"Chatham -Medway campaign boards 1+2 complete" Topic

Second board complete and ready for gaming.

All details here:

link

A few of the shots here:

Chattenden to Chatham

Chattenden to Gillingham Reach

Upnor Castle

Pre-attack – English ships at anchor from Upnor to Chatham

Dutch frigates bombard Upnor Castle

Awesome. These are breathtakingly good. Any museum would be proud to have such a model in their collection, let alone a humble wargamer. Wow! Well done indeed. :-)

Absolutely stunning!

There's clearly still some work to do. I don't see a single wading bird, and there should be clouds of gulls wheeling around the ships…

This is the kind of terrain board I always imagine doing. Simply amazing. Very well done.

- Ix

Whoa! Amazing work and thanks for sharing

Fantastic looking boards! I'm looking forward to the AAR.
John

Words fail.

Appreciated as always. It is first and foremost – gaming terrain.
I am playtesting the scenario for the attack on the three ships of the line right now. Going smooth but a couple of tweaks made to the scenario.

Mission accomplished – simply awesome!

Very impressive work.

SgtPrylo – thanks but not quite mission accomplished. There is a third board definitely being built for the downriver stretch and possible fourth for the upriver stretch. I'll stop when I run out of space. An obsession is an.. obsession, after all :)

Very impressive. What made you interested in this fight? The Chatham raid is interesting but it is very very, very one-sided.

Great question Vincent. Four things;

1. It was arguably the most humiliating defeat of the Royal Navy in its history but remains largely unknown. So exploring it has been educational.

2. The action is slap in the middle of my period of interest.

3. I love creating scenarios where each side is working to objectives and not necessarily simply lining up and shooting. This produces an enormous variety of mission based and fun objectives for both sides.

4. The British are fond of the 'we haven't been invaded for 1,000 years' nonsense and this is yet another of those invasions/raids etc which is either unknown or deliberately ignored.

I can agree that it was/is one of the most humiliating defeats. The un-preparedness of the English due to near-bankruptcy, lack of leadership, and pure stupidity, plus the genius of DeRuyter, makes it an interesting episode.

It is mostly a race to see if the English could tow/move their ships in storage to a safer point, and how the Dutch can navigate into and out of the harbour.

Your scenery is beautiful and your ships are great!

Does William of Orange's invasion in 1688 count as a foreign invasion?

Please keep up the good work!

It absolutely does! 15,000 foreign troops landed and exclusion zones for English troops around London… I think that very much counts.
To my knowledge, there is no statue of William III anywhere in Scotland either.

jocknroll, It was humiliating because it was known, obviously it was impossible to hide from the population something as obvious as that the Dutch had invaded English territory. But I think the most terrible episode for the Royal Navy was in Cartagena de Indias, That episode was so humiliating that it was forbidden to talk about it and write any news about it.

Now, I am going to go and read about that Julian!

Just read it. Ouch! No wonder it was suppressed!

In my land there is a saying that says: "Do not sell the skin of the bear before hunting it"

Commemorative British medal of the supposed "victory". It shows Vernon looking down upon the Spanish admiral Blas de Lezo (Don 'Blass'). The medal says "The pride of Spain humbled by ad. Vernon"

In case anyone is interested:

link

Spin doctors eh? These are the same breed which came up with the euphemism Glorious Revolution…

Bravo, Sir! Bravo!

Nick