The League of Augsburg
Spoiling myself
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| Thick of the action at Foulness. |
Work has been pretty all consuming of late and I have been promising myself a gaming treat for a while merely as a little carrot to keeping me wading through the grind. The naval rules have been growing in detail and feel and during my travels. A point system and some of the random elements which I like to incorporate in rule mechanics to remove player control have...
Tales from the riverbank (Medway) - revisiting the battleships
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| Remember these? I moved to V2 for each |
I very much enjoyed customizing the Tumbling Dice models for the large English men o'war 'in ordinary' which I have shown previously in some posts. The more work I do with these 1/2400 models the more confident I get in the scope of conversions.
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| V2s in the rear V1s to the fore |
I was very happy with the versions I did until I thought about simulating their...
Wrecked - sinking and sunken vessel markers
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| A French 1st rate sails past a wrecked English 1st rate |
I wanted to make visual representations of ships that had taken a bit of a hammering during action and used some of the Tumbling Dice wreck markers as made whilst doing some work myself with
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| Dutch wrecks for 4th/5th rates and Fireships |
bits and pieces of other ships which I had cannibalized for various reasons. These all came out quite well. The...
Fate, Fortune or Faithlessness? Camaret Bay 18th June 1694: Part 5
Orders of Battle
The full English order of battle is as follows:
1 battalion of converged grenadiers (all musket), 2 battalions of Marines (all musket), 1 battalion of Guards, 11 battalions of Foot (pike and musket with the possibility that 3-4 could be all musket armed).Here are the battalions which participated in the expedition:
1st Foot Guards
John Cutts’ Regiment
Richard Coote’s Regiment
Samuel...
Fate, Fortune or Faithlessness? Camaret Bay 18th June, 1694: Part 4
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| A map drawn up to wargame the action |
It does sound unmistakably like D-Day. It took place around 200 miles from and almost exactly 250 years to the day before Operation Overlord as, although the date is now noted at June 18th the old style calendar marks it as June 6th or 7thin most sources. The action can be fought in various ways; as a large scale battle, as a skirmish or...
Fate, Fortune or Faithlessness? Camaret Bay June 18th, 1694. Part 3
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| Possibly Lord Carmarthen running the Gullet |
Consequence of perfidy
When the Allied fleet arrived in Camaret Bay it immediately came under fire from the forts around Camaret village and those at Bertheaume Bay on the northern shore opposite. The plan was for men o’ war to run the narrow channel called the ‘Gullet’ between the two headlands and sail into the anchorage at Brest. This gap was exactly...
Fate, Fortune or Faithlessness? Camaret Bay 18th June, 1694 Part 2
The Mission – Destroy Brest!
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| D-Day 300 years before it happened. Camaret Bay was an exptremely ambitious plan |
The raid was a large scale affair for an action of its type. It was months in the planning with the objective of wreaking havoc on a key strategic anchorage for the French fleet at the port of Brest in western Brittany. Naval bombardments of French ports had been undertaken before, one such...
Fate, Fortune or Faithlessness? Camaret Bay 18th June, 1694 Part 1
This piece was first run in Wargames Illustrated in 2016. I thought it a solid multi-parter to run on the blog whilst I am holidaying.
Contemporaneous notoriety
The disastrous attack at Camaret Bay on June 18th1694 was a very English tragedy. From a distance of 322 years it is easy to understand that a relatively minor operation which went badly wrong and resulted in the death of a largely forgotten...
The Chatham Board - the tide is coming in
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| Looking north(down river) and from the west bank. |
Things are progressing. I have concentrated on the western bank of the river and focused on flora and dwellings.
The perspective on the landscape is better with trees and buildings in place. The wooded areas and hedges are glued down with slow setting Bostik.
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| Some 2mm troops on this base - Dutch Marines face off local militia |
The village is place on...
One Saturday at mine... Building 1/2400 terrain
I have been researching how to bring this important campaign to the table top for a while now. That activity has paid off. I originally planned to build the entire river in 1/2400 which would have been a mammoth task however, I have now identified five important stretches:
1.The Mouth/Sheerness
2. Musselbank
3. Gillingham Reach and St Mary's Creek
4. The Chatham Dockyard stretch
5. Chatham to Rochester...
1.The Mouth/Sheerness
2. Musselbank
3. Gillingham Reach and St Mary's Creek
4. The Chatham Dockyard stretch
5. Chatham to Rochester...
Verbrand hun slagschepen! (Burn their battleships!) June 13th 1667: Part 2
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| The battleships lie at anchor watched over by the Eastern Shore Battery commanded by Spragge. |
Turn 1.
The Dutch sailed upriver from Upnor Reach in line ahead with the frigate Harderwijck leading the way followed by the Fireships Catarina, Pro Patria, Rotterdam and Drak in that order. Ahead lay gun batteries on both the east and west bank consisting of heavy artillery transported from Gravesend and...
Verbrand hun slagschepen! (Burn their battleships!) June 13th 1667: Part 1
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| Restoration idyll. Lying at anchor in the calm of a June morning - Three men o'war in ordinary. |
I was keen to run this scenario and determine whether it made an exciting two player wargame or, whether it was a 'play against the house' type affair.
I have explained the background in a previous post - During the Medway Raid (Tocht naar Chatham) the ultimate phase was the Dutch attack on the pre-sunk...