Spanish Destroyer Furor in 1/600 scale

One of my other goals has always been to do a naval game. I have finally settled (well, for now...) on the Spanish American War, using the lovely 1/600 Age of Ironclads from Old Glory.

http://www.oldglory25s.com/index.php?cat_id=786&catname=Age+of+Ironclads

Old Glory does most of the major ships, but at Santiago de Cuba in 1898, the Spanish had two large "torpedo boat destroyers": Furor and Pluton. A third similar boat,Terror, was not up to the Atlantic crossing but would be available for a 'what-if ' encounter.  Furor and Terror were "Furor-class" and would be very similar. Pluton was apparently a newer "Audaz-class", but there seems to be some confusion as to the picture records of these ships. Google or Wikipedia the ships and you can find some side views, and I found some photos of a model of Furor. Since I was building in 1/600 scale the 220 foot boat comes out to just over four inches, so a 'general-arrangement' is good enough for my purposes. As always, feel free to research and include as much detail as you like.  But at some point your are going to have to start cutting some plastic!

This photo shows the basic structures of the ship. Behind is a downloaded profile, scanned and set to scale. I can measure directly off the drawing onto my stock to build up the model. I started with a wooden plug carved to the basic hull shape.  I then glued down a piece of Evergreen scribed stock for the decking and edged it with Evergreen strip for the sides.

Its not a big boat, just over four inches. The gun decks, cabins and stacks are bits of Evergreen detailed with scribed sheet and strip stock.

The torpedo tubes were a bit of suitable diameter sprue left over from a model kit.  The ships boats were carved from laminated 60-thou sheet.  A basic boat shape is easy to file out and I scalloped the topsides to similate tarps over the boats. The guns are bits of styrene rod. It appears the Furor did not have shields in front of the guns, but at this scale the little bit of plastic looks more gun-like with a small shield. The front gun here has a shield the back gun has yet to be completed.

Bay Area Yards makes ships boats and some guns in lead for its 1/600 ACW range. I have some of these but elected not to use them for this project.

http://bayareayards.virtualscratchbuilder.com/

I think this will be a fun period to game, and perhaps more importantly to build some model ships.  In reality a decrepid Spanish fleet was hammered, virtually annihilated, by the superior American navy.  On paper: if the Spanish could have mustered all their ships around Cuba; if the Spanish ships were outfitted like the specs said they were (some did not have their main guns fitted); if the Spanish navy was up to the task...

I am also not sure about the 1/600 scale.  Santiago de Cuba was a fairly limited engagement close to shore, but at 1/600 it will still require a lot of space. The ships however are lovely and great models from Old Glory.