All at Sea - Two for Trafalgar, Santa Anna & Agamemnon

 

This month, I will be taking the All at Sea collection to Wales, and precisely the historic 16th century Llancaiach Fawr Manor in Nelson, very aptly named in this case and about thirty minutes away from Cardiff, where I will be joining with friends from the Devon Wargames Group and the Penarth & District Wargames Society to play a two day refight of the Battle of Trafalgar using Kiss Me Hardy!

https://www.llancaiachfawr.co.uk/en/

We will have all the ships that were present on the day of battle out on the table and will be happy to meet up with visitors to the manor who might like to come and see the game.

In preparation for all the fun, I was keen to incorporate two of the more recently released models from Warlord Games that I picked up last year before I went off on my travels, both bearing the names of the famous ships they represent and both present in the opposing lines of the British and Combined fleets

Originally I had incorporated one of the Spanish generic first rates into my collection to represent the flagship of Vice-admiral Alava as covered in my post from July 2020 - link below.

JJ's Wargames- All at Sea, Spanish Builds, Part Two

Since then, Warlord have released a specific model to represent the Santa Anna and I present her here for the first time complete with her vice-admiral's pennant flown from the foremast and with Santa Anna emblazoned across her stern galleries.

I won't go over the history of the ship and her role in the Battle of Trafalgar as I covered those aspects in my post from 2020, so I thought I would look at how the model is translated into Kiss Me Hardy for our game this month.

The Santa Anna was a first rate 112-gun ship of the line launched in September 1784, the prototype for her class that included seven other sister ships and at Trafalgar would have carried 30 x 36-pdr long guns on her lower deck, 32 x 24-pdrs on her middle deck, 32 x 12-pdrs on her upper deck, 12 x 8-pdrs on her quarterdeck  and 6 x 8 pdrs together with 6 x 24-pdr obusiers on her forecastle.

Needing 250 men on her capstans to lift her mighty anchors, Santa Anna had an over-strength compliment of 1,189 crew consisting of 720 naval personnel, 383 army and 86 marine artillerymen.

The ship record card is how Santa Anna will be represented in our game, with a crew rating of Poor Landlubbers reflecting the large amount of landsmen and soldiers needed to crew this large first rate to enable her to join the fleet but doing nothing to improve the overall effectiveness of this ship to manoeuvre and fight in battle.

Hence Santa Anna loses one die from her twelve allotted broadside (Kiss Me Hardy - KMH, appears to award a vessel approximately one die per hundred pounds of broadside weight in shot) after her first broadside representing her poorly trained crew, with that lack of training and cohesion affecting her boarding capability, with one less die for 'Poor Crew', and her 'Cowardly Lubber' rating cancelling out the extra 15% added to her morale rating for being Vice-admiral Alava's flagship.

Vice-admiral Ignacio Maria de Alava

That said the Santa Anna is still a mighty 2,112 ton first rate with timbers well able to give her a fighting chance as represented by her hull rating of 92 'Damage Point' boxes (again KMH hull size in damage points can be roughly calculated by dividing the displacement tonnage BM by the builders formula of 23.1 to give you a figure in Damage Points) of which she can afford to lose thirteen and still have no effect on her basic morale and the guns she carries allows her crew to dish out twelve dice in her first round of firing and eleven on subsequent rounds, damage received depending.

Alava's flagship is likely to be involved in the thick of the fighting as she was the target of vice-admiral Collingwood's Royal Sovereign attacking the rear of the Combined fleet and is likely to need all of her 92 Damage Point boxes to keep her in the fight with the British first rate.

The Royal Sovereign depicted bearing down on the Santa Anna ahead - Stuart Bolton

It will be great to see this new addition to the collection out on the table and getting her first taste of table-top action, and I hope she performs to her best.

The other addition to the collection is HMS Agamemnon, 'Nelson's favourite ship', and affectionately known as the HMS 'Eggs and Bacon'.

As with the Santa Anna my original version of Agamemnon had relied on my efforts to scratch build a 64-gun third rate from the original generic plastic 74-gunner as covered in my post from December 2020, see link below.

JJ's Wargames- All at Sea, Conversion Work, Part Two, 64-gun Third Rate

The new Warlord resin hulled 64-gun third rates and this specific named Agamemnon model makes my additional scratch builds useful add-ons to these newer kits.

