Bantry Bay 1796 for Kiss Me Hardy - Preparations (French Troop Transports), Part Two

La Forte, French Armed Transport - Frederick Roux

 

This post follows on from Part One which, if you missed it, can be followed in the link below:

JJ's Wargames - Bantry Bay 1796 for Kiss Me Hardy, Part One

When looking at the development of naval power projection in the eighteenth and early nineteenth century and amphibious operations, the literature that predominates, I suppose unsurprisingly, seems to focus primarily on British operations, and even there the detail surrounding the actual transport ships involved as opposed to the men-of-war is a lot more sparse than you would wish if you were looking to model these fleets for the wargaming table.

If you then turn your attention to the French then you really have to start a bit of investigative digging to come to a firm impression of how to represent these forces.

For the French Invasion of Ireland in December 1796, originally James and then Clowes lists the following French transports that were part of the invasion fleet of seventeen ships of the line, thirteen frigates and six corvettes.

I decided to randomly choose four of these vessels for which I could possibly get enough detail to represent them as a KMH transport ship with a ship record card as seen below. For this kind of work I regularly turn to one of the Rif Winfield reference books, in this case French Warships of the Age of Sail 1786 -1861, which are an invaluable resource for better modelling the relevant ship statistics.

In addition I began scouring the various forums, museum and art gallery listings to find illustrations, models and paintings of as many of these French ships as possible to feed the inspiration for the look of my Irish expedition.

Antoine Roux

Perhaps one of the best resources for period illustrations of French warships, transports, Mediterranean ship types and other allied merchants are the paintings and drawings of the brilliant Antoine Roux and many of his descendants who also acquired the artistic talents, with two seen here from the brush of one of his sons, François Joseph Frédéric Roux, who produced the two illustrations of French armed-transports, to leave us a fantastic resource of the look of ships and boats from this era from a French perspective and with Roux the elder based in Marseille, a unique Mediterranean perspective.

Spanish merchantmen - Antoine Roux
These types of illustration help give a great picture of the likely look of typical merchantmen out on the high-seas.

An 18 to 20-gun French Corvette - Antoine Roux.
Similar in size and look to the small French transports described, less the guns

In addition I also looked at some of the models of French East Indiamen as presented here in a discussion link to Game Labs Forum looking at these types.

Game LabsForum - XVIII Cent Fluyts of the French East India Company

Armed with these illustrations in mind, I decided to create the look of some of these merchantmen with a view to the timing of the campaign to Ireland, being early in the French Revolutionary War and with likely many of these non-warship types still showing the look of the previous decade with the odd lateen rigged mizzen and white lead painted lower hulls instead of the coppering reserved for the warships of a bankrupt French state in the wake of the American War overspend.

As mentioned in my first post, I had already identified the battened-down sixth rates with their lashed quarterdeck guns as the most suitable models to use for the majority of my transports.

To add a little variety to the overall look of this little squadron, I decided to model the smaller of the four vessels as a merchant brig, with the guns removed to capture a better look for the plastic generic brig.

 

So the Justine is listed in French Warships of the Age of Sail 1786 -1861 as:

'(merchant ship commissioned 11.1796, possibly the 309 ton Justine that traded from Nantes between 1785 and 1790 or perhaps a larger ship, carried 1 x 8-pdr, 1 x 4-pdr, 1 x 10-inch an 2 x 8-inch mortars). Captured 30.12.1796 off Ireland by HMS Polyphemus (64), while carrying 465 soldiers, then wrecked and lost with all hands.'

So my translation of the KMH Justine is seen above, simply dividing her tonnage with the builders calculation of 23.1 gives me a vessel of fourteen hull boxes, there or there about, a typical look for a brig which prompted me to have Justine as you see her here, with a typical small ship's crew rated as Average Sans Culottes and with a basic speed of fourteen centimetres which is a bit quick for a two master but I wanted her to not hold the fleet back in the scenario and convinced myself that without the weight of a man-o-wars guns she might be a little quicker over the briny.

Next up we have the Fille Unique listed as follows and converted as per Justine seen above but with her tonnage indicating a larger corvette sized vessel of three masts, similar to the La Lionne and La Forte as depicted by Frederick Roux:

La Lionne, French Armed Transport - Frederick Roux

  

'(Flûte* built at Bordeaux 1783-83 and purchased 1785, 700 tons, 135-150 men, carried 24 x 8-pdrs). Gunnery school at Brest 11.1794 with 26 x 12-pdrs. Renamed Faveur 1.1795, reverted to Fille Unique 1796. Expedition to Ireland 11.1796. Hulk at Brest 3.1797. On sale list 28.5.1797 but not sold, powder hulk 9.1800, BU 4.1804.'

*En Flûte, simply meaning with no guns on board to be used as a transport, mercantile or military.

The Ville de Lorient is described thus:

'(French East India Co. flûte Bretagne built at Lorient in 1787 and requisitioned at Philadelphia 12. 1793 by the French representative there. then bought by the navy, 525/1000 tons, 175 men, carried 2 x 12-pdrs 22 x 6-pdrs and 4 x 3-pdrs. Renamed Ville Commune de Lorient 5.1794, Ville de Lorient No.1  10.1794, Voyageur 5.1795 but reverted to Ville de Lorient. Captured off Ireland with 431 soldiers by HMS Doris (36), Unicorn (32) and Druid (22), then wrecked off Irish coast.'

Finally the merchant ship Suffren, named in honour of perhaps one of the best and most famous French admirals. I decided that given her name and association with India I would have my Suffren looking the part to have sailed with the great man back in 1782:

'(merchant ship Suffren requisitioned 12.2.1794 at Lorient, 600 tons, 194 men, carried 24 x 8-pdrs). Renamed Saisissante 5.1795 but reverted to Suffren. Captured 1.1797 with 202 soldiers on board by HMS Jason (38), then retaken by the French frigate Tartu (ex Uranie), then sunk of Ushant by HMS Majestic (74), Daedalus (32) and Incendiary (14).'

As in most naval wargames, transports and merchantmen used on the table often act primarily as targets, which they will be in this scenario with the added caveat that the French are aiming to get all four of them over the finish line for a decisive victory, but as with the warships, I think it’s worth the effort to go a bit further with these models and try to capture the likely look of these ‘Cinderella’ ships and compliment the aesthetics that age-of-sail naval wargames played in 1:700 scale offer.

Hopefully those aesthetics will be obvious to the eye when you next see these models out on the table amid gun smoke and dice at Clotted Lard.

More Anon

JJ

Lot’s to come here on JJ’s as I look forward to doing a full AAR on the Bantry Bay games at Clotted Lard and the Naval Wargames Society meetings later this month, plus more age of sail to come with the start of my next fleet build project with the first models to be showcased in the rigging yard as I write, together with WWII vehicles on Dartmoor, and the next post in Carolyn’s and my Antipodean adventure to Hamilton Island on the Great Barrier Reef.