Bantam Revisited

June requested a game of Galleys & Galleons this week and specifically asked for sailing ships. So I had a quick look through my past games and thought that it would be fun to revisit my cut-down version of the Battle of Bantam from a few years ago. This was an action between Dutch and Portuguese ships fought off teh north coat of Java in 1601. There were a lot more vessels involved in the actual battle; I just scaled the numbers down.

It's more of an 'inspired by' really.

Anyway, the forces are:

Portuguese - Four Carracks (Sao Salvador (flag), Santa Cruz, Sao Simeao, Nazare), two Fustas (Domas, Serang)

Dutch - Three Cromsters (Gelderland (Flag), Utrecht, Zeelandia) plus a Jacht (Wachter)

All ships were lifted straight from the book aside from the Fustas which I rated as Q2 C1 with Galley, Shallow Draft and Yare. Domas and Wachter both had the Relay trait which extends the flagship's command radius. Both sides come to about 220 points.

I took the Portuguese, who mostly have ships that are big and powerful, but cumbersome.

June's Dutch force was smaller, but the ships are more easily controlled and a lot more nimble.

Early approaches saw an attempt to form a ragged line. The Portuguese fustas got left behind as their movement relied on me not rolling activation failures.

The Sao Simeo fired the first shot of the game, damaging the Utrecht. 

Return fire from the Dutch raked the Sao Simeo and started a fire.

More fire from the Dutch saw the Sao Simeo badly damaged. Rakes will do that

The Portuguese flag Sao Salvador ran aboard Utrecht and grappled it. The Dutch suffered badly in the ensuing melee.

June's enthusiasm for raking hadn't taken into account that the Portuguese ship on the receiving end would be so busy fighting fires that turning away from a collision would not be an option. Sao Simeo crashed into the Dutch flag, Gelderland. And set it on fire.

Utrecht cut grapples and escaped from being boarded by Sao Salvador, but in the confusion collided with Nazare, and ended up damaged.

Plenty of action. Sao Simeo was now burning brightly with multiple fires and would take no further part in teh action (despite some valiant firefighting activity by the crew). The Dutch flag was also ablaze. To the right of the picture the Jacht Wachter was boldly engaging the two fustas.

The hapless Utrecht collided with Serang. It was too much damage for the Dutch ship, which sank.

Wachter fired away at the two Portuguese galleys and inflicted damage on both of them. But it was suffering damage as well; its tiller was damaged and it had lost rigging.

Serang caught fire and exploded!

Meanwhile Santa Cruz and Zeelandia were locked in a duel which saw both ships battered. Nazare was coming up in support. And (not pictured) the fire on the Gelderland got out of control and the crew abandoned ship.

The plucky little Wachter finally struck.

This left June with just one ship. The Zeelandia fired one more broadside and fled the field of battle.

Dutch losses were the Utrecht sunk, the Wachter struck and the Gelderland burned to the waterline. The Portuguese lost the Sao Simeo burned, and the Serang to an explosion. Most of their ships were fairly beaten up as well, but a victory is a victory.

This was a lively action which saw a lot of ships on fire (four of them at one point). Thanks to June for a fun game.

More Small Boats

I took Torpedoes & Tides to the club last night and played a couple of games against Daniel. 

We started with a basic fight scenario, with three British MGBs taking on a couple of larger and faster S-boats. I played the Germans and Daniel took the British. The night was moonless and most encounters were down to boats bumping into each other. This exchange of fire saw both boats lightly damaged.

More firing as other boats emerged from the darkness. Daniel kept scoring hits that suppressed rather than damaged the S-boats , but it meant that I was removing suppressions rather than shooting back.

Oh no! A couple of boats from both sides bumped into a minefield! Fortunately neither of them struck a mine and everyone studiously avoided that area for the rest of the game.

Boats studiously avoiding a minefield.

A long-range shot from one of Daniel's boats inflicted hits on one of mine. This was considered an outrage.

Meanwhile since my boats were constantly suppressed I was struggling to inflict hits back. 

One of Daniel's boats had been badly shot-up in those initial exchanges, and he opted to have it run for home. And one of teh S-boats decided it had had enough after its fellow fired a few shots at it by accident. This left one S-boat against two British boats.

The lone German put up a decent fight bit eventually its commander also decided that he'd had enough and he fled. So a win for teh British. 

No boats were lost by either side, although one British boat was crippled.

With time in hand we set up a convoy attack. Daniel took three S-boats against a British east coast convoy of three freighters, two launches and an armed trawler.

He struck out of a patch on mist on a moonless night.

Some blundering about in the dark by both sides saw a minor collision that damaged the lead British launch.

Daniel cut in between the convoy and the land, hiding his small boats against the coast. His first torpedo salvo missed.

The trawler opened up with its Big Gun giving Daniel a few scares. Owing to activation failures the trawler was pretty much doing all of the work for the British. It did manage a hit that knocked out a gun on one of the S-boats.

