After a short period of maneuvering, in a fresh breeze with the wind nearly astern, with the U.S.S. Constitution to windward and H.M. S. Guerriere to leeward, the two adversaries drew abreast at 6:05 P.M.. At just under pistol shot range they fired their opening broadsides as their guns bore. These first broadsides, carefully aimed and loaded with grape and ball shot hit with incredible force. Through a fog of smoke came hundreds of pounds of iron and a deadly shower of wooden splinters. Guerriere was hulled, and had five guns upended, and sixty©five men either killed or wounded. The stout timbers of the Constitution gave greater protection to her men, but still one gun was destroyed and eighteen men struck down.

Both vessels maintained their courses and were still abreast at 6:10 P.M. when their second broadsides crashed out; both fired high. Constitution had minor damage to her rigging, while Guerriere's was more serious. Still keeping their positions, by 6:15 P.M. Guerriere accumulated enough high damage to lose a third of her rigging which fell over the disengaged side of the ship. By contrast, Constitution suffered just more minor rigging damage. At 6:20 P.M. the Guerriere was forced to take an involuntary turn away from her opponent, due to the drag of her rigging in the water, but her efficient crew had it cleared away before Constitution could fire again. Once more, Constitution had no serious damage or casualties, and she turned to starboard to take advantage of Guerriere's crippled condition.

At 6:25 P.M., from a position just off Guerriere's larboard bow, Constitution fired a devastating broadside which brought down another third of Guerriere's rigging. Guerriere could not return fire, owing to the Constitution's angle of attack, so her captain prudently struck his colors to avoid further bloodshed.

The previous scenario was fought to test my new gunnery rules which are based on the examples in my article in The Courier, issue #61 as well as recently discovered data. These rules eliminate many annoying modifiers, while giving very accurate casualty results. Besides using my own gunnery, morale, and damage rules for the refight, which I will eventually make available to The Courier, I used Rod Langton's Signal: Close Action rules for maneuver, movement, and crew tasks, since my rules will be based on a similar time frame. Signal: Close Action uses a move/counter move system with such short movement allowances that both ships were obliged to stay abreast to avoid being raked. My gunnery rules also do not give an initial fire bonus for firing high, thus both ships commenced action by firing low. I also merged my damage system with Signal: Close Action's system, for this game only, for rigging damage. This caused the Guerriere to involuntarily turn away from Constitution when her damaged rigging dragged in the water. For morale I used a variation of Beat to Quarters' morale system. A bad roll made the Brits strike their flag sooner than their historical counterparts. The original Guerriere lost all her rigging by 6:30 P.M. and had seventynine casualties. My Guerriere lost sixtyfive men, but would have been raked at 6:30 P.M. had she not struck at 6:25. She also lost the equivalent of two masts, which was enough to keep her tangled up for quite a while. The original Constitution had just fourteen casualties and minor rigging damage. My Constitution had eighteen casualties and very minor rigging damage.

Owing to the fact that I didn't use the historical duel between the Constitution and Guerriere to construct my gunnery chart, I was quite pleased with the results of my test. Hopefully, this report will inspire a few hardy souls to purchase some ships and be ready to play my Yardarm to Yardarm rules when they finally appears in The Courier.

This article appears in MagWeb (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web.
Other military history articles and gaming articles are available at http://www.magweb.com