Ideas for realistic Age of Sail gunnery

The reason threedecks exists in the first place.
Post Reply
sgtfox
Warrant Officer
Posts: 35
Joined: Wed May 24, 2017 1:05 am
Location: Idyllwild, California

Ideas for realistic Age of Sail gunnery

Post by sgtfox »

Ideas for Realistic Gunnery Rules (Part One)
These are just a few ideas I’ve come up with over many years. They won’t be to everyone’s taste, but I hope they will be of value in encouraging gamers to experiment with their own notions on how to improve the state of Age of Sail ship-to-ship combat rules. I’m certainly no expert, just a fan of the era who has probably spent too much time researching and pondering questions. I’m not sure how much will fit in a post, so I’ve broken my article down.
It’s hard to believe that it’ now been over a half century since I picked up my first copy of Don’t Give Up the Ship. It got me away from World War Two armor games and set me on a new path. Not content to just play the game, I immediately explored some of the books in the bibliography. I recall reading wonderful accounts of ship-to-ship battles, in James, and wondering how I could replicate those examples in my wargames. Although innovative, DGUTS just didn’t allow you do get accurate results. I realized that there were a myriad of variables involved, but it looked too puzzling to tackle. Cutting to the chase, when The Naval War of 1812: A Documentary History, came out, I saw a way in. I recognized that if I could find some examples of vessels firing just one broadside, then the damage caused could be analyzed by the range, poundage of guns, tonnage and crew casualties of the target ship, and the nationality of the firing vessel. If I could find even a few examples, I could at least get an idea of average damage done.
In the last century, wargame rules tended to be written by amateur historians who tried to design a playable game. The tendency now seems to be on cleaver designers thinking of playability first and historical reality be damned! It’s always been my contention that the only way we can judge the amount of damage done to vessels is by the number of the crew killed or wounded. Once that has been determined, then a relationship between crew casualties and surrender can be established. Working on that principle, I took the data, on one broadside firing, from volumes one and two of the series mentioned earlier, then included a couple of “battles” from Low’s History of the Indian Navy, 1613-1863 and Cranwell and Crane’s Men of Marque: A History of Private Armed Vessels out of Baltimore During the War of 1812. Using what I had learned, I then decided to closely examine the seven battles between sloops and brigs in Roosevelt’s The Naval War of 1812. Obviously, these vessels were primarily armed with carronades, but it was a good starting point for close-up firing by any types of guns. I later added data, based on the performance of cannons and “short” guns used by some navies, at other ranges. My goal was to construct a gunnery table showing probabilities of hits from certain ranges. I used only battles where the U.S. Navy was victorious, since I wanted a table built on the zenith of accuracy for the period. Most historians agree that the Royal Navy seemed to go downhill after 1805. That said, I consider the Royal Navy as the best navy in history. Had the USN been forced to man even a fraction of the 600 ships in commission in the RN, they would have had the same reduction in efficiency, due to attempting to man and train the crews. Naturally, when I went to make individual charts based on nationalities, I most certainly factored in the battles lost by the USN. I picked Roosevelt’s book, since he had detailed results which showed the range, tonnage (often wrong, but correctable with Rif Winfield’s book), types of guns, time taken to complete the action, and crew and mast damage. With that data (when some things seemed improbable, I did refer to James but, like Jeremy Clarkson, he tended to be very anti-American, although James was intelligent and left us worthwhile accomplishments!) Out of habit, I used five minutes as the time for broadsides. Obviously, vessels could fire more than one broadside in that time period, but because we don’t know how long it actually took to fire a broadside, it makes sense to assign a time and go by the damage caused in that period instead of worrying about how many could be fired. I also used the concept of dividing the broadside guns into batteries of three. When you see Roosevelt’s times for the battles (and again, I used an average of times when James and Roosevelt didn’t agree), you can assign one “broadside” for each five-minute period of a battle. Doing that, then taking an overall average, it came out to be 48.548% aimed low, hitting low. Now, let me qualify that. When I determined that the late Dave Arneson probably did the same thing, in 1968, as I was doing in this new century, I saw why Dave’s results didn’t match historical reality. It was he who first came up with the concept of five-minute turns for each broadside, but where he deviated from historical reality was in his defense factor. He used the tonnage of the vessel. I found that by doubling the tonnage the casualties seemed much closer to reality. I could also see where he came up with a figure of 50% being the low hit probability. My figures showed that approximately 13.07% of shots fired, from close range, went high. Those not going high or low missed. His original rules assigned a pip on a d6 for going high, but his 1975 rules assigned two pips for the same thing. Thus, using tonnage alone for hull defense, then giving more high hits, made for more damage. From seeing the data, I can only guess that he had “the answer” in his grasp at the University of Minnesota, in 1968, while I was doing my bit for Uncle Sam in the north of England. Thus, I think that something or someone changed his mind. I believe that he was influenced by a “wargaming demon,” who pushed spectacular broadsides over historical accuracy. Regardless of that, without his brilliance as a designer, I would have spent all these years playing Tractics! So, if you take the data, then reduce it to rounded-off probabilities, which dice can handle, the close-up range chart (using d20 dice) would look like this:

Close Hailing Distance (10cm.)-all guns aimed low.
1-7 Miss 8-10 Hits high 11-20 Hits low

The best rules are the ones which can reduce historically accurate information to a simple format. That said, when you have constructed your gunnery chart, your next step is to evaluate ship-to-ship battles. I got my nationality firing figures from averages. If force blue did the best in a battle, then they are assigned a 1.0. Force red receives a percentage of that number. As an example, HMS Alert (183 tons) 36# broadside, fought the Royal French cutter Coureur (138 tons) 11# broadside, at pistol shot range, for ninety minutes. Alert had four casualties, out of an eighty-man crew. Coureur had twelve casualties out of fifty men and struck. By my calculations, the British would receive 1.0, while the French would get .904. Doing this for every ship-to-ship action in the American War of Independence, then taking the average for each nationality, would show how the various navies did overall. Having done this, the result, after adjusting for the French having a few 1.0s, would be 1.0 for the British, with .8767 for the French.
Thus, the nationality with an average 1.0 would go straight to the main gunnery chart, while any other nationality would have to roll for the number of batteries, they had firing on their Nationality Chart. One d20 would be rolled for each battery. The French would need to roll 4 or better to roll for that battery on the main gunnery chart. If the French 32-gun frigate Belle Poule, with 5.8 batteries, were firing, then five d20s of the same color would be rolled, with one of a different color. Each roll would need to be 4 or better to roll again on the main gunnery chart. If the d20 of a different color rolled 4 or better, a d10 would be rolled, with 1-8 being a hit. Thus, if all 5.8 scored four or better, then 6 dice would be thrown on the main gunnery chart, an example of which is shown above for Close Hailing Distance Range. (Part Two to follow)
Post Reply