Paddlewheeler

It's a bit embarrassing, but I was pretty much this many years old before it really sank in for me how important paddlewheelers were in Western and Northern Canadian history.  It really shouldn't have taken this long, as I've been exposed to them all my life, but when I see them I tend to think of them as a curiosity, rather than a crucial link in the development of transportation infrastructure.

As a kid, I enjoyed visting the reproduction of the SS Moyie at Heritage Park in Calgary.  

Heritage Park's Moyie is a half-size reproduction of the original SS Moyie, which Arthur and I visited in 2023 at Kaslo, BC, where she is in dry dock a museum ship on the shore of Kootenay Lake.

Another find on the shore of Kootenay Lake was this former paddlewheeler that's been converted into a home!

I've also read about paddlewheelers like SS Northcote, which participated in the 1885 Northwest Rebellion/Resistance, and the SS City of Medicine Hat, which sank after crashing into a bridge over the South Saskatchewan River in Saskatoon.  I suppose they never entered my consciousness the way railways did, as they didn't leave the same legacy.  My main cultural appreciation for paddlewheelers is tied to Mark Twain and the Mississippi paddlewheelers!

On our summer trip this year, however, Arthur and I encountered several more paddlewheelers that worked in Yukon, including SS Klondike in Whitehorse,

SS Keno in Dawson,

And the remains of SS Tutshi in Carcross.

As a result of my new appreciation for paddlewheelers, I purchased Sarissa Precision's colonial paddlewheeler.  This is a pretty massive model, and was tricky to build, especially compared to other MDF models.  The rails and supports are somewhat delicate and need to be handled gently.  The rear deck on the upper level is open, and so the supports are thin and also delicate.  After assembling, it still took me a while to paint this model.

By the way, thanks to Doug for the blue cellophane - it makes a great river!

The lake-based paddlewheelers like SS Moyie have splashguards for their wheels, like this.  It kept the water from splashing onto the ship.

The Yukon River paddlewheelers omitted the guard, as there was too much chance of ice or other debris getting caught in the guard, as visible here on SS Keno.  You can also see the red rudders that steer the ship.

The Sarissa paddlewheeler has no guard, so most closely aligns with the Yukon paddlewheelers.

The top and upper deck lift off to allow access to the interior, so figures can be moved around inside the ship.

Upper deck.

Wheelhouse.

Main deck.  Ship's wheel and the engine order telegraph.  This is the dingy-thingie that is used by the captain to send a signal to the engine room instructing the crew to power the engine "full ahead", "all stop", "reverse engines" or whatever.  Eventually I'll glue it down (or else I'll end up losing it!) but for now it can be lifted out.

Lower deck with a view of the engine room and the engine crew.  Bob Murch's railway men are well suited for this job!  Although it's worth noting that the Yukon steamers burnt the readily available timber, roughly one cord of wood per hour, rather than coal, so I may need to consider the crewman who is shoveling coal. 

River paddlewheelers had limited cargo space, so they often pushed barges to allow more cargo to be moved.  I picked up a pair of these Sarissa skiffs to represent the barges.  Barges were pushed rather than towed as of course the paddlewheel gets in the way.

Here they are with cargo loaded.

Cargo crates from Xolk.

This post is also an opportunity to show off this older, smaller, resin paddlewheeler from Eureka Miniatures that's been in my collection for many years.  I'm pretty sure it is no longer available.  It's smaller so can be more easily moved around the table.  The paddlewheels on each side are not glued down, so they can be removed to allow more deck space as well!

Neither of my two steamships have names, yet.  My first instinct was to name the big Sarissa ship the Alice May, after the derelict from Robert Service's Cremation of Sam McGee, but it doesn't feel right to name my ship after a wrecked ship.  I have the same reservation about naming her Mary Ellen Carter, no matter how much I love Stan Roger's song.  Feel free to make some suggestions for suitable names in the comment section below!

