Zambezi Campaign 26: Margot Muirhead

Although I haven't done anything for the Zambezi project for nearly a year, it is far from forgotten.  While looking for something else, in one of my boxes of unpainted figures, recently, I came across the lady who was always destined to be the wife of the Rev Angus MacSporran.  She didn't take long to do and can also serve as a bystander for In Her Majesty's Names games. 

Margot Muirhead is the daughter of a minister of the Kirk herself. She married the much older Rev MacSporran and now, stuck in a native village up the Zambesi, regrets the fact that if she had stayed at home she could have gone to Edinburgh University, as she had always wanted,  Scottish Universities agreed to accept women shortly after she accompanied MacSporran to Africa.  She consoles herself by preaching to the poor benighted heathens, playing her flute and collecting butterflies.  The latter activity always seems to involve crawling around in the bushes by the river when the young men of the village go there to bathe.  She returns from these aurelian sorties flushed and breathless and usually needs a cold bath herself, afterwards.

Zambezi Campaign 21: Amelie Croissant in travelling dress

This is another figure that I have had sat on the workbench for ages.  I had painted her (not very well) years ago but decided to freshen her up to depict her appearance on arrival at the Zambezi headquarters of the British force; ready to show her press credentials to Commissioner Sanders.

I am moving along with my second and final Arab cannon and the second unit of wangwana freedmen askaris as well.  I hope to have both these units finished by the end of April which will give me enough figures for an opening skirmish in the campaign.

Zambezi Campaign 18: Veronique Croissant's gun

Ogilvie VC was postulating, in a comment on my last post, on what sort of gun Veronique Croissant was carrying and suggested a Purdey.  In fact, she is carrying a Joseph Lang 6-bore percussion elephant gun.

Hampshire-born Lang was originally a gun seller before moving into gun manufacture.  He was a contemporary of James Purdey, whose guns he sold, and married one of Purdey's daughters.  An excellent competition shot and innovator he exhibited his guns at the Great Exhibition in Crystal Palace in 1851 and then in 1855 at the Paris Exposition Universelle.  Veronique's father, Victor, was one of the more than 5 million people who attended the exhibition in Paris and it was here that he first saw Lang's guns.  He bought this weapon on a visit to Lang's Cockspur Street premises on a trip to London in 1857 ready for the South African safari he was planning the following year.

Ever since she was  a little girl Veronique had a passion for rowing on the River Sâone near the family home in Lyon.  As a result she built up very unladylike upper body strength so that she was the only one of the Croissant sisters able to use the gun.  Her father, therefore, had no problem with lending it to her when she declared that she was travelling to Africa with her older sister, the intrepid reporter, Amelie.

Zambezi Campaign 17: three more characters

I have very little time to paint at present and the light isn't very good anyway but I have managed to finish three more characters for the Zambezi capaign.  First up we have Commissioner Sanders Wallace.  Responsible for keeping the peace on the whole Upper Zambezi he has no compunction about calling in a heavy military response if the natives start getting uppity.  He is getting concerned about  Arab slavers upriver; especially as they appear to be in posession of some artillery which is having a very de-stabilising effect on the region.  He doesn't figure in the Gary Chalk scenarios but I liked the figure and am just reading Edgar Wallace's Sanders of the River which is a masterclass in conveying character and plot in the most economical and spare way possible.

Sean Sweeney is one of Trader Jones' "clerks" and is very much the hired muscle of the trading post.  When he's not drunk on Bushmills Whiskey he is a crack shot.  He features in the Trading Post scenario.

Finally, we have the French reporter Amelie Croissant's younger sister Veronique who has always been at the centre of whatever trouble is happening.  Amelie has told her to stay behind at the military post but hasn't counted upon her skill as a stowaway.

Zambezi Campaign 16: Amelie Croissant

This young lady isn't in the Gary Chalk scenarios but I have had her on the workbench for some time so feel I can put her in somewhere.

I was looking for an annoying lady reporter to join the steamboat transported reinforcements but decided what could be more annoying than a lady reporter who is French?  Hence she has become Amelie rather than Amelia.  Sent by her publication in France (probably something like La Vie Parisienne) in the hope of seeing the British make a mess of things and also follow up rumours of a tribe of warrior women led by a white woman.  She will, of course, be a total liablity!

Incidentally, this figure demonstrates how Mr Copplestone is one of the very few who can sculpt attractive female faces.  Lots of sculptors can do bodies but very few can do pretty faces!

Zambezi Campaign 13: British force completed and two more characters

Well, it's taken four months but I have now fininished my British force for the Zambezi campaign.  A unit of Sikhs, two units of regular askaris, a unit of irregular askaris, two units of Naval brigade plus command and baggage.   61 figures altogether but I painted some extras too so altogether it's 74 figures.

