All at Sea - On the Stocks in JJ's Dockyard, Spanish Builds Part Six

'Stuart vs Nelson' - Carlos Parilla Penegos
The Spanish frigates Santa Sabina ad Ceres fought an action off Cartagena with the British frigates  Blanche and Minerve, on 19th December 1796.

With my principle Spanish ships of the line complete from the Warlord Spanish Fleet box set I just had my frigate flotilla of three named Spanish frigates to complete, starting with His Most Catholic Majesty's Ship, Ceres.

The Spanish frigate Ceres 40-guns was built by Jose Romero Landa in Havana, Cuba and probably launched on 22nd October 1790 or the 22nd December 1791, with precise details about this ship vague.

The Ceres was one of a handful of 40-gun, 18-pdr frigates developed by the Spanish in response to those of its likely enemies, with the the British developing the 18-pdr 38-gun frigates towards the end of the American War of Independence and France following suit with their 40-gun variety.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Spanish_sail_frigates

With the commencement of hostilities against Revolutionary France in 1793 Spain found herself with the majority of her frigate force consisting of the 34-gun 12-pdr variety, although these ships would be gradually up-armed in response to those of her enemies as the wars progressed.

At the start of the French Revolutionary War, Ceres served in the Caribbean and it was not until early 1794 that she sailed home to Cadiz arriving at the end of March.

On the 19th December 1796, with Spain now allied to France, the Ceres in company with another 40-gun frigate Santa Sabina under the command of Captain Don Jacobo Stuart aboard Sabina encountered the British frigate squadron of HMS Minerve 38-guns and Blanche 32-guns commanded by Commodore Horatio Nelson aboard the Minerve, on his way into the Mediterranean to rescue the British garrison on Elba as Admiral Sir John Jervis withdrew the British Mediterranean fleet following the new alliance between France and Spain.

Nelson ordered Captain D'Arcy Preston and the Blanche to engage the Ceres whilst he took Minerve against Sabina coming alongside the Spanish frigate at 22.40 with both Spanish ships striking in the early hours of the 20th December only to be succoured by the arrival of Spanish reinforcements from Cartagena who drove off Nelson and forced him to abandon his prizes before the British commander set off to Elba to complete his mission.

Nelson's frigate Minerve off Gibraltar where on the 29th January 1796, the prisoners from the action with Ceres and Sabina were exchanged with the Spanish prior to Nelson joining Admiral Jervis at Lisbon.

The Ceres was reported to have been badly damaged in the action with Blanche losing seven men killed and fifteen wounded.

Two months later the Ceres would see action again at the Battle of Cape St. Vincent on the 14th February as Admiral Jervis and Commodore Nelson would defeat the Spanish fleet as it made its way into the Atlantic to attempt to join the French main fleet in Brest.

The Ceres served on up to the beginning of the Napoleonic War but missed the Trafalgar campaign, being broken up on the 12th May 1804.

At the time of her action with HMS Blanche she is reported to have been armed with 28 x 18-pdr long guns on her gun deck,  8 x 8-pdrs on her quarterdeck and 4 x 8pdrs on her forecastle with a crew of 290 men.

https://threedecks.org/index.php?display_type=show_ship&id=12096
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Action_of_19_December_1796

Harbors and High Seas, An Atlas and Geographical Guide to the Complete Aubrey-Maturin Novels of Patrick O'Brian (3rd Edition) - Dean King

The glorious cover artwork on Dean King's accompaniment to the Aubrey-Maturin novels, by Geoff Hunt illustrating the vessels commanded by Captain Aubrey with the 14-gun Brig Sophie of 1801 seen to the right, the 28-gun frigate Surprise, front left and the 74-gun Bellona between them, followed by the slow sailing 50-gun Leopard in the extreme left distance

I posted my thoughts last month about the first book in the series of Aubrey-Maturin novels by Patrick O'Brian,

http://jjwargames.blogspot.com/2020/07/master-commander-patrick-obrian.html

which seemed to tick a box with a lot of you, many far more experienced readers of the series than I.

