The Indispensible Fleet.

At last, we have come to the fleet that you must have in a Age of Sail collection.  Yes, here is the British fleet.  No matter what other navy from this period you might have, at some point they fought against the British.  The Russian Navy that cooperated with the British (and Ottomans!) in 1798 would be blockaded in Lisbon by the British in 1808.  Sometimes, the British fought their enemies and allies at the same time.  As an example, see the Anglo-Russian War (1807-1812) and the Anglo-Swedish War (1810-1812).  No acts of war occurred between Great Britain and Sweden, trade continued between the two nations, AND the British navy kept using Swedish ports.  Nevertheless, the Swedes did declare war against their former allies.  Clearly then, if you are going to play French Revolution or Napoleonic AOS scenarios, then you need a British fleet.

With all that in mind, here is my British fleet.  Keep in mind that even with all these ships, it is still growing as I progress towards completing my Trafalgar project.  The future ships will be seen on the blog as they're completed of course.  Maybe in the future, I can revisit this post and get all of the family together in one place.

The obvious ships to start with are the First Rates.  Of course, one of them is HMS Victory.  I suspect there is a law somewhere that says every wargamer's British fleet has to have Nelson's flagship.  The other one is HMS Britannia, also a 100 gunner and a near-contemporary to Victory as to when she was constructed.  Victory was purchased, but I repainted the hull and did some rerigging when I rebased the ship.  If you want better close-ups of Britannia, they are located in my post entitled, "The Hundredth Ship" from September of 2017.  Given the number of ships in this post, I will be grouping them together in pictures as much as I can. 

Yes, the Victory is way too high out of the water.  That will be fixed the next time she
is rebased.  When is that?  Dunno.

Victory towing the boats was based on the Geoff Hunt painting "Victory races Temeraire
for the Enemy Line."  I added those to the ship when I rebased it the first time.

Next are that British anomaly, the Second Rates.  These are the 90-98 gunners.  According to Brian Lavery's book Nelson's Navy they were originally conceived in the 1670s as a cheaper alternative to the first rate.  By our time, they had no specific role and their shorter length compared to a first rate made them poor sailors so they were (according to Lavery) in decline as a class.  Be that as it may, there were 21 in the fleet in 1793, and 17 by 1812.  I have three 98s, and still have to pick up one more for Trafalgar.  I couldn't get all three into one shot, so each of these gets their own beauty shot.

First up is HMS Windsor Castle.  She was an active ship, seeing service at Toulon (1793), the Battle of Genoa (1795), Calder's Action (1805), the Action of 25 September (1806) and the Dardanelles (1807).  Unfortunately, it appears that Langton doesn't make this ship any more.

One of my early efforts, so in need of a little update now.

I did have a bit steadier hand back then.

  The next two ships are just generic 98s, both of which are "at quarters."  They are more time consuming to paint with all the guns run out, but you just can't beat the appearance.

This is one of my older bases that were built of wood and modelling clay.
You can clearly see here what I mean about having the guns run out.

This is a purchased ship.

Next up are the backbone of any fleet, the third rates.  Since I don't have any British 80 gunners, we'll start with 74s.  Officially, there were only 2 types of 74: Large and Common classes.  Gamers and the historian William James though, talk about 3 types: Large, Common and Middling.  The Middling 74 tends to be slightly longer than the Common (173-75 feet instead of 168-170 feet), and so could carry 2 more 18 pounder guns on the upper gun deck (30 instead of 28).  Large class 74s could carry 24 pounders on the upper gun deck, but didn't always do so.  The two ships below are my Large class 74s:

The ship on the left side of both photos is purchased.

Next are the 74 Middlings.  All three of these ships were purchased, but I had to reinstall the mizzenmast on the center one, so took that opportunity to repaint the hull.

The photos below are of my 74 Common class ships, which are the backbone of any British battleline, especially for the early battles.  At the beginning of 1793 there were 3 x Large 74's, 4 x Middling 74's and 54 x Common 74's in the fleet, although many of these were in ordinary.  By 1805 there were 24 x Large 74's, 11 x Middling 74's and 32 x Common 74's on the register, and a great many of them were in service.  So, no matter what year you're looking at, you need a lot of Common class 74 gunners.

All three of these are purchased.

The ship on the right in these photos is one of the first British 74's I built after I got back into Age of Sail gaming; maybe even the first.    One thing is for sure, though: I built it before I had a lot of my reference works, as the picture below will demonstrate:

See if you can spot the error.  It's REALLY easy.

Yes, that is a red painted gundeck.  No, apparently I didn't know any better almost 20 years ago.  Why don't I correct it?  Well, I think 1) it's a good reminder of how far I've come, and 2) no one has ever said anything about it.  To be honest, it's probably more the second reason since I'm kind of lazy in that regard.

The third rates wrap up with my 64 gun ships.  I have two of these, and a French 64 that often stands in when needed.  The French 64 was pictured in those fleet photos, so this will be just the two British ones.

Once again, the one on the left is purchased.

The right hand ship is HMS Agamemnon, which was featured in the
post entitled, "HMS Agamemnon; Nelson's Favorite..." back in July of 2017.

The last ship of the line type is another peculiarity of the British Navy and that's the Fourth Rate.  These are the 50 gun ships that had no place in the line of battle, or even fighting another ship of the line (see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Leander_(1780) ).  They were useful as squadron flagships in peacetime and as patrol vessels in wartime, which is why there were 19 in service in 1793, and 14 as late as 1812.

