Copenhagen: Men & Machines

[Diamondback]

[WORK IN PROGRESS]

Records on Danish ship design are incomplete or not readily accessible, so this table is going to start as largely boilerplate. Like the Dutch, Danes have never been mentioned to me by Ares as a priority, but if we can boil the Must Haves of the Danish fleet at Copenhagen into a handful of sculpts each it just might be possible, assuming the management will exists, to slipstream them into future waves a sculpt or two at a time. Trafalgar will probably almost always be driving the bus, though, with Nile and 1812 frigate-duels also in the "priority" tier, so if they come it probably won't be fast until we have those three groups mostly petered out.

RateBritishUnsculptedDanishUnsculpted
First and Second
ThirdSGN104 74's Edgar, Elephant, Monarch, Defiance, Russell, Bellona
SGN114 64 Ardent, Agamemnon, Polyphemus74 Ganges74 Siaelland
64 Indfodsretten
60's Dannebrog, Holsteen
FourthPortland 50: Isis56 Glatton56 Provesteenen
54 Jylland
52 Wagrien
Fifth38 Amazon
ex-FR Romaine 36: Desiree
Hermione 32: Blanche
32 Alcmene
Sixth24 Jamaica22 Kronborg
Unrated18 Diligence brig-sloop: Harpy
18 Cruizer brig-sloop: Cruizer
Bentham experimental ship-sloops Arrow, Dart
Bombs Discovery, Explosion, Hecla, Sulphur, Terror, Volcano, Zebra
Fireships Otter, Zephyr20 prams Rendsborg, Nyborg
20 radeaus Svaerdfisken, Hajen
20 "defense vessel" Aggershus
20 floating-battery Fladebatteri No. 1
18 radeau Soehesten
16 "frigate" Hielperen
10 "frigate" Elven
Merchantmen26 Charlotte Amalia

Note that this table is not including Parker's reserve or the coastal fortifications. Off the bat we can forget about anything below 14 guns ever showing up, unless done as a Shapeways model and unofficial card.

Parker's reserve.

London 98 (flag of Admiral Sir Hyde Parker, with 1st Captain William Domett and 2nd Captain Robert Walker Otway
St George 98 (Captain Thomas Masterman Hardy
Warrior 74 Captain Charles Tyler
Defence 74 (Captain Henry Paulet
Saturn 74 (Captain Robert Lambert
Ramillies 74 (Captain James William Taylor Dixon
Raisonnable 64 (Captain John Dilkes
Veteran 64 (Captain Archibald Collingwood Dickson


Denmark-Norway.

Fortifications.

Sea battery TreKroner 68 guns.
Sea Battery Lynetten ? guns.
Land battery Sixtus ? guns.
Land battery Quintus ? guns.
Fortress Kastellet ? guns.

Site-plan for Sixtus today:
http://www.cfmoller.com/imgintra/Batteriet-Sixtus-C-F-Moeller-img-31259-w1400-h988-tD.jpg

Wikipedia on Kastellet: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kastellet,_Copenhagen




Danish ships taken into the RN - will break down into individual class/family lines as data develops

RateRatingDesignDanish shipsBritish/other (as noted) shipsPoss. SKU's
374
374
368
368
366
456
456
5razee 44
544
636
628 (12-pdr)
624
624
U18 brig
U18 ship-sloop
U6 avisoHaasje
Note: Within a given rating, ships not identified to a class or design are first, then the ones I've identified.

[Diamondback]

Reserved for British officers.

[Diamondback]

Reserved for Danish officers.

[Bligh]

I am not finding anything much on the Danish Officers either DB.
Rob.

[Naharaht]

The National Maritime Museum in Greenwich have this plate depicting ships captured at the battles of Genoa, Cape St. Vincent the Nile and Copehagen. I do not know whether it is of any use to your researches.

29782

[Bligh]

Thanks Dave.
Anything like this is always of interest, even though it casts no light on those elusive Danish commanders.
Rob.

[Naharaht]

Have you seen this page on Wikipedia, Rob? It gives a list of Danish/Norwegian vessel commanders. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Copenhagen_(1801)

[Bligh]

Fraid so Dave. That is where I got the list for the British.
However, when you follow up the names in a search engine you only come out with any information on about three of them.
Rob.