 I have since found myself devouring the books rapidly as my nocturnal reading habit has seen me finish Master & Commander, Post Captain and just this week HMS Surprise, with the Mauritius Command sat ready for my attention on my bed-side cabinet.

With my concern that there are just another seventeen books to go and wanting to savour the pleasure I have decided to let the next book wait awhile and turn my attention to a couple of factual tomes which I will review in turn, but before that I thought it would be worth highlighting a book that has accompanied my recent reading, namely Dean King's Atlas and Geographical guide which I got as an accompaniment to Master & Commander.

I have to say that I was in two minds whether to buy this book as I have a copious library on the period and do not come at the subject as a complete novice so don't struggle reading the detailed descriptions of the sailing activity and naval banter between the various characters, or bring an unfamiliarity to the various parts of the globe that are portrayed in the narrative, especially here at home in 'dear old blighty'.

However I decided to take the plunge and very happy I am to have done so, as it has been a very handy accompaniment to my reading this last month and I have found myself dipping into its covers when needing to clarify where exactly on the high seas a particular scene is taking place or to remind myself why Aubrey has set course for a particular landfall hoping to take advantage of a particular wind or set of seasonal currents to aid his progress across one particular ocean or another.

In addition to the Introductory section of the book written with Professor of Maritime History, John B. Hattendorf, covering these navigational aspects of the age of sail with some interesting statistics on the time taken to cover particular historical voyages to help illustrate those described in the various books, the content is then broken down into separate chapters dedicated to each book in the series in the sequence they are written which is perfect for those of us who don't necessarily want to know the plot of the next book before we have read it, although I noticed that the sections I have read more thoroughly are quite circumspect about not giving precise details about what happened to cause the description given to progress as described.

As you will see the book is copiously illustrated with excellent maps depicting the action covered in each of the books with the addition of places that are fictional but shown based on information in the books plus period maps and illustrations garnered from the Naval Chronicle which only adds to the feel of the period captured in O'Brian's writing.

Alongside the illustrations are yet more historical facts and information about places mentioned or certain species of wild life encountered or indeed certain medical aspects of life aboard ship that show the depth of O'Brian's knowledge and research that he put in to underpin his stories

If you have been inspired to start getting into the Aubrey-Maturin series of books or like many others, are rereading the series again, you might enjoy having a copy of Dean King's guide to add to that enjoyment and provide a ready reference to these masterful books of the period

Harbors and High Seas is 258 pages which includes the following:

List of Illustrations

Acknowledgements

A Note on the Third Edition

Preface to the Second Edition

Foreward by Dean King

Intoduction with the following maps to illustrate;

Neat Diagram of Winds: January to June

Neat Diagram of Winds: July to December

Colonies and Trade Routes in 1814

Maps of England, Ireland and Europe

England and Wales in 1812

Southern England

Ireland in 1812

London in 1812

Whitehall in 1812

Europe in 1812

The Novels

Chapter 1. Master and Commander - Mastering the Mediterranean

Chapter 2. Post Captain - England, the Continent and a North Atlantic Showdown

Chapter 3. HMS Surprise - A Lively Time in the Med and a Surprise Voyage to the East Indies

Chapter 4. The Mauritius Command - Action in the Indian Ocean

Chapter 5. Desolation Island - From Hot Water in Hampshire to Shattering South Seas

Chapter 6. The Fortune of War - An Unlucky Voyage from the East Indies

Chapter 7. The Surgeons Mate - From North America to the Baltic to the Tower in the Temple

Chapter 8. The Ionian Mission - Toil and Trouble in the Mediterranean

Chapter 9. Treason's Harbour; Fiasco in the Middle East

Chapter 10. The Far Side of the World - Around the Horn in a Hurry

Chapter 11. The Reverse of the Medal - Homeward Bound from the West Indies

Chapter 12. The Letter of Marque - Redemption in the Azores and on the Normandy Coast

