Ironclad Naval Game

 

Myself with British commanders Jeremy and Sylvain

Cropped photo of French admiral Curt

It’s been five months since my last post…but I’ve been regularly gaming.  Last Friday I tried out Long Face Games Barbette and Battery (B&B) rules using my scratch built 1870s era ironclads. As with all of LFGs rules, B&B were quick to learn  and play and gave a fun game, with reasonably historic results.  I don’t know what more one could want I a set of rules.

I set out the following forces based on what I had available (French) or felt like fielding (RN).

British Devastation, Monarch, Hercules, Achilles, Shah

French Redoutable, Colbert, Marengo, Fabert, Champlain

French ironclads Redoutable, Marengo and Colbert 

HMSs Monarch, Shah and Achilles

HMS Devastation

The two French had some lucky early hits that caused heavy damage to Hercules and Monarch, but ultimately the heavier British guns took their revenge and sank Marengo.

All in all a satisfying nights entertainment.

War of the Pacific Ironclads

Peruvians in front, Chileans in the background.  It turned out that only one shot of the Peruvian squadron  on its own came out, but my group shots have the Peruvians in the fore.

To follow on from an earlier post I have 4 of the major warships from the War of the Pacific fought between Chile and Peru from 1879-1884.  Back in the earlier 80s the Yaquinto board game "Ironclads" described it as a "Chilean-Peruvian Banana War", which is surely a misnomer as it was fought over the Atacama Desert where very little grows and certainly not bananas.  The key resource at stake was actually nitrate deposits from guano deposits at the large sea bird nesting sites,  yep....it was a war fought over bird sh*t.  Actually this war is also known as the Saltpetre War but 10 years earlier peru and Chile had allied  against Spain was in the Guano War.

Independencia leads Union

In addition to the Huáscar from my earlier post, back from the Peruvian fleet included these two vessels the Ironclad frigate Independencia and the unarmored corvette Union plus other oddities on the work bench.  

Independencia was armed with big rifles on pivots bow (8") and stern (7") plus 6" rifles on the broadside.  She was the Peruvian navies second most important ship after the Huascar but was written off after running aground in the war's first action.   Union was an unarmoured corvette packing a useful armament.  

Spot the doofus moment.  Note how the Blanco Encalada has more smoke and a flag.  I decided that I needed to fix this!

On the Chilean side of things we have the two central battery ironclad sisters Almirante Cochrane and Blanco Encalada built in the UK and completed just three years before the war began. They were named for naval heroes from the Chilean War of Independence, Cochrane of course being the Scot who was the inspiration for Horatio Hornblower.  They packed a punch of 9" rifles and feature the angled gun ports to give wider arcs of fire.  Cochrane survived until 1934 but her sister ship was torpedoed by the torpedo gunboat Almirante Lynch in the Chilean civil war of 1891 and was one of the first casualties of Mr Whitehead's invention.

Coinage added to give idea of scale.  Canadian quarter at the bow, loonie at the stern.

These are all Tumbling Dice 1/2400 model, and again I'm very pleased with these casting.  The Cochrane class come packaged in a pair, as do Huáscar  and Independencia.  Tumbling dice don't make specific models for the unarmored ships so I've used more generic models for these, including Union and HMS Amethyst. 

Look carefully, I've fixed the smoke on Blanco Encalada and took her flag off int he process.  Easily fixed however.

I seem to be following trends this Challenge as 19th century South American wars are on an upswing.  The Perry's released figures for a slightly earlier war across the Andes and there's a recently published set of rules for the land operations of the War of the Pacific.

These TD models have been scored at 3pts a pop, so that's a whopping 12 points for me.

The Battle of Pacocha 1877

The original action 1877

Recreated in 2020

I continue to tick along at a snail's pace on my challenge, and have here the three participants from the Battle of Pacocha in 1877.  These are 1/2400 scale ships from Tumbling Dice from their Victorian Era range.

First up is the instigator the Peruvian turret ship Huascar.  The Huascar was seized by rebels in the wrong side in a failed coup by the former finance minister (and future Peruvian President) Pierola.  With the coup defeated on land Huascar took to piracy and boarded some British flagged ships, triggering a Royal Navy response.

Note that the model shows Huascar cleared for action with bulwarks lowered to allow the turret to fire and thus showing the white interior. 

The Huascar was built by Laird's in the UK in 1866, she has armour of up to 7.5" and carried two 10" rifles in her turret plus a couple of smaller guns.   I used the present tense intentionally as she is still afloat as a museum ship in Valparaiso Chile, one of a few ships afloat from the Victorian era.  Her full history is impressive.  Built to fight the Spanish in the Island War she got to Peru during the war but didn't see action.  After fighting the Royal Navy she surrendered to the Peruvian government and served in the War of the Pacific against Chile.  Captured by the Chileans after a heroic action, they refitted her and used her against the Peruvians.  Finally she was involved in the Chilean Civil War of 1891. 

A famous ship with a proud history under two navies flags.

Britain's Imperial might c 1877

The predictable RN response came from the Pacific Station based in Esquimaux, British Columbia.  Rear Admiral de Horsey's flagship was the iron frigate HMS Shah.  Shah was big, fast and well armed but unarmoured.  She carried 9" rifled swivel guns fore and aft and a broadside of 7" rifles.  She also carried early Whitehead torpedoes and fired one at the Huascar, which outran it!  She proved expensive to run and this was her sole commission, although her iron masts can be seen on HMS Victory, having replaced the more fragile wooden originals.

I rigged the Amethyst as a barque.  It turns out that she was ship rigged in 1877 but changed to a barque rig on her return. 

HMS Shah was accompanied by the wooden corvette HMS Amethyst, name ship of the last class of wooden cruisers built by the RN. Typical of the small cruisers the RN used to patrol imperial waterways, she was armed with 64 pounder rifles on broadside with swivels fore and aft.  She served from 1873-1887.   

The battle of Pacocha was a tactical draw but a RN strategic win.  The RN hit the Huascar multiple times but didn't have armour piercing shot so did no damage.  In return, the Huascar was undermanned and fired slowly and badly causing only splinter damage to Shah's rigging.  The Huascar did avoid the Shah's torpedo, hampered the RN attack by staying in the shallows where the Shah couldn't go and avoided an attack by torpedo launches the next day.  However, the crew gave up the piracy gig and surrendered to the government 2 days later.

I added black funnel smoke from cotton batting soaked in black paint.  This took me back to my University days of carving 1/1200 scale pre-dreadnoughts out of balsa.

If you're are keeping score this is my second project using 1/2400 scale ships from Tumbling Dice and I have been very pleased with their models.  They are clean cast, relatively easy to put together and paint up well.   I had intended to work on my Anglo-Dutch fleets first but their rigs proved fussier to get right so plowed ahead on the ironclads.  I don't have the skill set or patience for fiddly sail rigs in general and have suffered great heartbreaks with past efforts at modelling sailing ships in 1/1200.  So far these TD ships are much easier to rig and appear much less fragile although we'll see how they stand the test of table top battle.  I should also point out that in action, these ships would furl their sails or even strike top masts altogether to reduce clutter.  However, I couldn't resist doing them fully rigged.

I added Canadian quarters (about the same size as a 5p piece) for comparison.  I also included the correctly named Windhond!

I've got a variety of odd naval projects underway and am beginning to regret not setting up a Sandi Cheek aquatic squirrel side duel for the most naval projects!

Points wise, I think it's typically 3 points for a 1/2400 scale ship, plus what ever points the 4 flags net me.  At about 9 points a post,  my challenge will definitely be the slow boat to China.