HMS Cressy

Jack recently discovered that a friend of a friend had a grandfather who served as a Royal Marine on, and survived the sinking of, HMS Cressy in World War One.  As he enjoys making mode;l ships, Jack offered to make a model of the Cressy for the family.

HMS Cressy was a four funnelled armoured cruiser built around 1900.  She was placed in the naval reserve in 1909 and then recommissioned at the start of the First World War.  She played a minor part in the Battle of Heligoland Blight a few weeks after the start of the war.

On the morning of the 22nd September 1914, she and her sister ships, HMS Aboukir and HMS Hogue were on patrol with any destroyer escort.  The destroyers had had to return seek shelter because of bad weather.

The three ships were not expecting submarine attacks but had lookouts posted and one gun manned on each side just in case.

U-9 commanded by Captain Otto Weddigen had been ordered to attack British transports of of Ostend but had been forced to dive and take shelter because of the storm. On surfacing he spotted the British ships and attacked.  He fired one torpedo at HMS Aboukir which struck on the starboard side.  The captain originally thought he had hit a mine.  As HMS Hogue approach the Aboukir to help rescue survivors and stopped to lower boats she too was hit by torpedoes from U-9.  She too capsized and sank.  

HMS Cressy opened fire on the U-9 but with no success although it is reported that they thought they had hit the submarine and also attempted to ram U-9.  HMS Cressy then went to the aid of the other two ships, only be torpedoed in turn.  From all three ships 837 men were rescued and 62 officers and 1,397 enlisted men were lost, 560 of those were from HMS Cressy. 

Jack's model is about 4 feet long.  This is the progress to date.

 The tertiary guns all swivel.

Hull and Superstructure

Jack himself helping to give the model scale.

Then he fitted some of the handrails all around the deck and large air vents and masts, 

He still has to make the ships boats and put more stanchions (each individually mounted!)
and a repaint/touch up.

 Watch out for more pictures - but not bad for a young lad pushing of 87!

Jack in action

Jack in his garage workshop casting up some figures for Bob and I.  

You can see all the moulds on his bench and the draws are full of them too. 

It is always a voyage of discovery trying to work out what the moulds are.  Some are marked but others you guess at a bit.  As you can see from the reflected glare my hair is very fine!

20mm unreleased Jacklex figures

Here's a bit of a teaser, Bob and I visited Jack today to take some more pictures of his collection.  I have been having a bit of difficulty casting some figures from the moulds I had and asked Jack if he could have a go.  

Whilst we were in his garage and he was casting, Bob had a hunt through all the moulds on his work bench and draws and came across three 20mm Colonial Jacklex moulds which neither of us had ever seen before:

a Mounted British Naval Officer, 
a British Colonial Infantry Standard Bearer and 
a Colonial Highland Infantry Standard Bearer.

Jack couldn't remember making the standard bearers - never part of his original range as he points out the British never took flags into the field at that time.  However, I do remember Jack saying to me that many years ago our mutual friend Stuart Asquith asked him to make a standard bearer for his armies.  These may be them.  Anyway we got Jack to cast some up.  I'll be painting them up and the Mounted Naval Officer in the near future, so watch this space.

20mm British and Sudanese/Egyptian Camels

In the lastest reprise of Jacklex figures I thought I would share his 20mm camel troops with you.  

The mounted 'Sudanese' camel is available from Spencer Smith Miniatures, although it is listed as Egyptian Camel Troops (E6/E7), but it works for either.

Jack and I were playing the Fire and the Sword Campaign and he decided he wanted to have some British Camel troops so he made the British Camel Corp figure.  I remember him agonising over the sun galsses on the helmet and trying to get them right.  Having made them, we then both decided that being able to dismount them would be fun.  So off he went and made the kneeling camel and a British and new Sudanese dismounted figure. I know that firing over the heads of camels was not on, but they look fun. 

Unfortunately, Spencer Smith do not list these British figures and dismounted camels in the range.

Sudanese Camel troops

E6 and E7

54mm British PomPom Gun

I still have more 20mm Jacklex models to photograph, but I thought you might like to see some of Jack's 54mm work.

This is a British 54mm gun crew and pom pom gun.  I think they are available from Little Legion.

Is Jack an antique?

See in an antique shop in Main Street, Gibraltar

Jack's 20mm colonial figures.  Does this make him an antique?

Jacklex 20mm Artillery and Sailors

A belated Happy New Year.

Continuing my trawl through Jack's boxes of colonial figures here are some of his artillery and Sailors.  As with the previous posts, these were painted by the man himself nearly 40 years ago.  There are more wagons and machine guns and light guns I have yet to take pictures of, but for now......

These are shown with 4 horse teams, but because of the way Jack set this up horse teams could be as big as you wanted.  The RHA in my British Zulu War army is a six horse team.

Colonial Gun and British crew...

.....and now the same gun with the Indian crew.

More 4.7 inch guns than you would know what to do with.  Gunners are shown in both Khaki and Royal Naval uniforms.

As with the artillery teams, you could add as many pairs of oxen to this set as you wanted. It looked pretty spectacular with 6 pairs of oxen although it took up masses of room on the table.

The great thing about Jack's colonial range was the breadth of it.  He made sailors to go with the infantry, making naval landings and support possible.  My apologies as these are not the best pictures.

Slight adjustments to the arms creates a variation on the running figure

Jack's ship's crew.  I am not sure this was ever produced commercially.  Jack made these a few years ago to go with a paddle steamer.  You can see the origins, the figure designed to hold the ships wheel looks very like it is based on the Boer horse holder and the ship's captain on a British officer with binoculars from the colonial range.  

Jacklex 20mm Colonial Indians

Following on from the other posts these are the Jacklex 20mm Indian figures.

Again all the figures were painted by Jack back in the 1970/80s so these are 
nearly 40 years old.

Indian cavalry in action against the Russians.

Korean Warships

Jack made these '20mm' Korean Warships based on the pictures in Fighting Ships of the Far East (2) - Japan and Korea (AD612-1639) by Stephen Turnbull published by Osprey.

The figures are Red Box Korean Infantry. 

Jack made and cast all the guns.

20mm Jacklex Boer War Staatsartillerie - The range that never made it.

Just for the curious.  This is the range that never made it beyond a diorama in the Harrow Road Model shop and a few figures which we have. No production was undertaken and the 'pom pom' gun in the picture has gone completely, unless someone out there has it?  Jack says they were originally intended for the Boer War range.

We think the diorama may have been sold off when the Model Shop closed or maybe it was just thrown out!

The figures are shown around a British gun.