Chain of Command 2 - Flanking Action Sicily 1943

This afternoon, Craig and I had another play through of Chain of Command v2, this time using my Operation Husky 1st Canadian Division and Fallschirm-Panzer-Division 1. Hermann Göring.  We played the Flank Attack scenario, and allocated the maximum number of support points in order to make things interesting.  It was very, um, educational, for me.
Here is the table. Germans get to deploy in the upper right corner.

Another view of the table.  Interpretation of the circular olive groves turned out to be important and will change how I set up terrain for the next game.  Flank Attack lets the attacker have two groups of patrol markers, compared to only 3 for the defenders.  This is a deceptive advantage, as having fewer markers lets the defender lock their patrol markers quickly, before the attacker can move their markers very far onto the table.  It's a reminder of the importance of the patrol phase and how best to get a good position on the table.

The two tetrahedral anti-tank obstacles represent the two scenario objectives.  

The Canadian jump-off points (JOP), including the mule and driver, and,

a pile of supplies with a nice little hand-painted map of Sicily!

And a somewhat more generic German JOP inside the small house.

Early in the game, the Canadians deployed their Sherman.  The Germans dropped an AT gun on the hill opposite, and started shooting.  The Germans needed several shots to take out the Sherman.  Their first shot stunned the Sherman TC, and kept it from moving out of the way of subsequent shots.  In all, the Germans hit the Sherman three times before finally killing it, starting the gradual destruction of the Canadian force morale, as well as consuming 7 of the 18 support points.  Sorry no photos of this duel!  

Here the Canadian sniper and a section deploy.  In some of our previous CoC2 games, the snipers were a significant nuisance.  In this game, not so much!  The sniper only activates on a '1', and even when I activated him, his shot missed more often than it hit.  Luck of the dice!

The Canadian section beside the road intersection have dashed forward, in order to force the Germans to deploy to defend the objective.  

The Germans deployed the MMG and caught the Canadian section in the open.  Bad news for the Canucks.  A major error on my part, as I would not have left the section there if I realised that the MMG could deploy on this side of the road.  Another error was not spending the command points for the section to hit the dirt for two phases, which meant multiple phases of fire in the open.  

I took advantage of a double phase to move this section into this house, as it held a German JOP.  

Back near the crossroads, the first section was continuing to be hammered.

Destruction of the first section ended up pushing the Canadian force morale over the edge.  I stopped taking photos as I was trying to figure out how to get my guys out of trouble.

Here's a photo from earlier in the game that shows where definition of the terrain matters!  Each of the olive grove disks was a minor obstruction, as were the line of trees alongside the road, and also the low wall that the Canadian section is hiding behind.  In CoC2, this means three minor obstructions, so Germans firing from the farmyard have line of sight which allows them to fire on the Canadians with the only limitation being at effective range (>18").  Otherwise their chance to hit was no different than if they Canadians had been in the open.  This vulnerability was not intuitive for me, so I'll be more careful with how exposed my troops are next time.  In a future game, I'll emphasize that the olive grove is area terrain covering the full area in the space between, as with the orchard just visible on the right.  If I do that, then 6" of olive grove will block LoS.

There were a few more aspects of CoC that we didn't use, both existing rules as well as new rules introduced in V2 that we didn't use, including suppressing fire and smoke.  In V1, I would liberally drop smoke everywhere - in this game, I used my '1's to activate the sniper instead of dropping smoke.  Smoke could have protected that exposed section and provided cover for it to advance.  I was slow to use my CoC points to get the section to 'hit the dirt' after the MMG opened up on them.  

Ultimately, a good lesson for me in watching for hazards, and considering things that my opponent can do!  Thanks to Craig, a real gentleman to play with.  I'm looking forward to our next game!
  

Dogsled

 The main mode of transportation in the arctic in winter prior to the invention of skidoos and construction of winter roads was the dogsled.  So naturally any gold rush or other arctic gaming will need some dogsleds, and here is the first one in my collection.  This is from Copplestone Castings via North Star Figures.  In addition to the dogsled there are a couple of huskies, one from Copplestone and one from Pulp Figures.