[Diamondback]

Do we have anybody here who can read Danish? In my experience, the Wikipedia pages on a given country's fleets in that nation's mother tongue are *much* better than their English counterparts.

[Bligh]

The only Dane I can think of is Tordenskjold and he has not posted this year.
Rob.
(http://sailsofglory.org/member.php?1702-Tordenskjold)

[Naharaht]

This webpage has a casualty list from the Battle of Copenhagen. It may be of use if you can find someone to read it for you.

https://www.slaegtogdata.dk/kilder/afskrevne-kilder/sjaelland/slaget-paa-reden

[Cloen]

Do you still need help finding out about the Danish Officers and ships. I would be glad to help :happy:

[Bligh]

That would be very useful Christian. We are still woefully short on information and pictures of many of the Captains. I have now opened this thread:-

http://sailsofglory.org/showthread.php?4604-Copenhagen-1801-The-Danish-Captains

Any information which you can add there will be most welcome in building up a better overview of the protagonists.
Thank you for the kind offer.

Rob.

[Cloen]

Ok, have pic and info on most of them. Just have to translate to English.

[Bligh]

Your first addition of the Captains is just what I was after Christian.
Thank you so much. Do not overwhelm yourself with work. Just add anything more as you find the time.
Rob.

[Cloen]

Yes, thank you. Will do.

[Bligh]

Thank you again for these next two biographies Christian. They are helping to fill in the gaps.
Rob.

[Cloen]

A small note if useful:
- The amager battery had 6 cannons and 2 mortars.
- Quintus had 26 cannons and 9 mortars and howitzers.
- Sextus had 44 cannons and 2 mortars.
- The trekroner battery had 66 cannons.
- Lynetten had no cannons.
- Kastellet had 45 cannons and 13 mortars on the seaward side.

[Diamondback]

Christian, that's a start--the ideal would be site plans and battery weights (number of guns at each caliber, ideally mapped out down to exact weights and locations of each individual gun), but every little bit helps. As the old saying goes, beggars can't be choosers.

I'm inclined to say that if we at least find numbers and fire arcs, if a given arc is equal in number and weight of bores to an existing shipboard battery in-game, we could start by using that ship's stats and then slightly buffing them to represent:
--Land battery has no heaving deck to disrupt aim, so more accurate fire.
--Same allows faster reload time.
--Land battery can have bigger guns without worrying how much hull timbers can support.
--Higher elevation allows longer range.

Other than musketry, I'm not sure if it'd be better to make each ammo option 1.5x or 2x its "normal" ship-fired ruler range. (Ex. A-range two rulers, B one, C/D extended to B-range on single ruler.)

[Bligh]

In my latest Scenario for our campaign I allowed the guns at clifftop elevation to have a range at extreme length of 1.5 rulers but half the damage at this range for the increased inaccuracy. I did not allow for plunging fire, however, as i was trying to keep things simple and not over complicate the rules.
For Copenhagen it would certainly be useful to know the distances and fire arcs. From my reading some of the battery fire seemed much more effective than others. It would be good to find out if this was due to size and number of guns, range, angle of delivery, or just the closeness and class of the ships engaging them. all these factors could help in determining the rules for guns efficiency in use during historical enactments of battles.

Rob.

[Cloen]

Okay, nice to know exactly what I'm looking for. Think I have some ideas on where to get the information, but will have to see.

What about the Danish ships, what am I looking for here?

[Capn Duff]

Things are looking up then for a Danish fleet of some description, I look forward to reading more on the Danish ships and Commanders

[Diamondback]

Okay, nice to know exactly what I'm looking for. Think I have some ideas on where to get the information, but will have to see.

What about the Danish ships, what am I looking for here?

Well, first I need to get off my arse and trawl ThreeDecks for their designers, dimensions and histories. Then I need to look for other Danish naval engagements of the time and similar ships in those... a better understanding of Scandinavian naval-architecture philosophy would help, and Chapman doesn't give me a lot of it despite having been one of the guys who was instrumental in it.