She's cute enough, but do the bigger ships pick on her when no one's looking?

Now that the ships of the line are out of the way, we come to the frigates.  There's not as many of them as there are ships of the line so they will each get their own beauty shot.  Just like the other ships, I will start with the largest and work my way down.

A purchased 40 gun frigate.

A 38 gunner, the backbone of the frigate fleet by 1813.

A purchased 36.  There were 43 of this type on the list in 1805.

Another 36.  This ship was the star of those "What Is My Time Worth" posts.

A purchased 32.  Most of my frigates are from a collection I bought when I
started AoS gaming again in 2000 or 2001.

A purchased 28 gun frigate.

To close out the post, here are a couple of ships that I suspect get no love at all from most gamers.  Those are the transports.  In real life, these were 44 gun two deckers like HMS Serapis that were converted for transport and troopship duties.  Although there were 21 of them in 1793, they were practically extinct by 1815.  If you want to run early war scenarios in places like the Caribbean though, you're going to need some.  I have two, and could need more depending on the scenario.

As you can see, this one still tries to look at least a little like a warship.

This one, however, isn't even trying anymore.

So there, at last, is my British fleet.  I think the next big post after this will be the various unrated warships that can be used for any side.  After that, future ships will show up as individual posts.  Once the Trafalgar project is finished, perhaps I will do a series of posts about each of the fleets involved for that, with pictures of all those ships together.

They're Not Targets, They're Merchants!

Too often, naval gamers are guilty of thinking about merchantmen only as targets for well, pretty much everything else on the table really.  In fairness to those gamers though, game rules usually treat the lowly merchantman as nothing more than a target.

I think it takes a campaign game for the merchantman to truly come into its own.  We think of supply convoys as belonging to World War I or II, but this is not the case.  Even in the Napoleonic Era, armies had to be fed and supplied  and navies did as well.  After all, sometimes the most convenient ports for your naval strategy are not the richest ones where supplies are concerned.  Escorting a convoy of food and supplies through a rapacious enemy squadron can be a fun scenario for us,  but was a recurring duty that Admirals from all nations faced during the Age of Sail.  No matter what sort of naval campaign you want to run, the simple fact is that you're going to need merchant ships.

With that in mind, here are some pictures of those unloved workhorses, my merchant fleet.  At the risk of sounding hypocritical, I'm not going to show individual ship photos in this post.  Instead, I'll break them down by manufacturer, and only show an individual photo if it's a one-off ship.

Most rules break merchants down into different sizes, and so it makes sense to start with what most rules call "small merchants."  There's not really a hard, fast rule about where the size break is between a "small" merchantman and their larger relatives.  For our purpose here, if the maker of the miniature calls it a small merchantman, then it's a small merchantman.

First up are the models originally from Skytrex, now sold by  Red Eagle Miniatures (http://www.redeagleminiatures.co.uk/). These first two are called "bark" on the website, but as you can see in the photos, the mizzen mast is not fore-and-aft rigged. 

The sterns on these ships are completely smooth, so you can detail them however you like.  Looks like the owner of the left ship didn't do a very good job of fake windows.

Skytrex sold the ship pictured below as the troop transport Buffalo, but Red Eagle just calls it a generic troop transport.  I think it makes a perfectly good small merchant, and Red Eagle must agree with me because that's what they have it listed under..  I don't like the Skytrex sails and masts, so for this one I replaced them with a small frigate set from Langton.

Another one-off ship is the West Indiaman from GHQ.  As with all the GHQ sailing ships, the hull is beautiful but the masts are flimsy and I find their ships hard to rig without bending the masts.

Next we come to the mainstay of my small merchantmen, the Langton small merchant.  The hull form is very similar to the Skytrex bark, except that the Langton hull has side galleries and decorations on the stern. 

The ship on the far right of the photo is a purchased one.

Even my Langton models have a one-off, however.  The ship below is a small Great Lakes schooner that I bought just to see how small they are.  As you can see from the photos, the answer to that is, "pretty darn small."

Up next are the medium merchants, and I only have two of those. The first one is from Langton

This is a purchased ship, and I just realized there is no running rigging.  Oops!

When I bought the ship pictured below from Skytrex, it was listed as, "medium merchantman The Pitt."  Red Eagle lists it under the same name, but calls it a medium East Indiaman.  To me though, she looks a little small to be an East Indiaman, and so that's why it is on a base size that Langton recommends for unrated vessels.

Finally, we have those big boys, the Large Merchants.  When handled aggressively, they can even convince a cautious enemy commander that they are ships of the line, instead of targets.  For a quick  example of this, see the Wikipedia article about the Battle of Pulo Aura, fought on Valentine's Day in 1804 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Pulo_Aura).  In looking at the pictures of these large merchants below, it's easy to see how a case of mistaken identity could come about

Fly the right flag, maneuver aggressively, and it just might work.

I think there is only one stern design for the Langton large merchant

This is a purchased vessel.

Skytrex/Red Eagle also puts out a large merchant, and while smaller than the Langton one, it still looks the part.

I do have some other ships that could be used as small merchants: poleacres, xebecs, and a lateen-rigged barque.  They are more limited in where they could be used though (they are primarily Mediterranean rigs), so I will put them in the post on unrated vessels.