"Gunboats explained - War of 1812" Topic

In the course of consulting a dusty old (and delicate) book that has been sitting on my bookshelf for twenty years, I came upon an entire chapter on the care, feeding, operational characteristics and combat history of American gunboats in the War of 1812. It contains a great deal of good detail which will be valuable to anyone seeking to incorporate gun-boats into an age of sail war-game. As such, I am transcribing it to a Word document as a "public service".

If anyone is interested in a copy, contact me at -
byron [dot] angel [at] Verizon [dot] net

B

My email to you came as 'not deliverable' after two sends and that byron.angel does not have a Verizon.net account.

Sorry about that, Iron Duke.
Mixed up my regular email with an old disused Gmail address.

Send here – byronangel [at] Verizon [dot] net

Boy, do I feel stupid …..

B

Could you just post the basic bibliographic data for the book? Title, author, publisher, and publication/copyright date?

No worries. I just sent another email.

Sure thing, rmaker -

THE HISTORY OF OUR NAVY
From it Origin to the Present Day
1775 – 1897

Volume II (of IV)

by John R Spears
New York, Scribner's Sons; 1897

The relevant material is located in Chapter XVIII – "Gun-boats not Wholly Worthless".

Blutarski Note –
This work was written in large part as a "popular history" at a time when ill feelings toward the British, consequent to the American Revolution and the War of 1812, still lingered. Expect to find some commentary that might be a bit "off-putting" to modern British sensibilities. Nevertheless, the information provided about gun-boats of this era is IMO quite valuable, given the awesome lack of such detailed information elsewhere.

I am about half-way done with the transcription after two days. The transcription, when complete, will be about a ten page Word document.

B

Thank you.

Ross, and anyone else who's interested, the book (multiple copies of all volumes, albeit some are mislabeled so check the title page) is available as a download in kindle, pdf and several other formats on archive dot org.

Dennis

The best thing I've ever read on the subject is "The Jeffersonian Gunboat Navy" by Spencer C. Tucker. That said, I was put off to find that the main gun on a gunboat could not be fired unless the vessel was anchored! That sort of limits the wargaming aspect!