Yes I Am (almost) A Pirate, Part I

Clearly, the title for that British 74 post came from Pink Floyd's song Another Brick in the Wall.    Since there are three parts to that song on the album, I guess you can choose for yourself which one it's from.  Personally, I'm more inclined towards part I than the more famous part II but that's just me.  This post title is a song from one of my favorite artists for many years (no, not Warren Zevon) and also describes the events of the day I'm writing about quite well.

Since it's October, that means it's time for another Broadsides! convention.  This year though, because of changes in the management of the Battleship Texas, we had to find another place for the convention at the last minute.  Fortunately, the convention organizer found another venue that is almost as good as the battleship:  The Houston Maritime Museum.

It is a small, but very nice facility and their website is: https://houstonmaritime.org/ .  Unfortunately, I did not take any pictures of their exhibits as I was busy running and playing games.  If, however, you are in Houston I recommend taking the time to visit.  They have a 1/48 scale model of HMS Victory that is so nice that I wondered if I could sneak it out under my shirt!  No, I didn't try. 🙄  What I will try is to go back and get some pictures, even if they are only of her.

Since the convention was starting over in a new location, I decided to revisit the scenario I ran from the very first Broadsides; a scenario I call "Jamaica Mistake."  It is a what-if scenario based on the idea that, instead of missing the Jamaica Convoy in the fog during the War of 1812, John Rodgers and his US Navy squadron find a section of the convoy.  All players are on the US side, and the object is to be the player with the largest amount of prize money when the scenario is over.  There are British escorts but they don't show up until after someone starts shooting.  Even then, the actual ship and its entry point are randomized so that I (playing the British) don't know exactly what I will get.

Since the scenario starts with a visibility range of 200 yards (6 inches), there are no ships on the table.  Instead, there are blinds that may or may not be a merchantman and the US entry is randomized for each ship entering on the table edge.  

Not as pretty as I'd originally hoped.

The idea was that each of those black rectangles would be wooden blocks, painted gray, with a discreet number on the back so I could match them to ships.  Well, since I waited till the last night to make them, my mini table-saw blade gave out.  I then discovered that I couldn't cut a straight line with a Dremel tool attachment.  Consequently, I got some craft foam out of the closet and used that.  

Not every one of those squares is a ship; in fact, only about half of them are.  The rest are shadows in the fog, false sightings and the like.  The only way for players to tell was to get within visibility range and actually see what is there.  To make things more fun, the visibility can change every turn.  In the Post Captain rules, you roll a D12 every turn and that is the visibility in yards.

There were only two players, so they drew their ships at random.  One player drew USS President and came in from the top short edge of the table.  The other drew USS Argus and came in from the opposite short edge.  

President from one short edge

Argus from the other

The first couple of phases (remember: for Post Captain there are three one-minute phases in a turn) were not good for either US player.  They discovered that some of the blinds were just empty ocean.  By the end of the blue phase though, they had started finding some targets.

Merchantman: "Oh.  Uh, hello."

I'm blaming any blurry photos on the "fog".  Yeah, that's it. . . .

Luckily for the Americans, the visibility went from 200 yards (6 inches) to 800 yards (24 inches) at the end of the turn.  This made everything but the center of the table visible, and let the commander of President realize that the entire convoy was coming right at him.

The fog begins to lift.

As the game sped up, my picture taking began to be a bit more erratic.  Everything that came within range of President decided that surrender was the wisest option, but the ship that Hornet sighted decided to try and run.  A single broadside from Argus was enough to make that merchant change her mind, but it also let the escorts know that something was wrong.  I rolled, and it would take one of the escorts three turns to reach the table.  Argus' merchantman had decided to surrender, but once the US captain saw the other ships ahead of him he simply sailed right past heading for the other prizes.

We wound up calling this a "naval drive-by."

At the end of this turn, another player came by a put down a Broadside Token. 

If a player puts one down, it lets him redo a die roll, or force another player to re-roll their dice.  If an onlooker puts one down, the game master has to modify something on the next turn.  As I was going crazy trying to keep my makeshift blinds associated with the right ships, I decided that next turn the fog would lift and everything on the table could be seen.

Over the next three turns, Argus kept chasing ships while President had so many surrendered ships around here that there was a bit of a traffic jam. 

In fact, President was in danger of running out of ship's boats.

"You bring that BACK when you're done, Midshipman,"

It was at this point that the Royal Navy finally put in an appearance.  The convoy was escorted by a 64, a 38 frigate and a brig.  My random die roll brought on the frigate, HMS Thalia.  Unfortunately for the Americans, she showed up behind President.  A third player joined in at this point, and wanted to run the British frigate, so I let him do it.

The watchdog arrives.

In our eagerness to start the real fighting, I didn't take any more photos.  Thalia got off a broadside before President could bring her guns to bear, and caused a rudder critical hit.  President  did manage to get turned though, and the two frigates had just settled down to pounding each other when we ran out of time.  All the players enjoyed themselves and said they would play the rules again, so I consider that a successful game.

I had planned on covering the entire convention in one post, but looking at the length of this one battle report makes it clear that I can't pull it off.  So, I'll talk about the rest of the games I played as part II.

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.