York Factory Refought

I had another go at my York Factory scenario last night, making the changes I'd mentioned at the end of that piece; I ran Owner's Love as a regular ship and scrapped the special ice-floe rules in favour of randomly scattering ten ice-floes around the board. If a ship collided with one then it would take a point of damage.

The action started with both the English and the French having their largest ships (Hampshire and Pelican respectively) on the board, sailing past each other in the fog with a small island between them.

The first action was when Pelican descended on Owner's Love and Royal Hudson's Bay. Owner's Love wisely fled, but Royal Hudson's Bay was damaged in the exchange.

The English ships had obviously been doing their best to sail in company, because Dering appeared in much the same area, only to be fired on and damaged by Pelican.

Dering managed to cut across Pelican's stern and deliver a not ineffective rake

Pelican caught fire, and the crew struggled to extinguish the blaze. The large French ship sailed east into the mist, still burning, and was never seen again

As expected the engagement became scattered. In this picture L'Equimaux has entered from teh left and is heading towards Owner's Love as it makes its way through some ice. At the top Hampshire has just exchanged fire with Palmier. With Pelican out of the action, Hampshire would be a tough nut for the French to crack.

Saying that, L'Equimaux had a narrow escape when it ran along the broadside of Hampshire within hailing distance and didn't receive a single shot (yes, Hampshire messed up its activations).

Palmier up to Royal Hudson's Bay, and grappled.

The English ship fought back briefly, but quickly struck.

L'Esquimaux engaged Owner's Love

Holed below the waterline and badly damaged, Owner's Love fought back, as both ships headed close-hauled to the west.

In fact a shift of wind had left all of the combatants struggling as, they tried to avoid going off the southern edge of the board and towards the silted river on which York Factory was situated. Most ships were slowly tacking to try and bring the enemy into action. Dering also collided with some ice.

Owner's Love managed to hold of L'Equimaux, but Wesp had now entered the action and quickly boarded and took the little English vessel.

Dering returned the favour, taking Wesp in a brisk boarding action.

Profond had also entered the action, but the wind was very much against the newly arrived French ships, and the vessel found itself trying to avoid teh powerful broadsides of Hampshire.

Badly damaged the French ship ran into the ice and sank.

Both sides were now down to two ships. The English still had the powerful and undamaged Hampshire, plus the smaller Dering, whilst the French had Palmier and the little L'Esquimaux.

Palmier was the only hope the French had of driving off Hampshire, despite it being heavily outgunned.

They quickly engaged and, amazingly, the smaller French vessel gained the upper-hand.

Both ships pounded away at each other, and damage quickly mounted on both sides. The English had a setback when Hampshire collided with the struck Royal Hudson's Bay.

With both ships battered into crippled wrecks it was Palmier who struck first, but it was a close-run thing; Hampshire was close to striking and had taken damage to its rigging.

As the sole surviving French vessel L'Esquimaux made a run for it. She took a final broadside from Dering as she did so ...

... which damaged her rudder. However she survived and, although crippled and almost unable to steer, made it to safety.

This was a fairly decisive win for the English, since both of the ships they lost had simply struck and would be recovered. It's true that their force was fairly beaten up, but the French had lost one ship sunk, one disappeared whilst ablaze, and two struck, so the English had made a net gain in vessels. It played much smoother than the previous run-through - Owner's Love was much more interesting as a regular vessel, and the ice-floes provided just the right amount of challenge and inconvenience and stopped the ships from whizzing around as they wished.

The random setup and random reinforcements make this an interesting scenario for future replays too.