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.
paints the Dogman from the Flintloque starter set.
