Battle of San Domingo

Battle of San Domingo

The ANF indulged me recently with the opportunity to start an extensive programme of rule-testing Napoleonic naval wargames rules. The motivation derived partly from the recent launch of the delightful Sails of Glory range of ready-made ships of the period, for which I have yearned since, no doubt, the manufacturers were not even born. There is an accompanying set of rules, which I have seen working at the NWS http://napoleonicwargamingsociety.blogspot.com.au/. First up for testing were Signal Close Action (SCA), the rules produced by Rod Langton, ironically the owner of Langton Miniatures, which produces fine metal cast Napoleonic models. (Using these rules with Ares miniatures - the definition of guilt). Unfortunately my copy of the latest edition is overseas still, so we had to make do with the original 90s version of the rules, but we all still thought it well worth while to try them out. This rambling post is the resultant report - naval wargames take a lot of moves - twenty-two in this case and still without an absolutely final ending - and it's hard to explain without detailing every single move.

James and Mark let me choose the scenario, and in deference to the ANF view about the desirability of historical scenarios if possible, for which I now have considerable sympathy, I picked the Battle of San Domingo. There's a good account on Wiki,http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_San_Domingo. That would be a crushing British victory, then. Fighting unequal battles like this is a challenge for both sides, though, as we discovered when fighting unequal Napoleonic land battles, the original winner being under pressure to do at least as well as his historical predecessor and the underdog with all the opportunity to do better.

My particular problem was how to recreate the slowness of the French response, and although the French ships may not have been at anchor historically - accounts differ - I opted to work through the SCA weighing anchor and getting underway rules. The other issue was how long the French Admiral should take to reach his flagship, I put him ashore as historically, but how many moves should he take to reach his flagship? SCA do not specify the exact timeframe for a move, but everyone was happy enough for the boat just to row out with normal moves towards the imposing French flagship.

We were joined for the day by Steve and Marc (in ANF parlance) who are both accomplished SoG wargamers alresdy and who were keen to see how an 'old-fashioned' (relatively) set of rules would work. I decided to let James take the role of contre-amiral Corentin Urbain Leissègues whilst Markov would take the role of his illustrious British opponent, Sir John Thomas Duckworth. Steve would take the role of Duckworth's second-in-command, Thomas Louis whilst Marc was to take command of the French until Leissegues managed to reach his flagship. Fortunately none of my admirals was familiar enough with Napoleonic naval wargaming to know the scenario, which was of great benefit, although the appearance of British ships did not come as much of a surprise to Marc and James, of course, whilst Mark as Admiral Duckworth had the advantage, as historically, of knowing the strength and approximate dispositions of the French squadron.

The French fleet rested gently at anchor in the blue Caribbean waters, blissfully ignorant of the fate that awaited them. Nearest to the camera is Imperial (118) (one of SoG's actual issue, clearly San Domingo is actually one battle they thought of before releasing the miniatures), then Alexandre (74), Diomede (74), Jupiter (74) and Brave (74).  It's just so easy to set up a naval battle - the 2mm buildings were scale wrong, though, we went for 15mm buildings but in fact 6mm would probably be right in size terms for the 1/1000 SoG ships. Note the frigate lurking out to sea - just scenery, in this instance - the smaller French ships escaped historically and I didn't want additional unnecessary complexity on this occasion. The wind is coming from the North-West, that is, from the top right of the photo below and blowing to the bottom left. I decided, for the purposes of the rules test, to leave the wind in that direction throughout the action. The French might well have had a better chance if I had allowed it to fluctuate as the rules suggest.

Why did I not paint large polystyrene blocks blue when I was a boy? Oh yes, because my parents had a blue carpet, but it had to be cleared every evening, of course  (the sand for the beach wouldn't have been popular in the lounge, either) and available rules at the time (Navwar, a move-by-move order writing Quarrie-like set) gave one little hope that anything useful might be accomplished in one day.What would SCA bring?

One thing it brought was a very slow journey by the French commander to his flagship. I had intended, to be honest, that the frustration caused by the delay in reaching his flagship would result in dissension between the French commanders, but I think I miscalculated the distances somewhat and James found himself in a small boat for the vast majority of the action.

Move 6 and the whole British force was on table. Vice-Admiral Duckworth had elected, following the example of his illustrious late predecessor Vice-Admiral Nelson, to divide his force into two column. The port column he led with HMS Superb (74) in the lead, followed by HMS Northumberland, (74) then HMS Spencer (74) and finally - very wisely considering her poor sailing capability - HMS Agamemnon. (64). The starboard column was under the command of Rear-Admiral Louis in HMS Canopus (80), followed by HMS Donegal (74) and finally HMS Atlas.(74), a razeed former Second Rate with an appallingly incompetent Captain, which Mark (corrected, thanks Marc!) wisely put at the rear of his line. The British did have a couple of frigates, but as with the French, we put them out to windward and assumed they would not play a role in the action.

