All at Sea - The Search for the One Rule to Rule them All!

Some of the many rules for Age of Sail gaming that grace my library

 

With the work to complete the Trafalgar collection of 1:700th ships nearing completion, and I'm looking forward to showing the next six French 3rd Rates to join the collection later this week, together with an update on the remaining models needed to be built, I have been turning my attention back to rules and the kind of game I would like to run.

If you have been in the hobby for a certain length of time, you will inevitably see the coming and going of different rules that capture the imagination only to subside into use by a loyal cohort as the next set hove's into view to steal the limelight with new ideas and ways to do what other sets have done but in a slightly different way with a slightly different emphasis on a particular aspect of the warfare at sea of this period.

The search began in 2020 for a set of rules to compliment the scale of models I wanted to use

If you get into a period, then like me you will also inevitably end up with quite a collection of rules as the header to the post illustrates, showing rules I have in my collection, not to mention the boardgame collection that has much to offer the table top player, with a close affinity between the two groups of players as illustrated by the many games of Wooden Ships & Iron Men played using models on a hex mat.

I am always interested to see a newcomer to the hobby posting on a forum that very familiar question, 'What rules do people recommend I should use to start playing ..........? Then just complete the sentence with any period you care to think of.

When I look at my large collection, I suppose I'm not that surprised that a newcomer might find the whole aspect of choosing a rule set rather overwhelming, and I guess that when I started out in the hobby in the mid seventies, the process was a lot more straight forward as there weren't that many rules to choose from and here in the UK with the wargame club scene, you ended up playing what everyone else decided on in your club, particularly when there were players there that had been doing it a lot longer than you and knew the good sets or rules from the not so good sets.

The rules needed to be able to cope with large actions and the smaller single ship affairs

Of course in the absence of the internet, information was a lot harder to come by and thus certain rules became the 'gold-standard' for playing a particular period or theme and with the difficulty researching the information that underpinned the assumptions the rules made one often ended up accepting the picture of battle the games they offered created.

However today, with information only stroke away on the keyboard, there really is no excuse for not putting in a bit of effort to find out about the ways a particular period was fought and then comparing that information with the way the rules you are looking at model them and then consider do they do it in a fun and entertaining way with plenty of decision points that the command level you are playing would have faced.

The Leeward Line scenario using War By Sail (adapted) helped to firm up the look and type of game I am planning, post-lockdown

Thus in a roundabout way I come to the crux of the process I am working on now to identify the key aspects I want to include on the table for the particular encounters I want to recreate, be they the big-battle scenario such as the Trafalgar game I am contemplating to the smaller single-ship encounters that pose quite a different set of challenges and to find rules capable of producing both types of games  hopefully with little adaptation to accommodate both.

As with the Talavera project that took a longer period to build, some four years in fact, I want a game that creates the granularity that allows the drama of the action to be captured as covered in the accounts of the historical battle and a comparison with the historical decision points to those made by the players on the table and thus the rules have to have enough detail in them to allow that and be pitched at the decision point level of the commanders in the game, that is an Admiral or Squadron Commodore in the big-game scenario and the Captain in the ship v ship game.

So the process started last year with the first few games pre-pandemic that used War by Sail which have a really nice level of detail at the gunnery level whilst pitching the player into the command seat perfectly at the level of the fleet/squadron commander, giving a very clean game that moves along at a good pace and work well in a solo format as demonstrated in the Leeward Line game I produced last month.

That said I have wondered if I can get a greater level of 'granularity' into the game, all be it at the expense of taking a bit longer to reach a conclusion, without losing the nice flowing game that War by Sail produces, something that would benefit the playing of small ship actions.

Small actions come in all shapes and sizes and the rules need to cope below the rate

There is where the choice of rules meets some interesting challenges, and something I chatted through with the chaps at the DWG on a recent Zoom gathering in that it has struck me that some of the rules I have looked at seem a little uncertain as to the level of command they want the player/s to play at. For example in one set I am messing around with, the game they create is designed to allow big battles and squadron level actions to be refought as evidenced by the scenarios in the back, including Trafalgar and yet the player is tasked with choosing whether to load grape, chain, single, double or triple shot into their guns at any given range, not only that but the precise mix of double shot for instance needs to be specific, namely are we talking double ball or ball and grape?

So my question immediately was, am I as an Admiral or Squadron Commodore focussed on what I expect my junior officers and gun-captains to take care of or am I supposed to be focussed on running my battle and having those decision points taken for me by a game mechanic representing the decisions of those junior leaders. However if I choose to focus on that lower level of commander, say Captain Brooke commanding HMS Shannon bearing down on the USS Chesapeake, then yes I probably am going to take a distinct interest in making sure my officer of the deck has ordered the gun captains to have loaded double shot and grape ready to take advantage of the point-blank pass I'm about to attempt.

Part of the fun of messing about with rule sets is coming up with materials to go with them,
like my latest damage records for the Trafalgar orders of battle.

The other aspect I am keen to include is the randomised activation process championed by Rich Clarke and Nick Skinner in their Lardy series of games which really generates the friction that characterises warfare in general and for me puts that 'fly in the ointment' when decisions are taken but stuff can happen to frustrate them being carried out in a timely manner and so that has to be the activation driven mechanism whatever rule set I decide to use, and are they adaptable to that mechanism if not originally designed that way?