Whenever I build something like a cart or other transport pulled by animals I hem and haw over whether to include the traces and/or reins.  I almost left traces off this time but finally decided to include them.  In this case the traces are made from thread soaked in CA glue. The traces are not accurate, the dogs should be attached in pairs rather than each individually as I've done here.  If a real dog musher connected their dogs this way there would be instant chaos as the dogs would immediately tangle their traces!

I'm happy with this dogsled but will be interested if anyone can recommend other dogsleds in 28mm size.

Arctic adventures

 Arthur and I had a visit to the Vancouver Maritime Museum this afternoon.  The key exhibit at the VMM is the RCMP St Roch, which served communities in the Canadian arctic from 1928 to 1954, including traversing the Northwest Passage multiple times, and was the first ship to circumnavigate North America.  

In addition to the St Roch, the VMM has some great displays about Arctic exploration among its other great displays.  Thus it's a great intro to today's post.  After Arthur and I returned from the EAAE, we hosted a game based on the hunt for the mad trapper of Rat River.  While we picked a bunch of proxy figures from our current collection, few of them were actually fitted to the real event.  This inaccuracy could not be allowed to stand, so i placed an order with North Star Military Figures for some Copplestone Castings polar explorers and Inuit hunters.  Now we will be ready for a replay of the Rat River action!

The four Inuit hunters can be hunters, and can also support the RCMP as special constables.

They are wearing animal skin (sealskin, most likely) for their parkas, mukluks and trousers. The parkas should be whiter shade seen on the two figures on the left but I suppose the other pair could be wearing caribou skin.  I don't know the reason for the tails on the belts of the two on the left, so I just painted them grey.

The four white guys are can be explorers, Mounties, hunters or any other folks depending on the scenario requirements.  Based on my research, they should all be in khaki or beige but that would be far too boring so I added colour where I could.

Finally, a group photo!

And finally, Arthur and I watched 'Death Hunt' last night.  This was a 1981 movie starring Charles Bronson and Lee Marvin, loosely based on the mad trapper hunt.  We had great fun picking out where the movie made mistakes, but also the details it got right.  It was clear from some of the details that the writers had done their research, but then decided to change aspects of the real story.  Arthur generally thought that the real story was plenty dramatic, and the deviations introduced by the filmmakers did not improve the story.

It's a fun movie but not to be taken seriously.

EAAE - Prince Rupert. the Inside Passage and then home

 Arthur and I woke up from our last night in a tent at the Water's Edge Campground at Dease Lake, packed our tent and then headed south to Terrace.  It was an easy drive, then we connected with Aileen, unloaded the truck and returned it to the rental company.  Back at Aileen's, we did our laundry, and prepared for our next step.  We packed an overnight bag for our trip to Prince Rupert, and loaded everything else into bins for shipping home to Burnaby.  Aileen's friend Rolf arranged for our gear to be shipped home, and Aileen took us to Prince Rupert.

Prince Rupert is close to Terrace, just over an hour along Highway 16.  We had a little explore of the city, where there are loads and loads of totem poles!

We had fish and chips at Bob's on the Rock, and then early to bed.

Next morning we were up early as we needed to be at the ferry terminal at 6 am to board the BC Ferry to Port Hardy, at the north end of Vancouver Island.  It's a full day, traversing the sheltered inside passage.

Boarding the ferry.

Arthur was a bit bored, but I absolutely loved sitting back and relaxing, and letting someone else do the driving!  The scenery is very beautiful.  And I had time to read a bit, including Jack London's Call of the Wild, White Fang and To Build A Fire.  Scenery included the usual rocks and trees (and water!), as well as lighthouses, abandoned communities, and even whales and ships.

I loved seeing whales, but of course it was not easy to take decent photos!

View from the ferry.

Lighthouse.

Sailboat.

We arrived very late into Port Hardy, not reaching our hotel until 1 am.  We had a lovely breakfast, then a nice bus ride into Nanaimo, another ferry to Horseshoe Bay, and finally Skytrain home to Burnaby.  And so ended our Epic Arctic Adventure of Epicness!