This product is sold as an unpainted kit. 

Additional Images:

1-3. Jack Alexander's Colonial Paddle Steamer. Jack made this some years ago from an illustration he found in a book. The amazing thing is, and it goes to prove Jack's huge talent, that he created the boat from scratch in 3D from a single 2D illustration; no plans, no diagram. Superb!

4. A close-up of the Royal Navy gun and new shield.

5. A Royal Navy gunboat sails down the Nile to take on enemy forces. Its forward Maxim machine gun firing at Mahdi forces on the river bank. 

6. Image of a Royal Navy gunboat pulling a transport barge. The Maxim machine gun is trained on potential enemy forces on the river bank.

7-11. Lovely scratch built gunboats with Jacklex guns and crew by the talented John Jones. The boats are shown with undercoat (image 7-8) and then in their completed state ready for the sultry African waters.  

GUNBOATS

‘Boats were by far the easiest way to travel in much of Africa. Al vessels might be used – the Nuggurs and Gyassas of the Nile, or the canoes of tropical Africa – but these were soon supplemented by steamers on the great lakes, on the Nile and on the Niger. There were also collapsible boats such as the ‘Faidherbe’ carried to Fashoda by the Marchand expedition, which broke down into sections for porterage. For the Gordon expedition 800 whaleboats were commissioned, each built to carry 12 men with rations for 100 days. With a draught of 2 feet ad a pair of masts they could negotiate the dangerous cateracts when guided by their crew of bluejackets, West African ‘Kroomen’ or even Canadian ‘Voyageurs’ (the best of whom were Iroquois). Civilian steamers might be armoured with sandbags, timber and boiler-plating. At Khartoum, Gordon’s defence depended largely on his small flotilla of improvised gunboats, but purpose-built vessels were often used elsewhere. These varied from tiny steam launches, through to ‘Tamai’ class sternwheelers of 1885 (carrying a 9pdr and two machine guns, with a speed of over 11 knots), to the powerful screw-driven ‘Melik’ class cruisers, which carried searchlights, two 12pdr quick-firing guns, a 4inch howitzer and four Maxims.’

Source: Battle in Africa 1879-1914, Howard Whitehouse, Field Books, 1987. One of, if not the best introductory book I have read on the subject of campaigning and fighting in the colonial period. A must for the wargamer.

Jacklex Miniatures Colonial Nineteenth Century 20mm metal wargame figures.