Black Seas : Trafalgar!

 

This Sunday the Wollongong Wargamers reprised our annual October Trafalgar game. Most followers of my blog will be familiar with the battle so I won't dwell on the history, for a useful summary click here: Royal Navy: Trafalgar

This year we tried to better portray the somewhat disjointed disposition of the Combined Fleet: initially in three lines and a single ship. Peter M took command of the Vanguard and I the Afterguard. We used the Trafalgar scenario from Black Seas, with a few minor changes: our French and Spanish seamen would be Regular rather than the more historical Inexperienced to make more of a game of it, along with boasting a high proportion of First and Second Rates compared to the RN.

The RN formed two columns each lead by a First Rate but only Nelson's port column was graced with an additional Second Rate. To make the numbers up several British frigates were promoted to Third Rates!

Admiral Collingwood's Royal Sovereign, sporting a brand new copper bottom, raced ahead of the fleet and suffered accordingly at the hands of the Spanish big guns!

What Peter and I had hoped would turn into a long range gunnery duel of parallel lines...

Was thwarted by some astute tactical thinking by Darren/Nelson - the RN would absorb more pain without retaliation for the sake of using the wind gage to wear around and isolate our vanguard! Peter took a deep breath and prepared for the worst - given the flat calm it would be a long, long time before my Afterguard could come up in support!

However our gunnery was able to disrupt the cunning British plans - as they were just at the point of wearing around a lucky shot inflicted some timely critical damage:

HMS Belleisle's rudder was shot away and she turned with the wind directly for the Combined Fleet, fouling the way for the rest of the column!

This was the point at which the Royal Navy fleet was at its most vulnerable, and the Combined Fleet delivered a hard pounding, particularly with Peter M's formidable dice rolling! As you can see below he has set fire to a couple of British Men O War and Royal Sovereign, in particularly, has been grievously damaged.

After lunch Peter served up a festive Rum Cake to celebrate the Immortal Memory!

Darren and Caesar returned to the table to plot the next stage of the battle - they had taken their punishment getting into position, now was their time!

They broke through...

Then isolated...

Then pounded, the Combined Fleet's Vanguard to smithereens. When even the Santissima Trinidad was forced to strike, we threw in the towel!

Congratulations to Darren and Caesar on a very convincing win, and commiserations to my team mate Peter - it was never going to be easy, even with his devastating die rolls!