Saturday 29 January 2022

Self-Inflicted Wounds

There is no doubt about it: if you want to kill off the readership of your blog (not literally, of course) the answer is to write about naval wargaming. The first post of this year about plans for the future got over forty views, although I do not know how many of those were Russian botnets or Indian exam answer mills. The second post, which was about a naval wargame in the Alexander’s Anabasis campaign got just over half that. It had a picture of a table with a blue cloth. It clearly puts people off.

I have mentioned before that this is very odd, particularly among Anglo-American wargamers, given the legacy of naval history both have. Most wargamers, it seems, like to keep their feet firmly on the ground. In spite of a few books in the heyday of wargame publishing, there seems to be relatively little uptake of naval wargaming, certainly as anything particularly mainstream.

Perhaps this is because naval wargaming is perceived as being complicated. Certainly I have seen some awfully complex naval wargame rules, some of which required a computer to play. These were mainly related to World War I, World War Two and fictitious (mercifully) recent Cold War actions, and I suppose the full gamut of modern naval fighting is very complicated, particularly with electronic countermeasures and so on. Incidentally I once nearly accepted a job part of which was to develop methods of hiding modern naval vessels. I often wonder what would have happened if I had; World War three possibly.

Still, my interest, wargame wise, is of course early modern and ancient wargaming and, as I think wargames should cover the whole of military activity, I am not going to stop writing about naval matters. As I threatened in the New Year post I have been pondering the Anglo-Dutch wars recently, and have even started to take some action in that direction. I have not quite decided what is going to happen, but it seems that something is in the air.

Anyway, with that in mind I have been reading:

Barry, Q. (2018). From Solebay to the Texel: The Third Anglo-Dutch War, 1672 - 1674. Warwick: Helion.

 

This work is part of Helion’s ‘Century of the Soldier’ series, which is extensive and, so far as I can tell, a bit patchy in quality, although on the whole useful and good. This is no exception – it is a good book.

The first two chapters are background, covering the first and second Anglo-Dutch Wars. Central to these conflicts was the commercial rivalry between the two nations. This is a bit interesting, as it shows that wars are often fought because of ideas. The idea here is mercantilism, the concept that there is a fixed amount of trade in the world and that each nation has to try to capture more from other countries, rather than the (more modern) idea that trade can expand endlessly.

Proximate causes of the first ADW was the refusal of the Dutch to remove Royalists from their land and the passing of the Navigation Act by Parliament in 1651. This was aimed directly at Dutch commerce, stating that imports into England could only be in ships of the nation of origin or English ships. The Dutch re-export trade was therefore threatened.

It is possible that the Anglo-Dutch Wars are rather unpopular in in wargame terms, or even in Anglophone historiography, because they were so nakedly related to money and trade. I suspect as well that Tony Bath’s comments about them in Setting Up a Wargame Campaign might have something to do with it. Without getting up to find the book, as I recall he suggests that the scope is rather cramped and opportunities for strategic manoeuvre limited. He also suggests that the chances of either side carrying out a successful amphibious operation was limited. These things are perhaps true, but not so true as to make the wars unwargamable.

Another factor in the relative unpopularity of the period is the fact that the wars were rather embarrassing to the British naval tradition of victory. Everyone, probably, has heard of the Dutch raid on the Medway, and none of the other actions seem to have been particularly decisive (except in the first war, but that was during the Commonwealth and therefore embarrassing for home political reasons rather than military ones). The British government had not really worked out how to create the infrastructure for naval operations, and the fleet was not wholly appropriate for them. Revictualling was a problem, as was the repair of battle and storm damage. Under Charles II money was a problem as well.

Land action did take place, of course, in the Third Anglo-Dutch War. This one was pushed by Charles II in alliance with the French under Louis XIV. The French invaded on land and contributed a naval squadron, under British overall command. The activities of the latter showed that perhaps Louis was not as committed as he might have been to the naval cause, and Charles had to drop out of the war when he ran out of money. Still, there are four battles described in the book, Solebay, two battles of Schooneveld and The Texel. While naval doctrine had been settled by the British in the first war, and then copied by the French and Dutch, the best description I can give of them is ‘chaotic’. It is one thing to order a fleet into line; it is quite another to keep it there.

This was probably a transitionary time in naval warfare., and therefore is possibly at least as interesting, if not more so, than Nelson and his colleagues. How best to handle a fleet was a bit moot at the time. The correct strategic employment of the ships was another. Barry concludes by observing that in spite of all the blood and treasure expended in home waters by both sides, the most damage was done by a small Dutch squadron in the West Indies and North America.

Still, I doubt if anyone is reading this post now, so I shall finish , but promise to return to unpopular naval matters. After all, whoever blogged for popularity?

10 comments:

  1. I read to the end. 😁 Naval wargaming is not my thing, but I wouldn’t rule it out. There’s quite a few bloggers out there into it,

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    1. There is more interest than I thought, admittedly. Still, glad you got to the end. I guess Frederick of Prussia didn't have much opportunity or need to get his feet wet...

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  2. I also read to the end. While naval is not high on my list of project, I do want to play some ancient naval battles, and do dabble in Medieval British Channel battles after reading an article and rules in the 80s in WI (I think) and then ordering some cogs.

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    1. Ancient naval battles are quite fun I've discovered, and there is not as much to worry about compared to gunpowder fighting ships. Medieval battles have always looked interesting, but the supply of 1:2400 cogs is, well, non-existent.

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  3. Sorry, didn’t make it past the first sentence ... :)
    *
    https://manoftinblog.wordpress.com/2018/08/19/my-pound-store-naval-convoy/

    https://manoftinblog.wordpress.com/2018/08/23/featherstone-and-co-naval-war-games/

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    1. Nice idea with the eraser merchant ships. I wonder if there are any with sails... I read the Featherstone decades ago and can't remember any of it, although the colonial game picture seems familiar somehow.

      Maybe as I've grown older I've come to prefer simpler games - even some of the older naval stuff seems a bit complex to me now. Mind you my first navies were sliced blocks of balsa wood painted different colours with pins stuck in for a sail. Now I like better models and faster rules. I think it is called getting old :)

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  4. I read you every week - always interesting! Sadly never got enthused by Naval games, though I still have Dunn's 'Sea Battle Games' with its madly complicated world war campaign! Dutch War could be interesting, how about a hypothetical invasion by the Dutch? Certainly good for 'combined ops'..

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    1. I have read Sea Battle Games but don't recall the campaign. Something like an ADW invasion would be a nice campaign, I think. I'm working on it, and naval wargaming often seems to come back to the land at some point.

      Thank you for reading, as well!

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  5. Yes, got to the end too. I would really like to do Napoleonic Naval, since I have some 1/4800 ships actually painted up; in fact I'd bet I could proxy pretty much the whole Age of Sail with them - but I haven't got the foggiest where to start for rules. I would like to do WW2 onwards air/naval too, but every ruleset I have seen has followed Sam Mustafa's description as my sets of complex maths equations are approaching your set of complex maths equations...

    Still, C17 combined naval/ land operations seems like a good start, if only for doing the naval aspects of the 80YW.

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    1. Yes, rules are a bit of a problem. I tend to go for very simple, I think my version of the renaissance are on the rules link to the right. he problem is, as with land based rules, often the wargamer is expected to have lots of hats during the game - master, commander, gunner and even sometimes powder monkey (I exaggerate, but only a bit). No-one has really seemed to ask what really mattered and what was dealt with by minions.

      I nearly went with 1:4800 for ADW but as I've got a load of 1:2400 galleys and Armada era ships I stuck to that. Now I've got to paint them, of course. Lots of gold, I think.

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