Daniel fired off more torpedoes and continued to miss. His boats sheered off so some of them might reload. At that point the trawler scored another hit, damaging an S-boat's engines.

All three S-boats were stalking one freighter now, but the British escorts were beginning to get their act together.

Not so the Germans, who managed a collision in the darkness that damaged one of their boats so badly that it sank!

Daniel's last salvo ...

... scored a hit!

With the escorts closing in Daniel decided not to pursue the other freighters and decided to head for home. The escorts tried to take on the S-boat with engine damage, but couldn't finish it off.

Despite their blundering this was very much a win for the British who got two freighters off their edge of the table and didn't lose a single escort. The Germans did get a freighter but at the cost of one boat sunk and another badly damaged.

Anyway, both games ran smoothly with lots of entertaining incidents, chaos and unpredictability.

Thanks to Daniel for an entertaining evening!

Some photos from Daniel

The Adventures Of Harvey Knight - 5

When dicing for Lt Cdr Harvey Knight's missions I seem to be beating the odds a little. His fifth mission was yet another convoy attack! Still, in terms of missions it's the one that offers the most in the way of reputation and glory, so no bad thing for Harvey.

With his flotilla now experienced Knight took four boats out, attacking a bigger convoy; four transports and three escorts. The boats were his own MTB 413, Stewart's MTB 414, Porter's MTB 418 and McDonald's MGB 103. Once again the MGB was used to spot the targets and provide fire support. 

Knight sent his vessels in on the centre again. The moon was over the land behind the convoy, so the targets would be silhouetted. He quickly spotted a freighter and, unable to line up an immediate torpedo run, took it under fire. 

Stewart in MTB 414 came up on his starboard and fired off his torpedoes, sinking the freighter. Seconds into the attack and the enemy had already lost a ship.

The Germans swung into action. A transport at the head of the convoy made a run for it, and Knight decided to let it go and focus on the two remaining targets. A Verpostenboot appeared out of the darkness, firing as it came. The next transport they spotted was a Siebel ferry. This would be a tougher proposition; its shallow draft made torpedo attacks next to impossible and, unlike the coasters, it was armed, albeit lightly.

Lt Porter took MTB 418 into an attack on the final transport, revealed as another freighter, but his torpedoes went wild. The other boats engaged the transports with gunfire, badly damaging the Siebel ferry. The German response was sluggish, with the two remaining escorts still trying to move up from the front of the convoy.

However the ferry and two of the escorts had Stewart's boat surrounded and under heavy fire. Somehow he took his little craft through it all unscathed.

Stewart and Porter hammered away at the freighter and the ferry, with both German vessels taking damage. The freighter was already belching smoke from a damaged engine, and more fire saw it slow to a halt, immobilised.

Knight's was the only MTB not to have fired torpedoes. He'd missed a clear shot at the freighter and, sensing that the British might need to escape now, decided to take a wild shot at the Verspostenboot. Against the odds he scored a hit and the escort went down!

McDonald's MGB had moved away from the action now, and headed for home, whilst the three MTB's poured gunfire into the stricken freighter. Try as they might they couldn't finish it off

A second Verpostenboot hove into view. And an R-boat was turning in to support it as well. 

Finally the freighter heeled over and began to sink. Knight ordered all boats to head for home.

The British boats now became uncoordinated in the darkness. Knight and Porter ran close inshore, looking to make their exit past the Siebel ferry on the hope that they could finish that off as well. But the second Verpostenboot, the Rahel, badly shot up Porter's MTB.

Stewart was running in teh other direction. Both German escorts pursued him and he started taking hits as he struggled along the coastline. Things were beginning to look dangerous for the British. But eventually Stewart escaped to safety.

Knight's boat took ineffective fire from the ferry; last gasp of a finished vessel. Another burst of gunfire sunk it.

The final act in the action was a sad one. In the confusion and darkness, the panicked crew of MTB 418 mistook Knight's boat for a German escort and opened fire, seriously damaging it. They quickly realised their mistake and joined their commander in speeding for home.

The trip back to base passed without incident.

Knight's flotilla had sunk three transports and an escort, with his own boat accounting for two of them, and Porter and Stewart picking up a transport each. All four boats had suffered heavy damage, though, mostly from the end of the action where things got a little confused. In game terms what happened was that the first boat to act each turn had failed two activations, so for three turns the British were all but inactive, whilst the Germans hammered them with fire. The damage to Porter's boat had caused them to have to roll on the All At Sea table and fire on the nearest vessel; Knight's 

Results like that should have seen Knight's reputation increase considerably, but whilst he attracted some notice it wasn't the high praise he truly deserved. All of the crews involved had picked up valuable experience though; McDonald's crew may have made a limited contribution to the action, but they could finally be considered competent now, whilst Knight's boat were considered veterans. 

Knight did a careful debriefing of his crews and together they refined their tactics, something which would hopefully make them even more efficient in future missions. The repair yard did its best, but by the rime of the next mission both Lt Porter and Lt Stewart's boats were still badly damaged, and unlikely to see action for a while.