In short, the next move is for me to find some motivation, grind up and snort some NoDoz, finish moving from the spare back to my laptop (which after three months running on the backup system is a slow process) and get back to work doing what I do. LOL (The vision for these "Men & Machines" threads is to assess both sculpts/stats for the ships, and positive or negative Captain Abilities for the officers leading them.)

[Bligh]

I don't have much on the Ships. Wiki even is silent about most of them.
Rob.

[Cloen]

Hi DB,
I'm not sure if you understood what I meant with my message. I would like to help find the information about the ships. Do "the floor work" if you know what I mean. Just don't know what to do with the information, that's what you're good at. I just needed to know what I should be looking for.
for example, I have information about the SoL Prøvesteenen and drawings. Are the drawings of any use?:
PS.: didn't know about threedecks.org, it has a lot of the information already translated into English. So that will help a lot.

33185
33187
33188
33189

History:
The ship of the line, Christian den syvende, was the last triple-decker in the Danish Navy, and it was used very little. In 1793 the upper deck was shut down and the ship was converted into a blockship, and as such, it became known in 1799 as the name Prøvesteenen. During the Battle of Copenhagen on April 2, 1801, it was a blockship at the southernmost position in the line. It was armed with 28 pcs. 36 P cannons on the bottom battery and 28 pcs. 24 P on top battery. It had a crew of approx. 525 men, and at the end of the fight, there were 40 killed and 35 injured crew members. Three times there was a fire in the ship, and at the time 15:15 it stroked the flag. The ship burned up.

Dimension-----------------Measurement------------Type----------------------Metric Equivalent
Length of gundeck------------182' 0''-----------Danish Fod (Feet)--------57.1662 (176' 7'' Imperial)
Bredth--------------------------49' 0''------------Danish Fod (Feet)-------15.3909 (47' 6'' Imperial)
Depth in hold-------------------21' 0''-----------Danish Fod (Feet)---------6.5961 (20' 4'' Imperial)

Constructor: Frederik Michael Krabbe

[Diamondback]

Christian, that next-to-last drawing is IDEAL for what we use for comparison and sculpt-design purposes. (Best results also require sheet size and plan scale... what happens with those is I mathematically enlarge the entire sheet to "full scale" (meaning "size of the sheet if the ship on it were full size"--a 1/48 drawing at 1500mm sheet width upscales to 72m "fullscale", and thus 72mm at game-scale) and then reduce to 1/1000. And then we get undersize ships because Ares's designer apparently traces off his screen and Windows undersizes displays by like 10-15% below actual size...

So if you can do the leg-work in archives, the bottleneck is still me "marking targets," suggesting things to look for--I tend to be rather hamstrung by no travel capability and the fact that Seattle is not exactly a city with a strong naval tradition--but it's a BIG help, and very much appreciated. :)

[Cloen]

Okay, cool, nice that the right things can be found.
Hope you don't feel that I pressure you into anything. It will just take the time it takes. The chance that Ares will produce Danish ships is probably also very small. But love doing this kind of research. I learn a great deal from it. Maybe with time I have learned enough that I might refit an already produced ship to resemble a Danish if nothing else. :happy:

[Diamondback]

No pressure here, amigo, just need to make sure everyone's aware that I work on my own timetable... some of that's actually getting ideas launched with the hope that somebody will pick up my ball and run with it, just in case the next rifle I build blows up on me in testing or a leftover toilet from Mir whacks me from orbit or something similarly Gone Sideways... heck, we all probably noticed that I've been pretty quiet since end of May with my main laptop down for repairs and am only now really starting to move toward getting back into full swing.

I'd rather go slow and be right... and even with being slow, methodical ad deliberate, as new data has come to light more than once I've had to reverse, re-reverse, RE-re-reverse, etc., myself on data provided to Ares. I follow the data, and when new data changes the previous analysis I find it better to address the new data than let myself become stale and obsolete.

[Cloen]

I'm glad to hear that.
Let us not hope something so bad happens. But very figuratively description, haha. Glad that you are back.
It's good to be methodical, I don't like half-solutions myself. Just say if there is any information missing, and I will be happy to try to find them.