Then I am looking at how well the rules can adjust to the lower level of game play to cater for the Shannon v Chesapeake type encounter or even the Scourge v Sans Culottes action with even smaller vessels, without them ending up a completely different set of rules, if that is possible, with the advantage, if they can cope, that the learning curve for players moving from one game type to the other is that much reduced through familiarity with the core rules.

Finally I am looking for the rules to clearly enable identifying the victor and the level of victory or defeat achieved when play stops, be that through a time limit or one side being so demoralised from casualties and damage that they will be forced to attempt to break contact, thus preventing the wargamer in all of us pushing our model warriors further than their historical counterparts who most likely would have broken off the action much earlier.

Four significant influences on my choice of rules

So which rules have my efforts focussed on and why? Well four sets figure large at the moment all for different and similar reasons.

War by Sail are a really nicely designed set of rules and I really enjoy the games I am able to create with them and the level of detailed information on gun fit outs for warships of all the key nations covered from 1550 to 1815 is worth the cover price alone whether you play the rules regularly or not and will be a turn to reference source for that alone.

Kiss Me Hardy were one of the first of the Lardy stable of rule sets and the chit/card activation method was rather unique when they first arrived on the age of sail naval wargames scene, an aspect of them I really love, and with the addition of 'To Covet Glory' by Chris Stoesen to cover small ship actions and the article 'Messing around with Boats' in the 2011 Christmas Special by Brian Weathersby looking at adding greater variety to the ships modelled in the rules. they have stood the test of time and still give a great game able to cater for big and small actions.

Materials such as these should help me present a visually attractive
report of how individual ships performed in a game

Not only that but Nick Skinner and other Lardy KMH fans put together several articles (Time Tunnel to Trafalgar - Lardies Game Day 2005 Christmas Special and Refighting Trafalgar, Game Report and Scenario 1805 - 2005 Summer Special) covering the playing and the planning of their 2005 Bicentennial Trafalgar game which has formed the foundation reading of my own planning process and has meant that I have not had to reinvent the wheel, all be it the models I will use are a bit bigger!

The other two sets are from A & A Game Engineering, like War by Sail available through Wargames Vault. I have to say I really like the layout of these two rule sets, with their minimalistic style reminiscent of my early days in the hobby before rules became glossy books full of wargamers porn, spread among the same old rules but more colourfully produced and costing a small mortgage.

Both 'Form Line of Battle' by a stalwart of the Naval Wargaming scene, David Manley and 'Grand Fleet Actions in the Age of Sail' by Alan Butler share a similar layout and no nonsense production ethos with two sets of solid rules in a black and white, low printer ink requiring format including enough simple diagrams to support the text and tables and both offering lots of great granularity in the games they are designed for.

Key aspects in both is the attention to producing battles of the era and not some sort of 'Pirates of the Caribbean' type game that usually ends up ignoring the Fighting Instructions and the struggle for commanders to maintain a coherent fighting formation and encourage players to dogfight with ships of the line, or take on the odd 'denizen of the deep', thus I think both sets will influence hugely my final choice of rules which inevitably will not be any one set but more likely my own concoction based on the ideas from all four to a lesser or greater extent.

Simple record sheets should also make it easy for players to keep track 
of each ship's status.

That concoction is coming together in anticipation of lockdown restrictions easing and table top gaming resuming so that I can play test the ideas with the chaps and I am eagerly awaiting the call up for a vaccination from the Chinese Bat Flu.

Finally the rules I have featured here in my personal analysis are by no means exhaustive but they all share the normal attention to aspects typical in all the rules for this period of naval warfare, namely sailing attitudes to the wind, gunnery, ranges and damage tables, critical hit tables etc etc, offering different emphasis as outlined, and I may not have mentioned your own particular favourite set, not because I am unaware of them, which I am probably not, but because the rules choices I have made fit in with the games I plan to produce and tick the boxes of my own criteria of high simulation and lots of fun to play, key aspects that are important to me.

And of course the next part of the collection is already well into the planning phase

I know I am not alone in the vain search for the perfect set of rules which are as rare as Unicorns, or should I say Kraken, but like many others enjoy the process of the search and then fiddling around with those that make the cut in an effort to create that Unicorn.

Next up: Six new French generic third rates in Revolutionary War trim join Admiral Villeneuve's Combined Fleet line up and I'll take a look at what's left to do on the Trafalgar collection, plus Steve and I are reaching a conclusion to our latest game on Vassal, Ardennes 44 from GMT.

Richard III, Columbia Games using Vassal

Over the Christmas break, Steve and I reacquainted ourselves with another of the Columbia Games family of block games we have enjoyed playing face to face in the past, namely Richard III this time on Vassal and recreating the bloody events of the 'Cousins War' latterly come to be known as the War of the Roses.

The Columbia take on this dramatic time in British history is a campaign game of three separate but linked games of seven turns recreating the fighting and fleeing abroad by the losing faction, raising money and troops reinvading and having another go at claiming the throne that came to characterise the wars between the rival houses of York and Lancaster with each house represented by a hierarchy of five Royal Nobles backed up by noble supporters and able to supplement their forces with those of the church, levies, mercenaries and rebels.

Of course the built in fog of war by the use of blocks, that hide the identity of what forces are gathered before you by the enemy, means battle is always fraught with hidden menace as the strength and quality of the enemy is only revealed when the opposing parties are brought to the battle board.

Then by adding in the odd plague, storms at sea, and a variable number of Action Points generated by a hand of cards that enable forces to be raised and moved, the game sets up a framework for both sides to achieve dominance in the kingdom by ending up having more nobles loyal to them than the other side.

