Ship Tactics Of The Early 17th Century

The Battle of Gibraltar (1607) by Adam Willaerts

A recent discussion on ship types for the 30 Years War on the Naval Wargaming Facebook group prompted a lively discussion, including this one from Ix Nichols that is such a great description of how a Galleys & Galleons game pans out that I thought it was worth sharing here:

I've been researching the 1600-1650 period for 3 decades, and there just isn't much written about it in English.

There simply wasn't any such thing as formal fleet tactics until the line of battle became formalized in the 2nd Anglo-Dutch War. In the first half of the 17th C. sailing ship commanders modeled their tactics on cavalry, charging in a mob lead by an flagship, and either settling into a boarding melee or withdrawing to reload and charge again (and again, and again, etc.)

It took a lot longer to reload a broadside (few gunners, primitive gun tackle), so Napoleonic exchanges of fire were nearly impossible. An individual ship bent on a gun duel might attempt to bear down, fire a broadside, come about, fire the other broadside, then break off to reload. Ships in a running fight would just fire individual guns as able.

The only fleet formations of the pre-Anglo-Dutch War period I'm aware of come from five days before the Battle of the Downs 1639: Oquendo put his ships in a crescent, and Tromp put his in a spread-out line ahead on the leeward gauge. Medina-Sidonia had used a crescent in 1588 and a Portuguese admiral used the retiring leeward line in the early 1500s, so both of these tactics may have had some known precedent to the belligerents, but most fleet battles with sailing ships seemed to involve pell-mell mob tactics (including the Downs).

Personally, I think this makes the period *excellent* for wargaming, because this is *exactly* how wargamers behave. Wargamers think (incorrectly) that Nelson's genius was initiating a melee, so the only way to keep ships in line is to handcuff them out of reach of the table and move their ships for them. In fact, the melee seems to have been the standard tactic until the 1670s, and it was always bloody and usually gave victory to the side with some kind of force advantage. That was bad in real-life wars, but great for wargaming.

So have at it wargamers - hurl your ships at each other with reckless abandon, and forget those neat and tidy lines!