Napoleonic Portuguese Navy I came upon a short note in an old, old copy of “Mariner’s Mirror” the other day, and it referred to the activities of the Portuguese navy during the Napoleonic Wars. I knew that at one stage, the Russians provided a squadron, which was for a time based in the Channel Islands, but not about the Portuguese. Apparently they provided at Britain’s request a strong squadron of an 84 gun man o’ war, two 74’s, a 64, a 44 gun frigate and two smaller sloops. They arrived in the Summer of 1794 under Admiral de Valle and served a year with Howe. Other Portuguese naval squadrons served in the Mediterranean with Nelson in 1793 and in 1799. These would make an interesting addition to my 1/1200th Napoleonic Royal Navy fleet, but apart from the names of one 64, she was Sao Sebastiao, and one of the 74’s, Rainha de Portugal , I’ve not been able to discover any others. Nor, more importantly am I aware of the colour schemes of Portuguese warships in the Napoleonic period - tempting to think they followed British schemes, but does anyone know? The Future British Surface Fleet: Options for Medium Sized Navies By D. K. Brown. Conways Maritime Press. 1991. ISBN 0-851 7 7-557-8. Original Price £20. Now priced at £1. hardback , discounted. Yes, this book’s a decade old, and is now available at only one pound, from “The Works” discount bookshop with about 150 UK branches. Ignore the age of a very sound assessment of the steady decline and yet still exceptional efficiency of the Royal Navy, for naval wargamers, it is worth buying. In a little under 200 pages, well illustrated photographically and more importantly-technically, David Brown formerly DCNA deals with aspects of warship design and use in the last ten and the next ten years. Written at the time of the Iraq War; the First Iraq War as we may come to know it! The book contains a number of interesting sea wargame scenarios including blockade at sea, reinforcement convoys to Europe and mine warfare, the priority aspect of naval warfare of the coming years no doubt of that, and an aspect late coming to the minds of US ‘blue water-big carrier’ proponents in particular. If you own a couple of late Cold War, or post-Cold War fleets, then here are a few ideas with which to try them out. Building A Fleet of River Gun-Boats in 1/300 Scale The range of plastic kits manufactured by “Glencoe Models” of the USA, are a strange mixture of the rare and interesting and the frankly useless. I've acquired one or two delightful items over the years, a stagecoach in roughly 25mm scale for example and a lovely Chinese Junk in approximately 1/300. I say 'roughly' and 'approximately' because the model I'm about to use is stated as being 1/400 scale. The Glencoe Range incidentally, is again becoming available in the UK through one or two enterprising importers, 'Pocketbond' among them. US readers will know they are based at P0 Box 846, Northboro,MA 01532, and this particular kit, like the Junk, is worth pursuing. Kit No. 01030 in their Range is “Southern Belle” a 22 piece hard plastic Mississippi Sternwheeler of the mid-l9th century. About 1$ in the US, but up to £3 here in the UK! The model is flat bottomed, requiring no work at 'water level' apart from the removal of the lower blades of the paddle, stage no.4 on the packet, the parts are not numbered by the way. Hilfstreuminendampfer B The Konigen Luise was a Hamburg-Amerika Line excursion steamer until World War I started, there after she led a brief career as an auxiliary minelayer in the Kaiserliche Marine, converted to carry 180 mines in less than twelve hours on 2nd August 1914, she sailed without her intended 2 x 88mm guns which had not arrived and was armed only with two 37mm QF guns and the crew’s small arms. The intention was that the minelayer (now known by the title of this note) should lay her field in the Thames estuary, a most suitable site for a German minefield. Since the war was no more than a day old, the ship sailed on the 4th, she was disguised as a Great Eastern Railway ferry with black hull with a yellow band, white upperworks and buff funnels with black tops. The story of how Hilfstreuminendampfer B laid her minefield near the Outer Gabbard Lightship, her destruction at the hands of a British Flotilla and the loss of HMS Amphion, a Light Cruiser to the minefield are recounted in the article “A Well Known Incident” by Len Barnett (published in ‘The Mariner’s Mirror’ Vol 89, No 2 (May 2003) pages 185-202. The article, which is well mapped and illustrated, provides the basis for a good solo wargame involving a single German vessel, a British destroyer flotilla or two, a Light Cruiser, an ‘E’ Class submarine, some basic minesweepers and a few neutral merchantmen. I reconstructed the ‘incident’ using an Admiralty chart (the Outer Gabbard is off Aldeburgh in Suffolk for those not familiar with the North Sea) and then with 1/300th ‘Navwar’ model ships on the table. The loss of the Hilfstreuminendampfer B is to be anticipated, the key is how many of her 180 ‘carbonit’ mines would she lay before she was caught and where the minefield would be. This offers the prospect of a substantial British effort to find and sweep them and the potential loss of large numbers of ships; as it is one Light Cruiser and two neutral merchantmen were lost. While the Germans, fully expected heavy units of the Grand Fleet to move to the Thames at the outbreak of hostilities. Reading this fascinating article provides an insight into just how traumatic an incident this was and how far reaching the consequences were. The Royal Navy suddenly became aware of an immediate threat, which required several hundred trawlers and drifters to defend against. A highly recommended naval read. There are two interesting pieces in the June issue of ”History Today” (Vol. 53, no.6), which it’s worth dropping into the library to read. First there’s a review of a new biography of Red Army General Georgi Zhukhov, without doubt the finest commander of the twentieth century. Entitled ‘Marshal Zhukhov: The Man who Beat Hitler’ by Albert Axell’s and newly published by Longmans it costs £19.99. Worth reading, and remembering cadets at Sandhurst and West Point study Zhukov’s crushing victories at Moscow, Stalingrad and Kursk as the key victories of WWII. They’re not wrong. Then there’s a two-page summary of Nelson’s leadership strategy, brief and interesting for the naval wargamer, a short analysis that explains more in a few hundred words than many of the lengthy biographies achieve. The Prussians called Nelson’s style Auftrahgstaktik while today we call it ‘Mission Command’ the subordinates knowing exactly what the commander intends and acting with initiative; pity my Brig captains didn’t act like that when my Baltic convoy was attacked by French privateers the other day! Back to Table of Contents -- Lone Warrior # 143 Back to Lone Warrior List of Issues Back to MagWeb Magazine List © Copyright 2003 by Solo Wargamers Association. This article appears in MagWeb.com (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other military history articles and gaming articles are available at http://www.magweb.com