Chapter 13. The Thirteen Gun Salute - False Starts and the East Indies

Chapter 14. The Nutmeg of Consolation - From Java Sea to Sydney Cove

Chapter 15. The Truelove - An Urgent Detour to the Not-So-Pacific Island of Moahu

Chapter 16. The Wine Dark Sea - South America at Last

Chapter 17. The Commodore - Great Guns on the Coast of Africa and Ireland

Chapter 18. The Yellow Admiral - Rough Seas on the Brest Blockade

Chapter 19. The Hundred Days - Confusion to Boney, Encore!

Chapter 20. Blue at the Mizzen - A Hot Time in Chile

Maritime Measures

Selected Bibliography

Author Notes

Index.

My copy of Harbor and High Seas was in paperback and at the time of writing can be picked up new from Amazon at £11.24 with free postage and I noticed second hand copies going for as little as £4.95 plus £2.80 described as 'Good Condition' so a very affordable addition to your reading.

Dartmoor Walk - Drizzlecombe Ceremonial Complex

 

It's been just over a week now since I started to compose this post only to discover that it was not going to be quite as simple as I first thought.

The creative team behind this platform, 'Blogger' that hosts 'JJ's Wargames' have been rather busy in recent months redesigning the layout of the screen that I look at when putting the blog together, so much so that I am never quite sure what I will find each time I press the 'Create a new Post' button, and long familiar ways of doing things are suddenly thrown astray by the creative whims of the people that make the changes.

This last week was slightly different in that someone in the design team had managed to create an input system that caused all type inputs to be created with a double spacing between lines which rather messed up the final appearance of a post.

Someone then discovered a convoluted solution to press the space key at the same time as pressing the return key to create a new line, that overcame this issue and kindly passed it on to the wider community of bloggers, and now I find, as I sit down to compose this post two weeks since my last, that the error has been corrected altogether and we are back to normal!

Hey-Ho, who said life was designed to make you happy - anyway on with the blog!

The end of July saw Carolyn and I celebrating our thirty-second wedding anniversary and so to enjoy the day together we decided to make the most of the hot weather with another expedition to Dartmoor to explore the prehistoric Drizzlecombe Ceremonial Complex and the scenery depicted in the Spielberg film War Horse based on Micheal Morpurgo's 1982 novel of the same name.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_Horse_(film)

The OS Map of Dartmoor that I carry on my View Ranger App on the phone shows the route of our walk starting at the small car park, just below Gutter Tor, the first point we intended to head for and where we planned to stop for our lunch as we gazed out over the splendour of south Dartmoor towards the coast and the entrance to Plymouth. 

The view below shows the climb up from the car park with the rocky crop of Gutter Tor before us silhouetted against the azure blue of a July Devon sky with glorious temperatures to enjoy on our climb to the top.

We descended the tor after a half hour stop for lunch, enjoying the views to join the stone track below that leads out over the low-lying scrub-land around Gutter Mire as we made our way towards Ditsworthy Warren House the star of the movie.

 

The trail below Gutter Tor looking back to the car park

Our walk for the day would take us over the ground ahead encompassing Gutter Mire and Drizzle Combe

Abandoned in 1947, Ditsworthy Warren House dates back to the 16th century although the building that stands today traces its buildings back to the 18th and early 19th century.

It was built for the keeper of Ditsworthy rabbit warren when rabbits were bred commercially in the area for their meat and fur, making use of the poor agricultural land on Dartmoor but perfect for breeding rabbits, allowing them to burrow easily in the pillow mounds of granite stone, topped off with soil that were constructed for them around the house.

Today the house is abandoned and occasionally used by the British military who train in the area and is described as a stone tent capable of accommodating twenty-three soldiers, and the odd use as a film set as in 2010, depicted below with its false thatch in its starring roll in War Horse.