The game sets the scene by having the weak and ineffective Henry VI, the grandson of the usurper Henry IV and presiding over the loss of noble estates in France following his fathers early death after his victory at Agincourt barely holding the situation together and with the House of York set to invade from Ireland and Calais to march on London.

In our game I took the House of Lancaster and Steve York as we concentrated our forces in the South of England in the counties of Hampshire, Wiltshire and Oxfordshire that resulted in the Lancastrians forced to take a boat to France and with the map below dominated by Yorkist sympathisers and just two Lancastrian hold outs in Wiltshire and Devon. 

The first campaign map and the Yorkists have control of the kingdom with Somerset and the other Lancastrian royals kicking their heels in 'Belle-France'.

The only glimmer on the horizon for the Lancastrians was our decision to include the 'Historical Events' additional rules that sees the rolling of a d6 by the King, the Pretender and the King again and consulting a list of plausible events that occurred in the short periods of peace that held between the series of campaigns.

In the event Steve ended up seeing both Richard Duke of York and Edward Earl of March succumb to a bad case of the vapours and die leaving him three heirs to work with through the next two campaigns.

The Lancastrian power base, following the defeat in the first campaign had taken a decisive shift to the north of England and so I decided to launch my second campaign in Cumbria and Scotland which on reflection was  not such a great plan as I had envisaged.

By focussing my efforts in the north, I allowed Steve the time to mop up my supporters in the south and the time it took crossing the various parts of mountainous terrain on the Scottish border and over the Pennines left little scope to  press my campaign south and with Steve carefully putting few nobles in range of my Lancastrian hoards but leaving his forward defence of the Midlands to levies and mercenaries he was able to close out the second campaign with a couple more nobles on the board forcing the Lancastrians to flee to France yet again.

Oh dear, my cunning plan foiled in the second campaign, with Yorkist nobles relatively unaffected by my slow marching Lancastrian hordes and so it was off back to France yet again, and not even Warwick wanted to come with me!

The historical events chart nearly came up trumps for Lancaster as Steve managed to annoy Warwick the Kingmaker enough to see him change sides only to find on his second die roll that Warwick had changed his mind and re-joined the Yorkist fold.

Oh well things were looking decidedly uphill for the Lancastrians with a three noble advantage to York on the map I would have to try and kill that many and not loose anymore of my own to have a hope of reclaiming the throne and I would not make the mistake of landing too far away from the midlands to have enough time to try and bring on one or more major battles where I could hope to kill Yorkists.

All over for Henry VI and God Save King Richard the III despite that rather noticeable hunch back, oh and where are his nephews? 

For the final campaign Henry, Somerset and Prince Edward joined with Stanley in the royal county of Lancaster bringing down the Scots and the nobles from Cumbria and Northumbria whilst raising the Levies of Newcastle together with the Church troops of York and some Lincolnshire rebels.

The final clash came in the Royal estates of Derbyshire as Steve pushed forward a picket line of militia and mercenaries bolstered by the occasional noble to frustrate my advance and leaving the map above solidly white from the midlands southward, protecting London, and a stack of dead red noble blocks against a smaller stack of white ones just off the Bristol Channel.

Thus history was reversed and Richard Duke of York took the throne as King Richard the III and didn't end up in a parking lot in Leicester!

It was fun playing Richard III again and certainly a challenge playing the Lancastrians who don't quite have the quality of the Yorkists and are difficult in my opinion to come back with from a poor start which I certainly managed to deliver and Steve managed very well by helping me to lose my nobles whilst killing his mercenaries in the later campaigns, coupled with a poor decision on my part for my landings in the second campaign.

Of course the card play and available events and action points make sure one game can be quite different from another and the historical event chart adds a little extra spice especially for the House that is on top having to suffer two die rolls on it between campaigns.

So with medieval England in our wake and with 2021 beckoning Steve and I headed off back to WWII with our current game now into its third week and one that is a bit of a monster ideal for playing on Vassal, 'Ardennes 44' from GMT with Steve taking the Allies and me climbing aboard my Tiger II and heading off towards the Schnee Eifel, more anon.

Next up: Well I'm not sure exactly, the editorial team are still debating the next post, but at the top of the queue are my six French generic 3rd rates in Revolutionary War trim set to join Villeneuve's Trafalgar line up, The sticks are up and they are going into the fitting out yard to have sails and rigging issued from the stores this weekend. 

My normal building routine has had a slight departure from normal with recent messing about on the games table, trying out rule sets and I might take time to take a look at rules in the age of sail following a chat with the chaps at the DWG on our weekly Zoom gathering to talk wargaming and other stuff whilst enjoying a beer or two.

The other plan is to update on the Trafalgar project with all three fleets nearing completion and the first naval reviews being planned.

Vimeiro Hill - Battle of Vimeiro 1808 from O'er the Hills at Tiny Wars Played Indoors

Back in December last year I posted a link here to Bill Slavin's blog 'Tiny Wars Played Indoors' as he and friends commenced a playthrough of scenarios from O'er The Hills, starting with 'The Leopard's Debut' covering the Battle of Rolica.

