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Author Topic: Invasion 1885! How the French tried to invade Britain.  (Read 1934 times)

Offline cataphractarius

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Invasion 1885! How the French tried to invade Britain.
« on: February 25, 2016, 10:17:23 PM »
Just a very quick introduction. For various reasons, I'm both privately and professionally interested in Victorian war fiction - not of the Wellsian "War of the Worlds" kind, but rather of the Chesneyan "Battle of Dorking" kind.

Now, between 1871 and 1914, scores of texts were published covering in one way or another a future war between one of the continental powers (or a combination of several of them) and Britain, ranging in tone from grim pessimism at the capability of the British military to withstand an invasion and that of British society to survive a total war, to blaring, over-the-top uber-jingoism, as for example in Louis Tracy's "Final War" - in an interview the author famously stated: "I firmly believe in the old saying that one Englishman is worth five of any other people in the world", and that exactly is how the novel plays out.

Anyway, of all these texts about 30% deal with naval matters, which eventually let me start thinking about turning this into a wargaming scenario. This resulted in the - still ongoing - development of a set of rules and in the - lamentably slow - buildup of wargaming material. I'll use this thread to post some - usually horrible - pictures from time to time.

Offline cataphractarius

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Re: Invasion 1885! How the French tried to invade Britain.
« Reply #1 on: February 25, 2016, 10:20:24 PM »
The year is 1885. The defence of the Norfolk coast is only a sideshow in the gigantic struggle between the French invaders and the British defenders, yet defended the coast has to be, and in this task the Royal Navy is ably - even though some may contest the last word - assisted by local volunteers. In order to guard the inlets on the Norfolk coast against possible intrusions by the enemy, a small fleet of requisitioned steam yachts, pinnaces and elderly gunboats has been organized and put under the command of Captain Octavius "Taffrail" Stormer; the old gunboat HMS "Rainbow" serves as a flagship for his small command.

Lt Algernon "Algy" Smythe-Fythleswyth has been put in command of HMS "Bloody Lance", a small race yacht that after being requisitioned was fitted with a 3pdr QF gun and a spar torpedo. Boatswain Benedict Tiller is tasked with conning the boat and serves as second-in-command to Lt Smythe-Fythleswyth. Both share a long history of serving together, ever since Smythe-Fythleswyth was a young midshipman.

Test Scenario 1.

HMS "Bloody Lance" is pitted against two French pinnaces, one armed with a Gatling gun, the other with a spar torpedo. A small cutter with a small crew of picked riflemen adds to the Gaulic punch.



HMS "Bloody Lance" in all its glory - Lt Smythe-Fythleswyth is the fairy haired chap to the right of the gun crew (and yes, the gun still lacks paint; that's probably the reason for its, uhem, suboptimal performance in the game).



The French boats; luckily, the wind was in favour of using the cutter - somehow we decided on using the cutter before determining the wind direction; that could have gone seriously wrong...

Boatswain Tiller is conning HMS "Bloody Lance", the Lieutenant is with the gun crew, while a party of three men armed with rifles led by a mate is assembled on the foredeck. The French Lieutenant decides to put the cutter in between the two pinnaces, personally leading from the gatling-armed one. His chances to succeed are slim at best, which is why no-one bothered to remember his name!

And off it went. Lt Smythe-Fythleswyth astonished everybody by employing the scandalously innovative tactic of lying still and waiting for the enemy. His gunners certainly profited from this novel approach, as a well-aimed shot by the 3pdr sent the gatling-armed pinnace to the bottom - first round, and the French have already lost their only major weapon.



On the left, the French pinnace is slowly going down; it took two turns to slip beneath the waves, allowing a final angry burst of defiance - which hit nothing at all. This started to look like an easy victory, particularly as the French commander, ahem, struggled with the fact that the sails on his cutter prevented the soldiers aboard from firing at the enemy.

Argh!



However, some deft manouvreing actually resulted in the second pinnace making a mad dash for HMS "Bloody Lance" - and actually succeeding in a textbook spar torpedo attack. Boatswain Tiller, however, was not impressed: "Yer spar torpeedo is not peeinted, ye eediot!" Which indeed it wasn't - and which certainly was the reason for the b----y thing not going off at all!



Instead, the gun crew turned onto the pinnace and let go - only to miss, and miss again once the two boats had seperated. Rather a poor showing by what was assumed to be a veteran crew.

Undaunted, the French commander yelled something incomprehensible, which probably meant something like "I still have a cutter with three soldiers in it! Be overawed by the magnificence of my power!". As a result, the gun crew on HMS "Bloody Lance" turned the gun towards the cutter...



... and missed again (who would have thought it). And even when the cutter rammed the boat, the gun continued to just make holes into the sails.



