"Battle of The Texel AAR" Topic

A nice way to start the New Year!

Here is part 1 of the AAR for the fleet action between Prince Rupert's Anglo French Fleet and Admiral de Ruyter's
Dutch Fleet:

link

And some shots of the action as it happened. There are about 20 or so in a similar style on the blog:

That turned into a free for all scrum really quick! I'm not quite sure how quickly the ships move / manoeuvre but I think eth Allies may have lost the opportunity to punish the Dutch disorder by insisting on forming a line of battle – still they're doing OK so far – so what do I know?

The movement is somewhat influenced by wind direction but generally 4 inches for larger slow moving ships and 6 inches for medium sized ships. Damage also slows them down. Turning is variable dependant on the ship type. Turns 7 and 8 had no wind so ships were drifting at angles with the current thus the higgledy-piggledy situation in the last shot.
It's nip and tuck at this juncture. Will post the second part soon.

Great batte and great report!

Terrific photography!

Great looking game!! Can't wait for part 2!!

Part 2 just written up and it will appear on the blog tomorrow. The end was.. a surprise. Thanks for the kind comments All.

That's a fantastic backdrop you'v Used in the profile shots.

Wow. I'm not sure I've even seen a Seventeenth Century fleet battle in miniature before. Spectacular.

What makes it even better is that it's one of the best miniature battle reports I've read. You've combined a clear narrative of the action with some great photos, including panoramas. Then, to make it even better, you have added a clever backdrop and captioned the photos to make it even clearer to follow. That must have taken hours. Thank you.

I love how your battle recreates the chaos of some Seventeenth Century fleet battles. Your rules, if brutal, seem to work well, particularly the fireships, random events and the drop in the wind. Pleasingly, your battle also illustrates the importance of both the line and the weather gauge.

The attack by the Constant Warwick was indeed gallant, but an unsupported attack by a small ship on a well-handled squadron of larger ones was only ever going to have one outcome. As BillyNM says above, the Allied failure to form a well-ordered line of battle probably cost them the opportunity to punish the Dutch more severely as the fleet approached. I suspect your rules accurately reflect the great difficulty of getting large warships with different handling characteristics into a neat line.

I can't help wondering why Rupert and D'Estrees headed so far downwind, largely giving up their initial advantage of being to windward. That movement downwind exposed the French squadron in particular to first a fireship attack and then raking fire from Dutch ships passing through the Allied line. Neither of those would have been possible had the French held further upwind. (I wondered whether D'Estrees was forced to bear down towards the Dutch because he would otherwise have sailed off the 4x4 table.) I presume fireships could only sail downwind once their crews had set them on fire.

Wonderful stuff. I really enjoyed reading it. Thank you. A battle lost by Rupert and D'Estrees? You should definitely refight the battle one day.

Appreciated Admiral Hawke. I think AARs should read well and if you got a sense (which it very much appears that you did) of how tense and enjoyable a game it was then, mission accomplished. I recall that d'Estrees' tactic was to lead the battle line and swing it to envelope the Dutch. Alas, the English and French became unglued from almost the beginning and the aggressive Dutch admirals didn't cooperate with their enemies' game plan!

Admiral Hawke having now fought three battles with these rules I can confirm that it is difficult/frustrating/fun trying to form line of battle with ships of different sizes and varied crew quality and your original brilliant plan go out the window on the first puff of wind.