The Leopard's Debut - Battle of Rolica

Bill and I have conversed over the many years that I have been posting to JJ's and I know we share a love of Napoleonics and table-top terrain to create the look of the battles we are trying to recreate and you only need to take a look at the tables Bill turns out for his games to appreciate the effort he puts in to get the look he does and I love that kind of passion for the hobby.

https://standtogames.co.uk/shop/ols/products/oer-the-hills-rules

So I thought you might like to see his second game played following on from the first with the fighting around Vimeiro Hill at the Battle of Vimeiro on the 21st August 1808, which as it was for the French in the historical battle, a very 'tough nut' to crack with Wellesley enjoying interior lines, great observation of the enemy and terrain, including poor cavalry country and reverse slopes to confound the moves of his opponent.

During our several playtests of this particular scenario I seem to recall only one French outright victory, when an audacious infantry attack on Vimiero town itself managed to dislodge the British garrison and then resist all attempts to dislodge them for the rest of the game.

It would seem in this latest run through the French had an equally tough encounter, but able to give a very good account of themselves and Bill outlines some of his own thoughts on tweaks he introduced for his game.

I love this way of playing with history and welcome any other ideas as I would never claim to have all the answers when trying to capture the known facts of these actions into a scenario that gives interest to both sides, despite the factors that weigh in favour of one side or the other; and the best scenarios for me are the ones that offer victory conditions other than the simple binary win-lose options, rather instead challenging the players to do a better job than their historical counterparts faced with broadly similar issues to overcome.

As you can see from these pictures from Bill's game, the look of it is amazing, so if you're interested in this subject, take the time to take a look at Bill's report of how their game played together with loads more eye-candy to accompany the comment.

Tiny Wars Played Indoors - Battle of Vimeiro Hill 21st August 1808

I'm really looking forward to the next instalment where I gather there are plans to play the linked game of this scenario and out on Junot's right flank at Ventosa Hill.

Next up Adventures in Vassal with Richard III

All at Sea - Scourge vs Le Sans Culottes 13th March 1793

The British Brig-Sloop Suffisante chasing down the French Brig-Corvette Revanche 27th May 1796 - Derek Gardner
Ok I know it's not the Scourge and Sans Culottes, but I couldn't resist using this great rendition of two similar British and French brigs from one of my favourite marine artists.

This week I got to try out a new way of enjoying the hobby of table-top wargaming when I played my first remote game over Zoom, this following watching a really interesting YouTube chat between Richard Clarke of Too Fat Lardies in discussion with friends about Miniature Wargaming On-line - A Beginners Guide.

So after getting in contact with another fellow Lard enthusiast, my mate Bob Connor who manages the DWG Lardy Day, we got together to put Richard's recommendations to the test plus me shortening my learning curve because Bob has a few such games under his belt already.

Well I have to agree with Richard that, if I understand the comments of Guy Bowers and the chaps at Wargames Soldier and Strategy Magazine correctly, I think they might be a bit premature in their assessment of this way of gaming as we certainly enjoyed the evening pushing some model ships about the table using Kiss Me Hardy (KMH) to moderate play and I have put together a short video presentation of how are game turned out.

I should say that I had originally planned to present the game as a solo run affair, as per my previous effort covering The Leeward Line scenario from the Battle of Trafalgar, but with comments from Rich and the chaps about how well naval games and KMH can work with this way of playing I was more than ready to try it out and would encourage others toying with the idea to have a go.

So to set the scene, I quote William James' 'A Naval History of Great Britain Volume 1' covering the year 1793 and the start of the French Revolutionary War;

'On the 13th of March, the British 16-gun brig-sloop Scourge, Captain George Brisac (but mounting then only eight 6-pounders, with a crew of 70 out of her complement of 90 men and boys), being a few leagues to the westward of Scilly, fell in with, and after a three hours' action captured, the French privateer Sans-Culotte, of 12 guns (eight long 8-pounders, and four English carronades, 12-pounders), with a complement of 81 men; of whom nine were killed, and 20 wounded, the Scourge escaping with only one man killed, and one wounded.'

In my previous post I outlined my plan for this game using Gina Willis' Grand Tactical AI Wheel to bring the Sans Culottes onto the table and Narrow Seas to determine advantage and wind, and 'To Covet Glory to better modify KMH for small ship actions thus enabling me to complete the first two turns solo before Bob and I picked up the game from there, with Bob taking the Sans Culottes under command.

All at Sea - To Covet Glory in Narrow Seas

The table and cameras set up during play - the iPad gives Bob an overview of the table and the phone camera enables close ups for a more detailed look. Bob can be seen on the iPad and we were able to enjoy all the normal chat and banter as we rapidly played through the turns of play.

Thus with the iPad and mobile phone logged in on Zoom Bob and I played another five turns resulting in an equally fierce and decisive, if slightly shorter action as the Scourge and Le Sans Culottes went at it 'hammer and tong'.

Hopefully the video presentation of the game will help capture the key elements, so if you want to find out how it played, just follow the link to the video below.

Next up: Another report looking at another Peninsular War scenario from O'er the Hills and progress continues to add six French 3rd rates to the collection of Napoleonic ships. In addition adventures in the world of Vassal with a game of Richard III and all the fun of the Wars of the Roses or should that be 'The Cousins War'?

All at Sea, Naval Support for the British Army during the American Revolutionary War - John Dillon

 

As the saying goes 'Amateurs study tactics while professionals study logistics' and John Dillon's addition to the body of work looking at the the role of the British Royal Navy in what is commonly known as, on this side of the pond, the American War of Independence, adds a very important look at the Cinderella aspect of warfare throughout the ages, namely logistics.

The Oxford English Dictionary defines 'logistics' as 'the branch of military science relating to procuring, maintaining and transporting material, personnel and facilities.'