HMS Agamemnon as depicted by Geoff Hunt

Built at Buckler's Hard in 1781, Agamemnon had seen twenty-four years service by the time of Trafalgar, and during his time in command Nelson regarded her; 

'. . . without exception as the finest 64 in the service'

Agamemnon's service record saw her in action in the Battle of Ushant 1781, and the following year in the Caribbean with Admiral Rodney and his victory over the French at the Battle of the Saintes, suffering twenty-eight killed and wounded in the battle.

On the 26th January 1793 Agamemnon was in Chatham awaiting the pleasure of her new captain, a certain Horatio Nelson and he would command the ship in the Mediterranean for the next three years until taking command of HMS Captain 74-guns on 10th June 1796 as Agamemnon returned to England for urgent repairs.

Under Nelson's command Agamemnon would be part of Vice-admiral Hood's fleet that took control of the naval dockyard in Toulon, sailing to Naples to pick up Neapolitan troops to occupy the citadel, before it fell to French republican troops.

On the 22nd October 1793, Agamemnon was in action with the 44-gun French frigate Melpomene off the coast of northern Sardinia badly damaging the French frigate after a chase that saw her escape under the cover of friendly escorts having caused slight damage to the British 64.

Nelson's ship would be in the thick of the action over the next three years, providing landing forces and guns to operations in Corsica and against the town of Calvi. 

In 1794 she was now part of Vice-admiral William Hotham's fleet, taking part in the battle of Genoa in March 1795, later playing a key role in the pursuit and capture of the damaged French 80-gun ship, Ca Ira.

Agamemnon opens fire on the Ca Ira - Geoff Hunt

Agamemnon and Nelson would be reunited in Copenhagen as part of his squadron for the attack on the Danish line, although due to navigational difficulties among the shoals was unable to play a key role.

At Trafalgar the Agamemnon was under the command of Sir Edward Berry an original member of the Nelsonian 'Band of Brothers', the captains in Nelson's fleet that won the dramatic victory at the Battle of the Nile on August 1st 1798.

Captain Sir Edward Berry commanding
Agamemnon at the Battle of Trafalgar.

A close friend of Nelson's until his association with Emma Hamilton, Berry had been a first lieutenant under Nelson on the Agamemnon in 1795, performing well and being mentioned in dispatches and later moving with Nelson to HMS Captain at Nelson's request, later securing his promotion to Commander, and still later Post Captain in 1798 after his involvement in the Battle of Cape St Vincent, taking part in the boarding of the San Nicholas and San Josef.

He would move to HMS Vanguard 74-guns as Nelson's flag-captain, again at Nelson's request, and was next to the admiral when he was wounded at the Battle of the Nile, but was later captured on HMS Leander 50-guns carrying Nelson's victory dispatches after getting into action with the French 74-gun Genereux, one of the few French ships that escaped the Battle of the Nile.

He was exchanged three months later and arrived in England in 1798 to be knighted and given the freedom of the City of London.

Berry and the Agamemnon joined Nelson's fleet on the 13th October 1805, just in time for Trafalgar, provoking Nelson to remark;

'Here comes Berry! Now we will have a battle!'

The reference Nelson was making was regards to the fact that at the time Sir Edward Berry had been involved in more fleet actions than any other captain.

HMS Agamemnon, a 64-gun ship of the line weighing in at about 1,384 tons which translates to a hull size of 60 Damage Point boxes and with her armament of 26 x 24-pounder long guns on her main gun deck, 26 x 18-pounders on her upper deck and ten and two 9-pounders on her quarterdeck and forecastle respectively translates into seven dice for firing on each broadside.

Additionally with her years of service from the start of the French Revolutionary War, her crew have reached a high level of training and experience, and under the veteran leadership of Captain Berry, more than making her eligible to be rated as Elite Jolly Jack Tars that increases her broadside potential to ten dice on the first round of firing and at any range under short, perfect for getting in close and preferably delivering a passing stern rake which would see those dice doubled to twenty hitting on three or more.

Her elite status also infers a great potential to take out any target sufficiently battered by her long guns with a boarding attack seeing her gain four dice to her basic total of six if undamaged making her a very formidable opponent even against larger enemy third rates and with a Strike test already improved by 25% because of her 'Fervent Determined' crew to win despite the cost.

I have to say, I really enjoy working with these new resin hull models from Warlord and their inclusion of the plastic third-rates masts and bowsprit together with the ships boats allows for a very nice model to be built and as with Santa Anna, I'm looking forward to seeing Agamemnon take her place in the line of battle.

Fleet review back in 2020 of the Trafalgar collection which will be out in force next weekend

Next up, I've got some other new models to show that will fill some very important gaps in my small ship actions line ups.

More anon

JJ