Close Action: Cape Henry

The Rebel Seas supplement includes an alternate history version of the Battle of Cape Henry, with seven ships on each side. The wind is from the southwest, the French are close hauled heading northwest, and the British are on a broad reach heading north after the French. Josh and I took the British, while Tracy and Richard got the French.

As the Brits, our plan was "Go get 'em!" The French plan was "We can't expect to coordinate better than Team DeBoe, so we'll just turn around and head into battle and hopefully what happens will be fun."

And that's what happened. The French line immediately tacked and ended facing south, coming to meet us as we swept down on them. Our van met the left end of their line and then both sides piled on at the point of contact. By turn 5 we had 11 ships within an area 13 hexes wide; by turn 9 it was 14 ships within 10 hexes. Richard had three of his ships collide with British, and at one point there were nine ships involved in four separate foulings.

In the photo, British ships are red, French ships are yellow. My ships are British flagship and the two with Turkish flags (just so I could keep track of them more easily).

Richard got high roll of the day, a gunnery number 36 that scored a 6 on the roll for a 42 total. He also managed to launch a boarding action; Royal Oak had had time to get ready and repelled the boarders, but Richard deserves kudos for being able to get boarders away. Overall, however, the British were able to concentrate fire better, and although only one ship had struck when we quit, the British were ahead on points by roughly 140 to 50.