The two ships finally made contact, and one of the soldiers hit Boatswain Tiller, who went down unconscious. The French army lieutenant jumped aboard the "Bloody Lance" as well, and a brief and bloody melee ensued.



The gun crew tried to blow the cutter to pieces - with the predictable result of yet another hole in the sail!



This left finally only Lt Smythe-Fythleswyth and one of the gunners standing aboard the "Bloody Lance", and a lone sailor in the cutter (the other pinnace had in the meantime drifted off map).

In the end, a clear but rather bloody victory for the Royal Navy. The rules already work fairly well; close combat needs some adjustment as it is currently absolutely deadly for nearly everybody involved.

Apologies for the poor pictures - not a lot of light, and we had to play on the floor, as I, uhem, seriously underestimated the space you need even for simple manouevres. Good fun it all was, though.

We'll have to do some minor rules adjustment - and to finish the models... - before we'll be off into the second round of tests.

 


« Last Edit: February 25, 2016, 10:24:44 PM by cataphractarius »

Offline TheBlackCrane

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Re: Invasion 1885! How the French tried to invade Britain.
« Reply #2 on: February 25, 2016, 10:35:18 PM »
Sounds great - look forward to seeing the thread develop.
I'm also interested in 'Invasion literature', although I will have to admit that The Battle of Dorking doesn't make such pleasant reading - I much prefer a British victory  :D (Jingoism, bias and lack of realism notwithstanding!)

Often considered doing something based on the idea, I've never really got off the ground with it. We did enjoy a walk at Box Hill though. That's probably as far as I've got, but like all these things it lurks at the back of my mind, so I shall enjoy some inspiration.

Edit - just read your second post as it came up whilst I was typing. Very nice! I'd never really considered the naval aspect but this I like (especially the sinking of the pinnace, good shooting sir!), will keep an eye out for more.

Offline cataphractarius

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Re: Invasion 1885! How the French tried to invade Britain.
« Reply #3 on: February 25, 2016, 10:53:09 PM »
Thanks - for British victories (provided you can stand practically limitless jingoism) Tracy's "Final War" is an excellent start. It's easily accessible via google books or here:

https://archive.org/details/finalwar00tracgoog

Some of the scenes are simply unbelievable - sooner or later you'll be either appalled or burn with the desire of seeing it with a multi-million budget on a big screen; linen draper-turned-rifle-volunteer-major Perkins leading what remains of his commands in a mad bayonet charge down the beach and into the surf at Worthing would definitely be something worth to be seen.

Just as a teaser - Tracy wrote in the preface:

"I have tried to write a story of adventure. It may interest and amuse the reader, but I shall have utterly failed in my task if he does not rise from its perusal feeling proud if the English languae be his mother tongue, or sad if it be not."

The novel he produced is one of the most jingoistic texts I have ever read.


Offline Arthur

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Re: Invasion 1885! How the French tried to invade Britain.
« Reply #4 on: February 26, 2016, 09:52:31 AM »
Were Tracy to write such a book in 2016, he'd be instantly and rightfully dismissed as a nationalist loony churning out pseudo-historical literature to wallow in his fantasies of Anglo-Saxon superiority - a Victorian variant of the internet mall ninja. 

But in the wonderful world of historical wargaming, he is merely a purveyor of interesting alternative history scenarios  lol 

Offline sukhe_bator

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Re: Invasion 1885! How the French tried to invade Britain.
« Reply #5 on: February 26, 2016, 10:57:09 AM »
A very novel setting for a wargaming campaign/scenario and my first introduction to the 'spar torpedo'. Given the novel setting, has anyone thought of using other Victorian tech for improvised weapons like Hale and Boxer rockets or even whaling guns? The Svend Foyn patent grenade harpoon gun (1870) could be a good one. It consisted of a cannon that fired a barbed explosive head harpoon. Aimed and fired, the harpoon barb would hook into the whale. A moment later an explosive charge in the head of the harpoon would inflict a mortal wound. I wonder what effect it might have on a wooden ship...

My only experience of this period of navy tech was a walkabout on HMS Gannet (1878) at Chatham Historic Dockyard - the combo of 7" rifled guns, 64pdrs and deck mounted nordenfeld mgs seems a potent one!
http://www.thedockyard.co.uk/plan/plan-your-day/three-historic-warships/hms-gannet-1878/historic-warships-hms-gannet-photo-gallery/

I can certainly see the appeal of this period. I have admired from afar some fab steamer models on Sudan games and often wandered through the ship gallery at the Science and Nat Maritime Museums wondering at the variety of Victorian ship tech and boat designs.

Keep up the great work
Warriors dreams, summer grasses, all that remains

 

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