Commentary from May 2004

Saturday, May 29, 2004

I have some new pictures from Privateers Bounty, running my Battle of Portland scenario (28 February-2 March 1653). This simulation run was unique, in that I actually fought over three days. The simulator spontaneously crashed about 5pm, game time, on the third day. This was also a different battle, in that I controlled the English, rather than the Dutch. I succeeded in not doing much better than the AI, after having been ahead for most of the simulation run. At the time the simulator shut down, there were about 65% of the English ships left, and 63% of the Dutch. As usual, the simulator AI seemed to use "Armada style tactics", meaning that ships would turn and fire a broadside, and then turn to the other side, and find the other broadside, and then withdraw.

This picture shows the Victory and Speaker approaching to rake the Vrede from either end.

This picture shows the Sint Francisco crossing on the left, with the heavily damaged Eenhoorn in the center. Surrendered English ships can be seen in the distance.

This picture shows the Rotterdam Director's ship, Prins te Paard (38 guns) passing the surrendered Friesland ship Prinses Albertina (24 guns).

This picture shows the English hired merchantman, Prosperous of London (42 guns), which has lost her foremast. Crossing in front are the Friesland ship Frisia (30 guns), the Amsterdam ship Zeelandia (36 guns), and behind her, Cornelis Evertsen's ship, the Wapen van Zeeland (30 guns). Also pictured are Tromp's flagship, the Brederode (54 guns), heeling in the wind, apparently in a turn, the English 4th Rate Nonsuch, and the Rotterdam ship Wapen van Holland (30 guns). The surrendered ship in the distance, on the right, is the 4th Rate Assurance.

Posted by Jim at 4:49pm

Sunday, May 23, 2004

In the spirit of continuing to publish tidbits with which many people will not be familiar, I offer the following. It is a list of 17 Zeeland ships and captains that sailed for Vlissingen, as a group, following the Battle of Portland.

Seventeen Zeeland Ships that left with Jan Evertsen, for Zeeland, after the Battle of Portland

Admiralty	Index	Ship Name	Captain/Admiral	Guns	Crew
Zeeland	1	Hollandia	Adriaen Banckert/Jan Evertsen	38	160
Zeeland	2	Wapen van Holland	Cornelis Evertsen de Oude	30	120
Vlissingen Directors	3	Vlissingen	Cornelis Evertsen de Jonge	26	110
Zeeland	4	Leeuwin	Claes Janszoon	unk	unk
Zeeland	5	Liefde	Joost Banckert (dead)	26	86
Vlissingen Directors	6	Haes	Bastiaan Centen	30	108
Zeeland	7	Dubbele Arend	Allert Janszoon's ship, skipper Theunis Poort	26	110
Zeeland	8	an Admiralty ship	Lambert Bartelszoon	28	100
Middelburg Directors	9	an Admiralty ship	Johannes van Regermorter (dead)	30	105
Zeeland	10	Gouden Leeuw	Jacob Penssen	30	110
Zeeland	11	Gekroonde Liefde	Dingeman Cats	23	unk
Zeeland	12	Amsterdam	Adriaen Nikolaaszoon Kempen	30	120
Zeeland	13	Neptunus	Jan Pouwelszoon	28	134
Zeeland	14	Zeeridder	Gillis Janszoon	28	100
Veere Directors	15	a Veere Directors ship	Jan Olivierszoon	38	125
Zeeland	16	an Admiralty ship	Jacob Wolphertszoon	unk	unk
Zeeland	17	Liefde	Frans Mangelaer's skipper	30	110

As always, if anyone can fill in more of the table, I would welcome the input and give you credit.

Posted by Jim at 7:39pm

Wednesday, May 19, 2004

I have been looking at pages from the Hollandsche Mercurius for 1652 and 1653. I realized that I have a rather bad copy of a 17th Century drawing of the Battle of Dungeness. The picture shows Tromp fighting the English Garland (44 guns). The English hired ship, the Anthony Bonaventure (36 guns) is also pictured.

Posted by Jim at 7:31pm

Sunday, May 16, 2004

This is the first time that AngloDutchWarsBlog.com has not been published with Joel Spolsky's product, CityDesk. I had reached the point where I had 40 files for the site, and the free version of CityDesk will only allow you to have a 50-file site. With some trepidation, I am using AceHTML 5 Pro and AceFTP Pro for publishing.

