Sudan project part 12 - British Camel Corps

Morning All

part 11 can be found here


Hot on the heels of the Egyptian Infantry we have one of the more Iconic units of the Sudan campaign - The British Camel Corps

Once again I have elected to use the Perry Miniature range and after some careful calculations worked out the optimum number for my purchase. 

These have all been given the serge grey blue tunics of the time with the rather spiffy looking mustard coloured cords. I have to say these were a real joy to paint and were turned around in about four evenings of hard painting.

Out of interest I have copied this short summary from wikipedia

The British forces consisted of the 1,100 British of the Desert Column under Sir Herbert Stewart, against a Sudanese force of approximately 12,000 fighters. While the main British force (the River Column), led by General Sir Garnet Wolseley travelled by river from Korti to Khartoum, Stewart's column was to cut across country by column directly for Khartoum, since time was running short according to what little information was available from the garrison.The force was composed of four regiments of camel-mounted troops (Guards, Heavy, Light and Mounted Infantry), detachments of the various infantry regiments in Egypt and of the River Column, and a detachment of the 19th Hussars, mounted on horses. Four light field pieces and a small Naval Brigade manning a Gardner machine gun completed the force.

The good news is that I already have the Hussars (not shown yet), the artillery pieces (shown in British Infantry post) and the Naval units (to be finished).

Up first we have a dozen riders (this equates to one regiment so there is plenty of scope to add more !)

The basing on these represents a departure from my usual format. Usually I base all my cavalry individually on single bases (25 x 50mm) but because I ran out of these I decided to mount half the unit in pairs. Quite happy with the result and will probably do this forward going.

Of course I needed these guys to be able to dismount and fight so a couple of packs of dismounted units were procured. These packs come in packs of 6 - I bought three of them giving me eighteen figures. Twelve were used to make this unit. 

The plan will be to transfer these to more skirmish style trays with a larger footprint.


Finally I bought two packs of camels kneeling with their guards (2). These along with the remaining six dismounted riders were used to create four bases of troopers defending their mounts. These have been set up so they can either form a firing line or a square

Rather fortuitously the square in the middle is exactly the same size as one of the infantry units so these can be dropped in to complete the complement of twelve

So the final shots are of the total unit - in theory I could use these as tywo units (or even three on the table)

I am now getting very close to finishing the core army - just the Naval units to finish and some Bashi Bazouki irregulars

Still can't help thinking I dont have enough Dervishes....

More soon

part 13 here
part13