Simply put, without careful attention to the key aspects covered in the definition of logistics as described, experience tends to show that military expeditions, campaigns and the conduct of a war as a whole is often doomed to failure before the first boot has got onto the ground to use a horrible journalistic cliché, and I promise not to use anymore.

As Dillon's book highlights, the war with her thirteen American colonies coming on the back of a highly expensive but extremely successful conclusion to the Seven Years War in 1763 was for Great Britain a war she neither needed or in the early stages of the dispute believed was a distinct possibility; and as usual following other major conflicts, the savings on military expenditure was well underway, with cutbacks in both the army and navy together with additional taxes designed to pay off the British national debt incurred to fight that war. 

Frederick North, Lord North, and British Prime Minister 1770-1782 - Nathaniel Dance
With frequent requests to the King to be allowed to retire from his position being rejected, Edmund Burke would describe North as 'of admirable parts, of general knowledge, of a versatile understanding, fitted for every sort of business, of infinite wit and pleasantry' but who 'wanted something of the vigilance and spirit of command that the time required.'   

The dispute that erupted in to all out war between the mother country and her colonies, left many on both sides sympathetic to the other, with no clear divide in what was as much a civil war, perhaps the first American Civil War, that left many folks caught up between the warring forces just trying to avoid taking sides one way or the other and with several senior and junior British commanders reluctant to press military action against those they saw as fellow British subjects.

However with a seemingly belligerent attitude from King George III and his determination that the colonies should submit to Parliamentary, and de-facto his authority, the opportunities for concessions and a peaceful resolution quickly and seemingly irrevocably faded with the so called 'Boston Massacre' in 1770, the  burning of HM Customs Schooner Gaspee in 1772, to the arrival in Boston of a British force of four regiments to the one already in garrison along with the boastful Lieutenant General Thomas Gage who had told the King that that would be all he would need to bring the Americans to heel.

Thus military conflict looked more and more likely to be the solution to the impasse, although Gage would soon reel back from his boast, quickly requesting, after his arrival in Boston a force of 20,000 men to get the job done.

Thus we are led through the series of events that led to a war that not many right thinking people at the time were either contemplating or looking for and was probably very avoidable had smarter heads been involved.

The British military authorities and indeed government could not have been less prepared for war than it is possible to imagine and indeed would see British troop numbers increased from 10,000 to nearly a staggering 100,000 men in three to four years as the conflict grew from one of a minor colonial dispute to a full on global war between the Bourbon monarchies of France and Spain, later joined by the Dutch, as European neighbours sort to gain at the expense of British overstretch.

As an historical wargamer interested in this period of British military history and one who has indulged that interest in many a tactical and strategic level game around the war, I found John Dillon's book a fascinating and insightful look at the actual issues faced by the military of all sides but particularly the British, tasked with sending an army overseas with a 3,000 mile long sea journey between it and its supply base, subject to vagaries of enemy ships, wind and tide on a fleet of wooden warships and merchantmen in the era before canned food or any modern method of food preservation, whilst also trying to fight multiple enemies on multiple fronts in an age when communication could be months in the sending and receiving of information, long out of date after its arrival.

The numbers and statistics quoted in terms of supplies, reinforcements, equipment and horses for the British army are truly staggering, with Dillon's analysis for example taking the reader through the requirements for one man's rations over seven days through to what that looks like when supplying provisions for 40,000 men for twelve months, specifically 14,560,000 lbs of flour, 7,280,000 lbs of pork, 1,820,000 lbs of beef, 780,000 lbs of butter etc.

These supplies had to be brought from Britain once the war closed down the opportunity to purchase supplies in America, and note the word 'purchase' as this was not a Napoleonic army living off the land and 'making war pay for itself' to quote a famous French Emperor of later years. Generally British forces sought to purchase provisions locally, in efforts to not antagonise Americans, that is unless they refused to supply the King's forces when force could be used to enforce a request.

In addition to supplying the troops the British authorities would see themselves needing to provide supplies for several thousands of Loyalist civilians forced to evacuate to the safety of British administered coastal areas around places like New York and Charleston.

All this was done, sometimes barely, with the garrison in New York sometimes only several weeks away from running out of key foodstuffs before a relief convoy would arrive to replenish stocks, but this fact alone meant that increasingly British Army commanders were unable to launch major expeditions into the interior through their inability to keep the troops fed once they moved away from their coastal depots.

Dillon describes the lengths gone to, to purchase supplies at home, ensure their preservation and storage over long weeks at sea and thus be still fit for consumption on arrival, with officers charged with identifying poor of bad produce so that reparations could be had from the supplier when traced back, with a surprisingly low failure rate in the good provisioning of foodstuffs.

The stress put on requisitioning enough merchant ships to not only carry supplies but also to move British troops in theatre is described in detail, highlighting the problem for the authorities at home to find enough shipping, particularly exacerbated by the habit of British commanders not releasing merchants to sail home after unloading stocks to be able to pick up and bring out further supplies, but instead being held in American ports to store the supplies carried, through lack of suitable warehousing, or to be used to carry troops on amphibious operations.

Initially this supply operation for the army was carried out by the Treasury who were responsible for putting out tenders to supply contractors such as the marvellously named 'Drummond and Franks' who very soon were advising the government that things would quickly go awry through a combination of the break down in acquiring local supplies from in and around Boston due to 'radical elements' and the nature of the town out on a narrow peninsular with the British troops confined and unable to forage locally.