This editor is NOT WYSIWYG, but it is nice enough. Despite not being WYSIWYG (at least as far as I can tell), it has more capabilities than the little WYSIWYG editor that comes with CityDesk. For example, this editor has the ability to do tables and lists, which would free me from either using Word or hand-coding.

Anyway, I just posted to a note about the Dutch captain, Lambert Pieterszoon. It is noteworthy, in that I will need to revise my ship lists for the First Anglo-Dutch War battles, at least Portland. The question is if Lambert Pieterszoon shows up in the Onstelde-Zee (1654) as being at the Battle of Portland. I had thought that he was, but that seems not to be the case.

Posted by Jim at 7:31pm

 

Saturday, May 15, 2004

Four years ago, I was more seriously researching the Spanish Armada era. I made spreadsheets that included estimates of dimensions for both the Spanish and the English. That seemed to be important for trying to do any wargaming for the battle. I decided to make the Spanish list available here, even though it is rather off-topic. Spanish Armada List from April 2000

Posted by Jim at 7:00pm

Thursday, May 13, 2004

I am doing a family of English ship drawings based on this picture. The concept is that when I have a nicely proportioned drawing, I will scale it up and down, and make derived drawings from it. That way, I am assured of having ship drawings that will have a nice appearance. I am doing these drawings for use on wargame pieces for use using rules such as Iain Stanford's General-at-Sea.

 

Posted by Jim at 7:35pm

Wednesday, May 12, 2004

This is a table from an unpublished manuscript that I am writing called Dutch Ships in Various Operations During the First Anglo-Dutch War.

Fishery Protection Vessels Taken by Blake in July 12, 1652

(The "Disaster")

 

Admiralty	Index	Ship Name	Captain/Admiral	Guns	Crew	Notes,References
Noorder Kwartier	1	Sampson van Hoorn	Willem Ham	24	est. 80	1DW1, p.383; LMW No.182; LMW, p.12; Ball, p.290
Amsterdam	2	Adam en Eva	Jan Heck	24	est. 80	LMW No.91; LMW, p.8; 1DW1, p.383; Ball, p.290
Amsterdam	3	Katherina	Dirck Bogaart	24	80	1DW1, p.383; LMW No. 100; LMW, p.8; Ball, p.290
Amsterdam	4	't Land van Belofte	Jan Noblet	24	est. 80	1DW1, p.383; LMW, No.146; LMW, p.10; Ball,  p.290
Rotterdam	5	Kalmar Sleutel		22	est. 80	1DW1, p.383; LMW No.141; LMW, p.10; Ball, p.290
Rotterdam	6	Paulus	Rijnhart Venhuizen van der Maas	24	est. 80	1DW1, p.383; LMW No.194; LMW, p.13; Ball, p.290
Rotterdam	7	Waterhond		24	est. 80	1DW1, p.383; LMW No.213, LMW, p.14
Amsterdam	8	Arke Noach		24	est. 80	1DW1, p.383; LMW No.163; LMW, p.11
Amsterdam	9	Zwaan		28	est. 100	1DW1, p.383; LMW No.219; LMW, p.14
Enkhuisen Directors	10	Sampson van Enkhuisen		28	est. 100	1DW1, p.383; LMW No.181; LMW, p.12
Noorder Kwartier	11	't Wapen van Holland		30	est. 110	1DW1, p.383; LMW No.208; LMW, p.13; Ball, p.290
Amsterdam	12	St. Jan Baptist		22	est. 80	1DW1, p.383; LMW No.188
Amsterdam	13	Marcus Curtius	Hendrik Kroeger	24	80	1DW1, p.389; 1DW4, p.310; LMW, p.11; LMW No.153

Sources

[1DW4] ed. Atkinson, C.T., First Dutch War, Vol.IV, Navy Records Society, London, 1909.

[Ball]                Ballhausen, Carl, Der Erste Englisch-Höllandische Seekrieg 1652-1654, Haag, 1923.

[1DW1] ed. Gardiner, Dr. S.R., First Dutch War, Vol.I, Navy Records Society, London, 1898.