War Horse’s production designer Rick Carter said the location’s panoramic views gave “it a sense of being part of something huge and imposing – the expanse of skies, the force of the elements – and that created a beauty beyond what we had hoped for."

Following the path that leads around and behind the house we followed the route of the upper reaches of the River Plym that gives its name to the historic Devon city of Plymouth, carefully picking our way over muddy and fast flowing leats drizzling their contents into the Plym close by with the intent of reaching the higher ground beyond to see the amazing Bronze Age spine line of stones and the Drizzlecombe Complex of twenty-two cairns or burial mounds that surround it including the massive Giant's Basin Cairn one of the most remarkable prehistoric sites on Dartmoor.

The final leat crossing proved a bit too much for Carolyn who decided to head off along the course of Drizzle Combe (see map) to find an easier crossing, as I having made the other side with a bit of a jump, kept her in view as I made my way alone up the slope towards the stone row, immediately recognisable by its two large standing stones at each end, re-erected in 1893 in their original sockets.

The first view of the stone row and its imposing header stones at each end

A closer view of the stone row reveals the Giant's Basin Cairn directly behind the closer of the two largest stones.

Meanwhile Carolyn had found a friend as she discovered an easier route across Drizzle Combe to get up to the complex

The stones are massive when one considers the work it would have taken for these early bronze age settlers on Dartmoor to erect them and the significance these monuments must have had for so many burial mounds to have been constructed close by.

As with the stone row, the massive Giant's Basin Cairn reveals a structure that would have taken an enormous amount of labour to construct and suggests a person of very high status within the community.

The cairns consist of an outer and inner ring of stones in their construction, with a central pit.

It is an amazing feeling to stand amid the ruins of such an ancient site that must have carried a great deal of significance to the people that built it  some four thousand years ago.

As we headed up the slope of Higher Hartor Tor from the complex, the view back over the ground we had walked from Ditsworthy Warren House displayed the expanse of Dartmoor with the Plym and Drizzle Combe bisecting the valley below.

The view from the slope of Higher Hartor Tor, with the Ceremonial Complex and the courses of the River Plym (left) and Drizzle Combe (right) cutting across the valley below.

We had planned originally to walk up to the summit of Higher Hartor Tor befor cutting across to the ruins of the Eylesbarrow Tin Mine (see map above), but with a fish and chip supper booked for picking up on our way home and over an hours drive to get back we decided to cut across to the military track just below the ruins and our walk back to the car park.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eylesbarrow_mine

Ruins of the stamping mill of the Eylesbarrow Tin Mine

The military track leads back across the moor providing easy walking on our last leg as we made our way back to the car looking forward to the fish and chips that evening.

As you will see from the pictures the weather was stunning for our wedding anniversary walk and all that fresh air meant we were hungry after it.

Dartmoor is such a special place to walk and I am looking forward to sharing more of its amazing vistas and history in future visits.

http://www.dartmoorwalks.org.uk/site/drizzle1.php
http://www.dartmoorwalks.org.uk/resource/rows.php

International Naval Wargames Day 2020

As highlighted recently on David Manley's blog post and notices to various forums, today is Fred T Jane's birthday, the father of Naval Wargaming and as good a day as any to promote naval wargaming, by playing some games.

http://dtbsam.blogspot.com/2020/06/international-naval-wargames-day-2020.html

Unfortunately I'm not in a position to present a game at the moment, but thought I might do my bit to support the profile raising of this part of our hobby by doing my fleet review that I've been threatening to do for the last few months as the 1:700th Age of Sail collection has grown.

I have mentioned a few times in other comments that 1:700th scale model ships offers the naval gamer a chance to do the Age of Sail in the 'Grand Manner' rather as 28mm does for figure gaming and with the relatively short range of black powder weaponry means you can compensate for the blue of the open table with a mass of spars and rigging to give the eye plenty to work with without having to resort to adding some land features and lighthouses, but if you do, they can only add to the spectacle.