The fact that the British Army could not conduct operations without the support of the Royal Navy, together with the fact that the navy were a supply and provisioning organisation in their own right, well versed in producing ships and equipment as well as providing provisioning for their ships around the globe, made it an obvious though reluctant decision on the part of the navy, for them to take responsibility for supplying the army as well as their own ships.

The two most prominent figures in the cabinet during the American War of Independence
First Lord of the Admiralty, Lord Sandwich (left) and Lord George Germain, Secretary of State for America (right)

Thus after the King and Prime Minister, Lord North  and alongside the much criticised Lord George Germain, Secretary of State for America, whose most prominent failure, among many, was not to have appointed a Supreme Commander of British forces in America and possibly the Caribbean, steps on to the pages of this interesting account the First Lord of the Admiralty, Lord Sandwich on to whose desk came all the numerous requests for increased supply and troop transport capacity, whilst he busied himself running the naval war with inadequate naval resources and numerous demands on their deployments

In several ways this book splits into two sections that neatly mirrors the changing magnitude of the war as the early chapters focus on the minutia of the British authorities getting their heads around supplying their ever growing forces in America, following the retreat from Boston and the appointment of the Howe brothers to command both land an sea operations as the army commenced operations to capture New York with a view to using it as a base to advance plans to control the Hudson valley up to the borders of Canada and cutting New England off from the wider continent.

The amphibious landings conducted by the Howe brothers at New York, Kipps Bay and Head of Elk stand testament to the ability of the British army and navy to cooperate successfully in combined operations to land and supply large numbers of troops even facing opposed landings and it was in the operations around New York that saw the British opportunity to win the war finally slip away.

The two brothers showed how talented and cooperative command between the two services could bring outstanding results and as Dillon remarks, it is surprising how close Britain came to winning the war in 1776 as the British ran rings around Washington and his outclassed Continental army, only to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory possibly down to the Howe's both being Peace Commissioners, not pressing home their advantage more vigorously, a charge that would cause them both to be recalled home to defend their conduct to Parliament.

With the defeats in the winter of 1776 and the debacle of Burgoyne's invasion as the Howes ignored the original plan to cooperate along the Hudson but decided to evict Congress from Philadelphia instead, the threat of French involvement, at first clandestine, morphed into an outright challenge to British interests and a declaration of war, with the second part of this book changing focus in line with the British military authorities led by Lord Sandwich to shift attention and resources away from America to much more important strategic imperatives such as the defence of Britain's Sugar Islands and the gateway to the Mediterranean, Gibraltar soon to be under siege as the other Bourbon power Spain joined France in 1779.

As the war ramps up with the involvement of Britain's traditional European enemies, Dillon takes more of a focus on the amphibious and naval operations conducted by the various navies, contrasting sharply the brilliantly executed operations at New York, Kipps Bay, and Head of Elk (Philadelphia) by the Howe's, with its precise landing tables for troops reminiscent of D-Day to that of D'Estaing off Savannah and Rhode Island where the lack of experience was painfully exposed.

The Second Battle of Virginia Capes - V Zveg
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:BattleOfVirginiaCapes.jpg
The British inability to secure naval supply line to Cornwallis's army at Yorktown, that alone why Cornwallis was their in the first place was just one of a series of events that predicted how the war in America was likely to end, with supplies and logistics drawing a line under any further British involvement in the thirteen colonies.

However the fact remained that because of a severe lack of supplies, British troops would remain tethered to key coastal towns, supplied by the navy and if poor cooperation between army and navy existed between the commanders, exemplified with the description of Clinton and Arbuthnot, with the Admiral failing to attend a prearranged meeting after Clinton had ridden across the best part of Long Island or with Clinton and Parker off Charleston in 1776 when neither party would join the other for a command meeting on each other's ship, preferring to send letters via a jolly-boat to one another whilst anchored yards apart, then the potential for disaster was only one operation away.

Then if you throw in an Admiral with the worst credentials for such an important command as North America (Arbuthnot) together with the army falling out among itself (Clinton and Cornwallis) then the debacle of Yorktown became the self fulfilling prophecy that the description of previous adventures foretold.

Admiral of the White, Lord George Brydges Rodney - Thomas Gainsborough
Pictured here behind him with the captured ensign of De Grasse's flagship at the Battle of the Saintes,
the Ville de Paris 

In the end the British supply situation was barely holding things together when the peace was finally signed with British garrisons in Charleston and New York having weeks to spare between needing urgent resupply; and Lord Sandwich can take credit for braving the King and many other detractors by insisting on the appointment of a fighting Admiral such as George Brydges Rodney, who for all his many faults knew how to take the war to the enemy at sea and in the end contributed hugely to Britain being able to secure the terms of peace that she did and continue to hold her possessions in the Caribbean and Gibraltar despite the loss of her American colonies.

John Dillon's book is very well focussed on the specifics of what it quite clearly sets out as its brief, namely to look closely at British arrangements around supplying their troops and organising combined operations between the navy and army whilst contending with the other demands of naval warfare during the American War of Independence. 

Thus it is not another book looking purely at the naval operations of that period, and there are plenty of other great books that cover that subject matter, one coming immediately to mind and reviewed here recently on JJ's being  The Struggle for Sea Power, A Naval History of American Independence by Dr Sam Willis and so if you come to this book looking for descriptions of the dramatic naval battles and actions of this period then you might find Dillon's work unsatisfying.

