Chesapeake vs. Shannon

Today is the anniversary of two notable naval victories by the Royal Navy.

The more recent of the two was the 1813 duel between the American frigate Chesapeake and the British frigate Shannon which has been the topic of several posts already.

The earlier one was the British naval battle known as the Glorious First of June, where a British fleet defeated a French fleet in 1794.

Unexpected outcomes

The redoubtable Mark K. came by on Saturday for a day of gaming which ended up being full of unexpected outcomes. We started off the day with a match of Hold the Line playing the Quebec scenario from the Clash for a Continent game. The unexpected part was that the French won both times in a battle where they lost quickly and decisively in history. We ended the day with our first game of Serpents of the Sea, playing a duel scenario between the Shannon and the Chesapeake. The unexpected part of that game was a long, knock-down drag out fight between the two ships -- again a battle that ended historically with a quick and decisive victory for one side.
The bulk of the day's session was playing Twilight Struggle.

More than any game I've played in years I still feel completely at sea while playing it. So much so that I haven't even developed a sense of how to put together a narrative for a session report. Mark and and agreed that there was an awful lot going on and in our second game we were just beginning what promises to be a long learning process.
Overall the Early and Mid war games were pretty much a wash, with neither side able to make much headway one way of the other. Generally my USSR tended to keep the VP marker slightly on the Soviet side of the track, but Mark's US was able to keep things close enough that he had a reasonable expectation of making headway in the Late War. There were a number of scoring card plays that ended up with a relatively marginal haul for either player. Mark was generally ahead in Asia and the Middle East while Europe was very much contested. Both players tended to have a lot of influence spread around in Europe but had trouble controlling many nations.
Mark K.'s USA scored somewhat of a coup by getting the Africa Scoring Card discarded without scoring after the USSR had devoted considerable resources to building a strong position there.

The last turn of the Mid War period saw what turned out to be a critical turn-long battle for control of South America that ended up with the USSR scoring Control for a significant swing of around 10 points that ended up with the VP marker at around 15 for the Reds.

The game came to an unexpected end early in the first turn of the Late War period due to this card:


I used ops to coup a couple of countries, driving the DefCon down to 2 and then played this card. Being ahead by 15 at that moment I could give Mark's USA the 6 VPs while still remaining comfortably ahead on points. It seemed like an anti-climactic end to the game in many ways, although I felt pretty good about my chances going into the Late War anyway.

I'm pretty sure neither one of us will be caught by THAT card again, though, now that we have seen it in action. I think that's how it's going to be with Twilight Struggle -- a long series of harsh lessons on the way to basic competence. What a game!

I think Lake Champlain does hold the record

Battle of Valcour Island on Lake Champlain, Oct. 11, 1776

I wondered a day or so ago if Lake Champlain held some sort of record for the largest naval battle on the smallest lake.

Some preliminary research suggest that it does. As a matter of fact, Lake Champlain was the site of TWO rather large naval battles.

Naval battle big enough to have a name are extremely rare on lakes, it turns out. I could find only a handful. It appears some very special circumstances are required and, in fact, the struggle for the lakes in the War of 1812 was to only campaign of its type ever that I could find.

It appears there have been roughly a half dozen major naval battles/campaigns on freshwater lakes in recorded history.

Three of those occurred on lakes considerably larger than Lake Champlain: Lake Erie in 1813. Lake Ontario in 1813-14 and Lake Tanganyika in 1915-1916.

There were, as I said, Two large naval battles on Lake Champlain: Valcour Island, Oct. 11, 1776 and Lake Champlain (also known as Plattsburgh) Sept. 11, 1814.

There's only one other candidate to threaten Lake Champlain's record, a battle or series of battles on Lake Poyang, China from Aug. 30-Oct. 4, 1363. This battle is sometimes regarded as the largest naval battle in history in terms of manpower, with several hundred thousand fighting men, but there doesn't appear to be an awful lot of confidence by historians in those numbers. In any case, there's also the question of the size of the lake. Lake Poyang is reported to be as small as 1,000 square kilometers in the dry season as compared to Lake Champlain's 1,130 square kilometers, so it's possible that Poyang edged out Champlain -- but the battle occurred during China's rainy season when Lake Poyang can be as large as 5,000 square kilometers. I think it's probable, then, that Lake Champlain securely holds the distinction of being the smallest lake to be the site of a major naval battle -- twice over.

Serpents of the Sea arrives

Serpents of the Seas arrived today. My box was rather battered by the Postal Service, which is unusual. I think that GMT may have packed the game a little on the light side as well.
On the other hand, the game itself looks interesting. I'm hoping to try out the duel rules pretty soon. Those appear especially interesting.
And the game gets a special Bonus Point from me, because it includes a namesake counter. Yes, it appears that the British had a gunboat named Owen. It appears at the Battle of Lake Champlain, 11 Sept. 1814. The counter tells us it was a 2-gun gunboat, making it just about the smallest gunboat there is.

I'm looking forward to this one

Serpents of the Seas is charging and should be shipping in a month or so. I'm looking forward to this one.

It also means I need to get cracking on my next installment of the "replay" of the Chesapeake and Shannon fight. Next up will be Close Action because I plan to cap the series with the Serpents of the Seas review.