By Move 10 the British fleet had got into action with the cotton wool Marc brought coming in mighty handy to show broadsides. At long range little damage was likely to be done - but Rear-Admiral Louis' port division was bearing down on the French who seemed to have glue attached to their hulls, so immobile were they, The superiority of the British crews was already telling - over the next few moves a collision between HMS Agamemnon and HMS Spencer was only narrowly avoided by the splendid seamanship of both Captain and crew aboard HMS Spencer.

The British Admiral's general contentment at the progress of the action proved remarkably short-lived, however, as the following move, a chance shot carried him off, one of the very few casualties on HMS Superb, but dead for all that. Command passed to his flag-captain until a signal could be sent to Rear-Admiral Louis to take over - and as you might imagine from the title of the rules, SCA did that job excellently.

Rear-Admiral Louis' daring close to the coast dash brought its just reward on Move 14, when a devastating rake from his flagship brought the swift surrender of the Brave.

Four moves later, and Rear-Admiral Louis was able to bring HMS Atlas alongside his second prize, the Jupiter. Unfortunately for him, his squadron had now advanced so far, with the wind filling their sails from the North-West, that the Brave was eventually able to take another morale test and recover their nerve, hoist the French flag, and make off! But here is the Jupiter about to be boarded, and she did not escape.

At the same time, the commander of the other squadron, now Rear-Admiral Cochrane (uncle of the Sea Wolf) found himself in the position Nelson dreaded at Trafalgar, being fired on whilst being unable to reply. The rules having permitted 'delay fire' once to the manoeuvre phase and 'delay twice' to the move fire, any ship that gets into a raking position can almost inevitably rake twice in these rules (at least the advanced version that we used) and HMS Superb (right centre below) was battered, losing her captain as she retreated, all of which Markov, at least, found most peculiar, Worse, HMS Superb  eventually struck whilst making off, a morale oddity to the rules that none of us much liked - there needs, I think, to be a 'inert' rule for ships out of enemy fire range in place of strike - simple enough to arrange but very peculiar, we thought.

Move 21, and the heavy broadside of the Imperial (I love the Ares models, and this one is a star) started to tell, with a fire broken out on HMS Canopus, though it was swiftly extinguished.

Markov therefore determined that the other ships in his command would at least secure one prize, especially having watched Rear-Admiral Louis take two (though one was to escape) and his determination to surround the Diomede (admirably commanded by Marc who very nearly escaped) was absolutely striking to note (if you excuse the pun).

  

 This is where we left the action, Move 22. Rear-Admiral Louis had managed the impossible and swept HMS Canopus and HMS Donegal round the sandbar without grounding - quite an achievement, whilst the atrociously commanded HMS Atlas is rightly confined to taking the French prize, the Jupiter. Top left you can see the Alexandre making off, whilst out of view is the Brave, beating a retreat.  Come to think of it now, we didn't insist on a signal for them to escape, nor did we insist on a Tactical Initiative test. Perhaps we should have done: their captains historically did no such sensible thing as escape.

So final score was two French ships, the Brave and Alexandre, escaped, two captured, the Diomede and the Jupiter, and one presumed beached by its crew and under the Admiral's orders, the Imperial. A knighthood for Rear-Admiral Louis, without doubt: the French had been defeated, and decisively, but the heroism of the Diomede, distracting the successively more junior commanders of the British main column after Admiral Duckworth's death, was not to be forgotten. The decision to exclude the frigates had implications, too, as had Rear-Admiral Louis had them available, no doubt he would have used them rather than HMS Atlas to grapple with the prize, and the Brave would not have escaped.

As we ended, rather late at night, we were all left wondering, whether the 4th edition of SCA would demonstrate significant improvements in playability, as Trafalgar with these rules really would be quite a protracted endeavour, or whether, perhaps, another set would bring greater playability without any sacrifice in verisimilitude or undue compromises. Form Line of Battle is on the list to try, for example. We shall see. In the meantime, thank you Mr Langton, Ares Games, and my ANF and NWS colleagues for a wargame for which I have waited for forty years.

There are two other blog reviews of this action that I can recommend, and am delighted have been posted, one from each of the subordinate commanders.
http://napoleonicwargamingsociety.blogspot.com.au/2014/11/battle-of-san-domingo.html here from the British side (where you can see some splendid pictures of the brief fire on the Imperial)  and here
http://onesidedminiaturewargamingdiscourse.blogspot.com.au/2014/11/battle-of-san-domingo-with-signal-close.html from the French side.