The Battle of the Saintes 9-12th April 1782 - Thomas Whitcombe
The French flagship, Ville de Paris in action at right with HMS Barfleur.
Rodney's victory reasserted British naval dominance and laid the foundation for the further development of British naval tactics exposed during the American War of Independence.

However if you want to get a better understanding of the challenges faced by the British in particular, looking to commit their forces to action in America and elsewhere and the challenges faced in commanding, supplying and maintaining them with the background of the wider war events to give context then this is a great read and I know the next time I am happily moving my forces around the map during a game of Washington's War, my appreciation for what stresses that would have imposed on my logistics chain will be that much better understood.

My only criticism of the book is the poor quality of the maps accompanying the text with the outlines of various land masses barely visible, only really confirmed by the position of dots identifying key coastal towns and cities of the time. However I didn't find myself referring to them that much, being fairly familiar with the places mentioned, but newcomers to the subject might find them slightly irritating.

All at Sea is another really interesting and valuable contribution from Helion & Company and is 293 pages containing the following:

List of Maps

1. East Coast of America
2. The English Channel
3. Boston Harbour
4. New York area
5. Philadelphia area
6. Rhode Island
7. The Caribbean
8. Charleston 1780
9. Yorktown and Chesapeake Bay

Acknowledgements

Introduction

Chapters

1. Revolt, hostility, and rebellion'
2. 'Blows must decide'
3. 'Good, wholesome, and sound'
4. 'On which the subsistence of the army immediately and entirely depends'
5. 'Hell is in the forecastle, the devil at the helm'
6. 'Few people dare to supply us'
7. 'In bad plight we go to Halifax'
8. 'Our safety depends on our having a powerful fleet at home'
9. 'His Majesty's Troops being landed without opposition'
10. 'The Expectation of war increases here Every Hour'
11. 'The country that will hazard most will get advantage in this war'
12. 'Oh God! It is all over'
13. 'Their Command of the Sea gives them Advantages'

Bibliography

Index

All at Sea is in paperback with a very nicely designed and robust feeling cover, something I immediately noticed when taking it out of the package. At the time of writing it can be purchased from Amazon at £15.51 saving £9.49 on the list price.

Next up: I'm all at sea in the Western Approaches refighting the first naval action of the French Revolutionary War, HMS Scourge versus the French Privateer Brig, Le Sans Culottes as my mate Bob Connor joined me via Zoom to do some remote tabletop wargaming, and much fun it was too.

Rorkes Drift and Isandlwana Presentation courtesy of the National Army Museum and Professor Ian Beckett

 

Back in March 2019, I attended the National Army Museum presentation by Ian Knight, looking at the events of  the Zulu War One-hundred and forty-one years previously and posted about it soon after, here on the blog.

http://jjwargames.blogspot.com/2019/03/then-red-soldier-zulu-war-one-hundred.html

Obviously attending similar events at the moment is impossible, but the National Army Museum are providing a great service to military history enthusiasts around the world, if the Crowdcast chat feed was anything to go by, by providing a platform for some great speakers and presentations on a varied offering of British military subjects; with today's offering presented by Professor Ian Beckett, it being the one-hundred and forty-third anniversary of the Battles of Isandlwana and Rorkes Drift on the 22nd January 1879, an overview of the history of the war and those two battles in particular, its commemoration in popular drama and arts, since the news of the battles arrived in Great Britain in early February 1879 and the impact it has had on British and Zulu culture throughout the changes in views over the intervening years. 

One of the many Zulu War games we have played at the DWG and looking forward to doing again when normality resumes, with many members of the club attending Professor Beckett's talk today

Of course that overview scans the books, musical and theatre interpretations and more recently the films Zulu and Zulu Dawn which still hold popular appeal today, but also looks at the reality they captured or not and the modern interpretation of the events seen today based on modern research and recent archaeology.

Professor Beckett presents in an engaging and fast paced style which really grabbed the attention of the audience inspiring plenty of chat and appreciative comments together with enthusiastic questions which he answered at the end. 

If you missed today's presentation, the good news is that you can register to watch a recording on the NAM Home Page and sign up for updates of future talks which are completely free to attend and highly recommended.

https://www.crowdcast.io/nationalarmymuseum

In addition you can also pick up a copy of Professor Beckett's book on the subject

 

With all the lockdowns going on and people confined to indoors I can recommend this as a very pleasant way to spend a couple of hours in between the painting and modelling.

More anon 

JJ

All at Sea - To Covet Glory in Narrow Seas!

HMS Scourge capturing the Sans Coulotte, 13th March 1793 - Thomas Yates

 

This time last year, having built a few models in the age of sail collection, I was working through some historical single ship actions, looking to develop those scenarios based around the concept of duels and chases to try a set up a framework around these games that better reflected what the commanders of these ships were trying to achieve when they ended up in the fights they did.

Very often these fights were a mismatch because the opposing commanders mistook the identity and fighting capability of their opponent before it was too late to alter course and escape and the ruses of flying false colours or shoddy handling of sail and rigging to add to the confusion only made things more difficult as most nations insisted on a positive identification to be made before engaging in combat, Barbary Corsairs excepted.

The other issue when refighting engagements between ships at the smaller end of the rating lists and below are that the rules have to cater for these lighter and more lightly armed fighting vessels, to allow the players to recreate the actions that could last for tens of minutes to several hours once the action became close.

