"Carronades in wargames?" Topic

Hi everyone,

I'm still relatively new to Napoleonic Naval and I am a little bit confused as to the nature of carronade guns, especially from a wargaming perspective.

I think I am correct when I say that they had a reduced range but I am not sure when exactly they were used. I've been reading that they were positioned on the top deck but now I am confused by learning that some ships only had carronades and used them for broadsides too.
I suppose my specific questions would be;
1. can the carronades fire forward and aft, as opposed to to the sides of the ship?
2. Do you normally fire them seperately in games, or are they factored into the main gunnery roll?
3. Do you bother noting how many carronade guns each ship has in your Orders of Battle? I guess the answer to this will depend on the answers to questions 1 & 2.

Note; To start off with I am using the "Beat to quarters" free rules, which seem excellent to me as they are a good mix of fast play and detail.
These rules allow carronades to fire 4 hexes (as opposed to the usual 13), but they are not clear as to whether they are fired in addition to the main broadside, or whether they are more vicious than the ordinary fire, or what direction they can fire.

Vicious is an understatement.

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See the wikipedia entry en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carronade.

Basically carronades were roughly 1/4-1/3 the wieght of a normal full size naval gun. They were fired with a much lighter charge than a normal naval gun but due to more precise manufacutring and reduced windage were still quite effective at shorter ranges. They could be served by smaller crews than a full size gun and be reloaded and fired more rapidly.

Chris

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They were not counted in gun complement of the vessel.

The advantage, once in range was a reduced crew to operate.

They fired similar rounds to the long guns.

The trade-off for reduced crew appears to be accuracy and range.

The main advantage of carronades was that they allowed the normally light upper deck armament to be supplemented or replaced by guns firing much heavier shot – 18, 24 or 32 pounders which would be impossible to mount normally.

(Victory's 68-pdrs were something of an oddball … )

The short barrels limited muzzle velocity and effective range but created a close range boost to firepower invaluable at yardarm range – hence the nickname "smasher".

As previously stated they could also be served by a smaller gun-crew, invaluable if you were strapped for people such as a merchantman (where the carronade was first used) and the perenially overstreched Royal Navy.

Mark Barker
The Inshore Squadron

The Essex had almost all carronades. It cost her in the end when the RN finally caught up with her and pounded her at long range. Captain Porter complained about not having enough long guns, but the US navy didn't do anything about it.

HMS Glatton was another ship with all carronades.