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Coog
08-07-2012, 00:10
On 7 August 1798 the brig-sloop HMS Espoir, under the command of Commander Loftus Otway Bland, was escorting the Oran convoy when she encountered the Genoese pirate, the 26-gun Liguria, some three leagues off Cape Windmill. Bland sailed to meet the vessel, which ordered him to surrender and then fired on Espoir. Espoir mounted fourteen 6-pounder guns and carried a crew of 80 men. Liguria mounted twelve 18-pounder guns, four 12-pounder guns, and ten 6-pounder guns. She also carried 12 wall-pieces, and four swivel guns. Lastly, she had a crew of 120 men. She thus outgunned and outnumbered Espoir. After several broadsides and some lulls, lasting in all perhaps four hours, Ligouria struck her colors. She had lost her boatswain and six men killed, and 14 men wounded, including her commander Don Francisco de Orso dangerously so. Espoir lost her master killed, and had six men wounded, of whom two were badly wounded. Liguria was a Dutch frigate that had been sold to the Genoese.

Bland received a promotion to post-captain, with seniority of 25 September 1798. In 1847 the Admiralty issued the clasp "Espoir 7 Augt. 1798" to the Naval General Service Medal to the one surviving claimant from that action.

Comte de Brueys
08-07-2012, 05:39
I bet gunnery skill and sailors abilities decided the battle.

csadn
08-07-2012, 15:52
I bet gunnery skill and sailors abilities decided the battle.

Most likely. I've found in replaying scenarios from the Napoleonic period in _WS&IM_ that bumping up the Continentals' skill level by one makes for *much* closer games (as well as making the _Chesapeake_-_Shannon_ affray a much-closer-run affair).

To quote Dr. Robert Ballard: "I don't place my faith in technology; I place my faith in people. Those who place their faith in technology tend to run into an iceberg."

David Manley
08-07-2012, 23:28
Thats a given - if you play age of sail games and don't take account of command and crew aspects you are missing out the whole aspect that made these incredible victories possible. I do know of one set of rules that was published a while back where the author decided not to include these, to rather they did but watered down the potential differences to the point where they were virtually worthless. It was just one of the reasons why those rules sucked big time (the others included a failure to appreciate how sailing ships worked, any real appreciation of gunnery and the way that the whole ensemble punished players who used contemporary tactics whilst promoting tactics that in the age of sail would have led to diaster - but those were only minor faults :) ) But the whole thing was done on the altar of "play balance". The designer kind of half heartedly accepted that they'd really been trying to produce a game that looked good on a 6x4 table and that realism had taken a back seat as a consequence.

David Manley
08-07-2012, 23:33
WS&IM

Didn't Avalon Hill market this as a 1776 Bicentennial game? Stroke of marketing genius. Not the best simulation of AoS naval warfare (Mark Campbell did an excellent job of taking the basic approach and providing a much better overlay of realism) but a true wargaming classic. First AH wargame I ever bought (or was that B17?). Its up there on my shelf with Flat Top and Midway :)

csadn
08-08-2012, 14:38
Didn't Avalon Hill market this as a 1776 Bicentennial game?

That's what my copy says. And while the detail isn't exact, it also doesn't require two hours and a degree in advanced mathematics to figure out.

David Manley
08-08-2012, 14:45
Agreed, it has an elegant simplicity. Close Action retains the same feel and speed of play, so I'd recommend it as an alternative. And I've played in some monster games using miniatures with the designer, Mark Campbell, at Greenbelt MD - 30-40 players, each driving their own ship, and Mark able to memorise not only all of the gunnery tables in his head, but also the movement and damage states of every ship.