Of course fighting these single ship engagements also presents added problems for the solo gamer in that representing the options available to an enemy commander of a ship desperately trying to outmanoeuvre ones own is problematic when you the player are trying to choose options for both ships, which is why I have focussed my attention of the larger ship engagements initially, where the line of battle tactics limit the options of the individual ship commanders on each side.

 

The basic components as supplied in Gina Willis' download, printed to paper and glued to thick card
https://boardgamegeek.com/filepage/144002/acg-grand-tactical-ai-movement-wheel-and-table

That was until I saw a very interesting video presentation from Gina Willis who is the designer of a board game 'A Glorious Chance', hopefully soon to be published, covering the naval warfare on Lake Ontario during the War of 1812 for which she has designed a tactical simulation for those who would want to set up the engagements generated by the game on the table top.

In the video she demonstrates the use of her Grand Tactical AI Wheel which, by setting up the course of the AI ship in relation to the wind and the player's ship randomly generates some plausible course directions for the AI vessel, and I thought it might be fun to try on the table top to bring ships into close action or indeed have them run simply by taking an opposite course to that generated by the AI Wheel.

All the components  cut and made ready for assembly

Well that's the idea and so to test it I sat down at the weekend and put her design together, falling back on my old 'Blue Peter' skills (for non UK residents, a BBC TV kids show that taught you how to make models of Windsor Castle out of Cornflakes boxes and old washing up liquid bottles, back in the day when BBC made programs that people wanted to watch!) and with card, modelling knife and a Pritt stick made myself an AI Tactical Wheel that will generate my three numbers and help my AI vessel select a course to close with or run from the enemy.

Voila, one Grand Tactical AI Wheel for the use of!

The idea is, that the three numbers it generates is read off against a chart with six course options next to each set of three numbers, selected by rolling a D6. The ship will generally head towards the threat and my intention is that if the commander decides that he will run instead then that course option is simply reversed - 'simples!' as the Meer Cat said (Sorry another British TV thing).

To Covet Glory- Wargames Vault

The next idea was to choose a set of rules to marry with this idea and to further develop the thoughts around scenario set ups and small ship rules and that lead me to think about 'To Covet Glory' by Chris Stoesen, a small ship rules adaptation of Kiss Me Hardy together with a selection of some very interesting single small ship actions, with ideas around flying false colours and other such goodies.

Plenty of open sea for my little brigs to operate over

The other idea was to take some of the scenario design ideas from another publication available through Wargames Vault, 'Narrow Seas' by  Wargame Vault Curs'd-Captain Products, and their frigate war set of rules 'Enterprize' which sets up these smaller engagements within a framework around the ideas of chases and duels, designed to allow enough scope to tailor them to the rules you want to use.

Narrow Seas for Any Age of Sail-Game - Wargames Vault

So as usual I sat down and started to mess around with both these resources to come up with my own ideas hence the title of the post and above and below is my table set up to try them out.

The red markers indicate 'gates' that facilitate set up arrival points and possible escape routes should a chase develop

The scenario I chose to bring these ideas together was a simple action involving two brig-sloops that met 'a few leagues west of the Isles of Scilly on the 13th of March 1793' at the very start of the naval war of the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic War or 'Great War' as it was known before the titanic struggles of the twentieth century eclipsed it.

The reason for selecting To Covet Glory is that it is tailor made for these small ship engagements using Kiss Me Hardy as its foundation, a rule set I am very familiar with and of course using the chit activation system that makes them very solo play friendly. That said, I'm halfway through Rich Clarke's video recording on best ways to run games via Zoom, so I might see if we can get some live opposition in future games.

Everything set up and ready to go, with the wind direction established and the AI course director set up

So to get things going I have set up the encounter between His Majesty's Brig-Sloop Scourge, nominally of sixteen guns but reported on the day of this encounter to have only mounted eight six-pounder long guns and with seventy men aboard, twenty men under strength, and under the able command of Captain George Brisac.

Commander George Brisac of His Majesty's Brig-Sloop Scourge
artwork courtesy of the old rule set Heart of Oak and Privateers & Gentlemen by Jon Williams and J.Andrew Keith, also available through Wargames Vault.

The very able Lieutenant Visage de Vache commanding the French privateer brig Le Sans Culottes

The opposition and the AI controlled ship is the French privateer brig Le Sans Culottes sporting a formidable armament of eight eight-pounder long guns and four twelve-pounder obusiers and with a crew of eighty-one souls, the commander unknown to history but out of due respect to Nick Skinner commanded by that 'devil may care', 'rash is my middle name', Lieutenant Visage de Vache.

  

 Attention ennemi en vue! Le Sans Culottes is still beating to quarters as Scourge turns towards her

Being a privateer merits the Sans Culottes as having a better than normal French crew, recognising their desire for prize money and volunteer status as 'Poor, Jolly Jack Tars', so this should make for a very interesting little fight.

Deck there, Sail one point off the starboard bow!

Table plan arrangement adapted from Narrow Seas

Gaining a slight advantage and surprise, Scourge makes sail having beaten to quarters

Fortunately or unfortunately this little action, one of the first in a very long war, only merits about six to eight lines in William James' history and so sea conditions, wind direction and details of the action are none at all, limited and/or concise, so I generated the wind direction based on prevailing westerlies off the Scilly Isles and used the Narrow Seas rules to generate the initial positions and preparedness for battle with the Frenchman being the slower off the mark to beat to quarters, and with both ships needing to confirm the identity of the other.

I shall record the proceedings as play develops and put together a presentation to follow.

More Anon

JJ