I have also painted two more characters, for the McKenzie's trading post scenario.  This requires a trader, McKenzie, and three clerks. My trader is called Jones, after the character in the underrated and quite brilliant animated children's TV series Charlie Chalk.  Here he is (right) with one of his clerks Portuguese Paulo (left).  I need to find another clerk for him, who will probably be a native and for the fourth character I think I will give him a wife.  Hopefully I will get these two done in the next week.

Trader Jones is sick of his bossy wife and wishes he hadn't persuaded her to go up the Zambezi with him as he quite likes the look of the native girls who would be very happy to look after him in exchange for beads, cloth and whisky.  He wishes he had followed the example of his brother, Vic, who had the sense to travel to the South Seas instead to set up his trading post.

In fact the British force is not quite complete as I have to finish my gunboat, which means finding a suitable artillery piece and naval crew for it.  Mutineer Miniatures have just released a naval gun crew which, although from forty years earlier, will probably do.  Their figures will certainly look better with the Copplestone and Foundry ones than the rather lumpy Zulu War naval crew from Foundry.

I have now also started work on my first Arab unit and hope to have these finished by the end of this weekend.

Zambezi Campagn 12: Major Hadden Bowen

Major Bowen, commander of the land expeditionary force

I had already painted two figures for the British officers but decided that one of them looked to old to go gallivanting about up river so he has been promoted to Colonel and will remain at the base further down the Zambezi.  I may put him, Colonel Perceval Hedley, on the paddle boat with the naval reinforcements.

Colonel Hedley

So I needed a new commander for the force, Major Hadden  Bowen.  I've decided that he is a tough, no nonsense man who learnt his trade in Afghanistan and would be likely, unlike his stuffy Lieutenant, William Baker-House, to dress down in the field.

He also wears one of the wider brimmed Wolseley helmets; named after Sir Garnet Wolsely who sported one in the Sudan War of the 1880s. Also called the Solar Topi, this helmet was not yet official issue for officers (it would be by the Boer War) but was very popular with British officers serving in this part of Africa in the 1890s. They would probably have bought theirs at Cearn & Company, Government Road, Nairobi.

Zambezi Campaign 8: a few oddments.

Whilst doing the Naval Brigade I also painted a few other characters.  Firstly, and most importantly, I painted the British standard bearer because the scenario forces require one.  In fact, by this time,  British forces didn't carry standards in battle anymore so we have an unofficial standard bearer carrying the Union flag.

After I finished the British askaris I found, annoyingly, one more which I had missed so finished him up too.  I think I will use one of these uniformed askaris to command the group of 14 levy askaris required.  I found that I already had enough figures for this unit so they are now based and ready for undercoating once the Sikhs are done.

Finally, I bought some Darkest Africa odds and ends off eBay, mainly to get some more bearers but also included was this female villager.  She is an excellent piece of Copplestone characterisation and I thought that she would make a suitably combative wife for the chief of the Wasimba village which gets attacked by the Arabs in one of the scenarios.  She is resplendent in red tradecloth skirt and bronze bangles.

Along with the Sikhs I am also going to start work on the British baggage elements.  Some of these will be newly painted and some will be old, repainted figures.

Three more figures

I finished three more Darkest Africa figures this weekend. From left to right District Officer Hedley, Lord Greystoke and another Ngoni.

District Officer Hedley is actually a Copplestone Back of Beyond figure but I think he makes a very good fellow to look after a district up the Zambezi somewhere during the later colonial period. You'll find him living in his bungalow overlooking the steamer jetty, listening to Gilbert and Sullivan, hunting anything that moves, drinking gin and being "looked after" by a couple of native girls.

The original Daktari jeep.

District Officer Hedley is, of course a character from the 1960's TV show Daktari which I watched when I was little. It was mostly famous for its character of Clarence the cross-eyed lion and it's zebra striped jeeps, since copied by safari parks all over the world.

Hedley Mattingly.

District Officer Hedley was a minor character who popped up occasionally and was played by a British-born actor called Hedley Mattingly. This was all a source of great amusement in our house as my father's name was Hedley (as indeed is my second name) and it was the only other time that we came across the name (other than in the famous tort court case Hedley Byrne v Heller!).

He is wearing a Brasenose tie, of course.

The Lord of the Jungle figure is another Foundry Darkest Africa figure. I have never been a fan of Tarzan, my Edgar Rice Burroughs phase (when I was about ten) concentrating more on his Mars and Venus series, but in a Pulp Africa, rather than a purely historical one (and my universe contemplates both) then he should appear and, anyway, I have already painted Jane.