It's only when you see the models en mass that you can start to appreciate the extra wow factor they can create for the onlooker that other naval games in smaller scales would probably struggle to match and so I thought you might like to see what I mean by a review of my British, French and Spanish squadrons, not to mention the inclusion of the representative of the fledgling United States Navy of the period.

My Royal Navy collection consists of a core of first and third rates seen above with HMS Victory flying 'England expects ...' leading the Royal Sovereign and another three decker with six third rates bringing up the rear.

The heavy squadron is supported by a light squadron of five fifth rate frigates a sixth rate ship-sloop and six brigs.

Next up we have the Marine de la Republic Francaise with their three decked first rate leading six third rates and a light squadron of four frigates, a corvette and two brigs.

The most recent addition to the collection had been the Armada Espagnole led here by the two first rates Santisima Trinidad and Santa Anna with the three third rates and three frigates alongside a single corvette.

And last but by no means least is my single but by no means insignificant representative of the US Navy in the shape of the USS Constitution.

The collection was started in October 2019 and is set to be joined by another fifteen third rates, nine of which are the named options for each of the main fleets together with some additional frigates and sloops. 

The build process has been a learning curve with these models and I certainly don't do things the way I did when I started and it all gets quicker and more effective the more you do.

Anyway with this growing collection I  have some large games planned for when things return to normal and we can start to gather around the table again, but in the meantime its fun watching the various fleets grow.

The Second Battle of the Virginia Capes - V. Zveg
Inconclusive actions such as this action, otherwise known as the Battle of the Chesapeake, drove a radical rethink of British naval tactics in the late 18th century.

Finally as a slight side bar to this current project, I am enjoying researching the tactical ideas that flourished in this period, particularly among the senior officers of the Royal Navy who were grappling with the problem of how to force an enemy fleet lying upwind to accept action.

This perennial tactical problem would draw a distinct line between the Royal Navy, the principle force of an island nation, Great Britain, with vital interests in dominating the oceans and protecting her trade routes, and colonies, driving a policy of seeking and destroying enemy vessels as the principle aim of her fleets and admirals to those of the navies of the continental powers, principally France and Spain, which were much more mission driven in terms of supporting troop movements and invasions or protecting vital convoys, which might be readily achieved by avoiding combat

The inconclusive engagements that came to characterise many of the fleet engagements of the 18th century which perhaps reached its zenith with the loss of the American colonies and the stalemate action fought off the Chesapeake caused a radical rethink of naval tactics in British circles and saw these ideas first captured in an amazing book by the laird of a Scottish estate, John Clerk of Elgin.

An enthusiastic amateur, he captured the key details in his analysis of the actions in the American War of Independence and published his conclusions in his Treatise on Naval Tactics which among other things promoted the need for a more radical approach to forcing battle, most notably the idea of breaking the enemy line of battle to engage on the leeward side, preventing damaged enemy ships from simply breaking off by falling away to windward.

Battle of the Saintes, 12th April 1782, National Maritime Museum - Thomas Luny

Perhaps the most influential endorsement of Clerk's work came from no less a person than Admiral Lord Rodney, who suffered much from inconclusive actions off Martinique, but was much heralded for his later victory at the Battle of the Saintes by breaking the French line as described.

Thanks to the marvels of the internet, Clerk's pivotal work is available for other naval tactical amateurs to read today, and if you find this kind of reading useful in informing your hobby as much as I do then you might like to get a copy to study at the link below, which you can read online or download a pdf copy for later reference.

https://archive.org/details/anessayonnavalt00clergoog

Happy International Naval Wargames Day.

Next up more exploration of neolithic.bronze-age Dartmoor, our final play through of Washington's War on Vassal, Spanish frigates and a couple of corvettes.