MOC: Historic James River Batteau

[LEGO Ink]

Greetings! This is my first post to the historic forum, as I usually build CITY or Misc, and I just wanted to give something older, and larger, a try. This MOC is a representation of a river batteau (Ba-toe), commonly used on the eastern regions of the colonial United States. Batteaux were used to transport goods, primarily tobacco, along the various river routes from plantations.

For this particular project, I chose MINILAND Scale. This scale provided more opportunity for detail, as well as a simple solution to a shallow draft, yet wide, base to start on. There are some very unique techniques I wanted to develop for myself, including successfully building 'Studs-In'. The hogshead barrels are built to the appropriate scale using this technique, and can be completely self contained/sturdy without the rubber band, which is simply aesthetics for the steel banding.

As this was only my second attempt at building MINILAND figure(s), completing the batteaumen would effectively grow my ML population four-fold and so each one was designed with his own characteristics. The legs, torso, and head are different for each one.

Enjoy, and feel free to check out the rest of the album here!

And here's a Minifig Scale MOC I did about a year and a half ago:

[Lord_Tyrannus]

Fantastic creation! Loved it.. I leke your technic for the barrels, the minifigs are also perferct. Keep up the good work

[Slegengr]

Nice build, LEGO Ink!

I also think the barrels look amazing! The figures are very nice for brick-built minifigures. The tiled top works well, especially the angled tiles. It would be nice if the corner gap were somehow covered, but it still looks nice.

Brick on, LEGO Ink!

[Zerobricks]

I love those barrels! Good work man.

[egg roller]

I really enjoyed this build. It's cool how you have your miniland scale and minifig scale of the same subject. Why have you taken such an interest in the bateau?

[LEGO Ink]

Thanks!

Nice build, LEGO Ink!

I also think the barrels look amazing! The figures are very nice for brick-built minifigures. The tiled top works well, especially the angled tiles. It would be nice if the corner gap were somehow covered, but it still looks nice.

Brick on, LEGO Ink!

--I had hoped to cover some of those gaps as well. In trying different solutions using 2x4 Wedge, Plates (and the like) I found that the resulting gaps were still intrusive, or the increased thickness of tiles and plates was just a bit more than I felt looked right.

I really enjoyed this build. It's cool how you have your miniland scale and minifig scale of the same subject. Why have you taken such an interest in the bateau?

--It's mostly been a work endeavor, but there's a slight personal significance as well. I'm currently employed at an interactive children's museum, and was responsible for developing a program where we build a custom LEGO model every month. Similar to what you'd find at a LEGO Store, or Holiday TRU, but I design them specifically for our facility to incorporate local history, points of interest, etc. There's an annual festival where folks from all over the state build replica batteau and spend a week navigating downriver, and the start point is in the calm of the river just down the street from our museum. My parents were participants many years ago and, as a child, I would get to ride along for a day or two. Back to your original question: being surrounded by the event every year, it seemed only natural to encourage our museum guests to engage in the history with a minifig scale model. Our CEO liked the concept so much, I was commissioned to build the larger model as seen.

Any of the other sets listed under the LEGO Lynchburg folder of my flickr are part of that same program.