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Latest Update: Final Image: “Witch” - “Tyrant Queen”
Steampunk Myths and Legends Entry: marko antonov
markoA
#3
this is crappy sketch i will use for main concept… all other shall be on “work in progress”
markoA
#10
Software: 3ds max,finalRender,Maya,mental ray,Photoshop
“Gunpowder Gertie” - Pirate Queen Of The Kootenays
In the late 1800’s there were few roads in the Kootenays; the rivers and railways were the main routes of travel. Scores of shallow bottomed sternwheelers plied the often treacherous waterways; they supplied the towns, and carried passengers. They fed the mining boom and transported the valuable metals for smelting.
Of course where there are ships and treasure, there are Pirates and the Kootenay Lake system was no exception. Of them all, the roughest and toughest and most to be reckoned with was Gunpowder Gertie, the Pirate Queen of the Kootenays.
Originally christened the “Witch” when it was built in Scuttle Bay, just north of Powell River, this patrol boat was purchased and refitted by the Provincial Police with the intention of using it to patrol inland lakes and rivers. She was transported to the interior by railcar where her hull was sheathed in iron and her stern was modified and fitted with two of the first ever ducted propellers.
Unlike the modern propellers we are familiar with today, these experimental propellers were only half submerged below the water line, which gave her a shallow draft of about 18-20"(50cm). There was a funnel over the part of the blades that was above the water which directed the churning water up, thus immersing the whole propeller. The steam engines could drive her at a top speed of 22 knots, making the “Witch” the fastest thing in the water at the time. Her speed, combined with the water-cooled Gatling gun mounted on the bow made the little boat a fairly formidable vessel.
It was this gunboat that was Gunpowder Gertie’s first ill-gotten prize. The “Witch” arrived in Nelson on February 12, 1898, by railcar. On the morning of February 13, it was gone. It was a feat that would put modern master illusionist David Copperfield to shame. To this day no one has figured out how she managed to steal the ship from its railcar and transport it to the water without so much as being seen, but she did.
From 1898 to 1903 Gunpowder Gertie steamed up and down the rivers in her gunboat, rechristened the “Tyrant Queen”, attacking and robbing steamboats of their cargos- gold and silver from local mines and payrolls on their way to towns. She would appear out of nowhere brandishing the small but deadly Gatling gun, relieve the passengers of their valuables and the paddlewheelers of their payloads at pistol point and then vanish. Communication was much slower in those days and by the time word got through to the Provincial Police that Gunpowder Gertie had struck again, she would like as not be long gone. Try as they might, the law could never catch her. The sleek and speedy Tyrant Queen could outrun anything else in the water at the time and Gertie knew every little twist and turn, isle and inlet on the lake system. She would hide in the tiniest creeks camouflaged from prying eyes till venturing out to strike once more…
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