced that if I were to build it in say 28mm I could make a working Version..ok, I would have to replace the power provided by the horses with an electric Motor and make the model watertight but I´m sure it would be possible.

    ReplyDelete
  3. ok ... it doesn't work but with your setting, the figures and the horses, I easily imagine it works !
    That's good enough for me !

    + I like the river effect ! simple, it seems (a piece of glass over a painted etc... base ?), very effective !

    ReplyDelete
  4. Thanks Pascal. The river effect is a Piece of glass, just laid over the ground, the edges hidden with some soil. I tried to make some wave effects with some plastic wrapping but it didn´t look good.

    ReplyDelete