One suggestion I found interesting came from Vol, the owner of a sailing ship blog located at: http://volsminiatures.blogspot.com/. He suggested using some 1/800 scale photo-etched brass naval crew figures from Eduard, a Czech company that specializes in accessories for plastic model ships. At first I was afraid they would be way too large; after all, 1/800 scale is 66.7 feet/inch while 1/1200 is 100 feet/inch. In metric, that means that 1mm in 1/800 equals 2.62 feet while 1mm in 1/1200 scale equals 4 feet. That still sounds too big. However, when you divide it down some more, a 6 foot tall man is 2.28mm in 1/800 scale while that same man is 1.5mm tall in 1/1200. That's a difference of less than 1mm, which meant I was willing to take a chance on them. I found a set on eBay, and they arrived while we were away on vacation.
One thing's for sure: They are small. They come pre-painted, and there are about 500 of them on a fret. This means that there are plenty of spares when you drop one after cutting it out (and you will drop a few; trust me on this). The main question though is, how do they look in a shore battery?
Well, they look pretty good actually. Below is the two-gun battery that I showed in a post about some ACW ships that I bought. As you can see, it does look pretty bare:
Now here's how it looks with some of those Eduard figures glued in:
Now that battery looks like it's open for business! So, a rousing "thank you" to Vol, who turned me on to these figures.