[LMW]  Vreugdenhil, A., Ships of the United Netherlands, 1648-1702, London, 1938.

Posted by Jim at 8:49pm

Sunday, May 9, 2004

I finally have made significant progress in making wargame pieces. My first attempt is a sheet of 1/3000 scale Dutch ships. They are a variation on what is used for Iain Stanford's General-at-Sea Rules. This is a corner from that sheet. This is actually larger than the pieces appear on the printed sheet. The real page image is 300 dpi, while this is reduced from that, as if we used that resolution, when displayed on a webpage, the image is 2.5x's larger. I used my "quick and dirty" Dutch ship drawings for the sheet.

 

Wednesday, May 5, 2004

Gun Calculations

I developed a "rule of thumb" system for calculating gun weights, based on shot weight, gun length, and being aware of real gun characteristics. The purpose was to be able to estimate gun weights, where I had little information. I have a set of spreadsheets that I have used to estimate sailing warship weights. To do that, I needed to be able to better estimate gun weights, where there is a mix of good and missing information.

I have a formula that I use, which is purely empirical:

W = (D)^3 x L x K, where W=gun wt. in lbs, D=bore dia., L=bore length in calibers, and K is a constant, based on comparable pieces.

I don't use a real bore diameter, but use another calculation, based on shot type. For iron shot, I compute the bore diameter as:

   D = (8 x Shot Wt.)^1/3       (purely because it works acceptably well for me).

For stone shot the formula is:  D = (22 x Shot Wt.)^1/3.

The table below illustrates the use of my formulae. Many of these are 16th Century pieces.

Name	Shot Type	Shot Wt	Bore Dia.	Length (Ft)	Length (Cals)	Gun Wt	K
Cannon	Iron	68	8.163	9	13.2	8256	1.15
Cannon	Iron	60	7.83	9.5	14.6	8060	1.15
Cannon	Iron	42	6.952	10	17.3	6684	1.15
Cannon	Iron	42	6.952	9.5	16.4	6336	1.15
Cannon	Iron	42	6.952	9	15.5	5989	1.15
Demi-Cannon	Iron	32	6.35	9.5	18	5853	1.27
Demi-Cannon	Iron	32	6.35	9	17	5528	1.27
Cannon Perrier	Iron	24	5.769	6	12.5	2904	1.21
Cannon Perrier	Stone	24	8.082	6.5	9.7	2918	0.57
24pdr	Iron	24	5.769	9.5	19.8	4371	1.15
24pdr	Iron	24	5.769	9	18.7	4128	1.15

Posted by Jim at 8:15pm

Saturday, May 1, 2004

Another Battle of Plymouth Experiment 

I just ran a very interesting and instructive run with the Battle of Plymouth scenario in the simulator (Privateers Bounty). My rules were to maneuver the Dutch as a group, but not to use the single line formation. I fought the battle pretty much as a "fight to the ship and round", but the battle didn't nearly turn out that way for the Dutch. The Dutch had 41% their fleet left while the English were down to 8%, as night was falling. The last English survivors were all substantial ships. The William, a hired merchantman had just surrendered, while the Vanguard and another substantial hired merchantman survived, but were immobile. The Dutch would have lost too many ships trying to finish them off, knowing how Privateers Bounty works.

You can see the Dutch crossing to the East, while the English were to windward, to the North. In the background, two ships are burning. One is the English hired merchantman, the Ruth, while another is a Dutch fireship that has been ignited by gunfire.

Here, you can see that even with the Dutch not in a single line formation,their crossing, all on the same tack, has the effect of "crossing the English T". The English can bee seen to be in great disorder. The Dutch were under my control, maneuvering together, while the English were under control of the artificial intelligence in the simulator.

This is just a closer view of the Dutch fleet, "crossing the T". While they are not in a single line, the ships behind are able to fire at English ships, as they become unobscured, between the closer Dutch ships.

This is the aftermatch of the battle, at nightfall. The William surrendered shortly after this, after taking further damage from the dismasted Dutch Graaf Willem (40 guns). You can see that there were many remaining Dutch ships that were fully mobile, even at the end of the battle.

Posted by Jim at 11:26am