Winston Churchill described Hornblower as 'admirable' and 'vastly entertaining', which is true of course, but C. S. Forester's naval hero also lends himself to the wargames table, and a couple of the books, still in print as Penguin paperbacks, provide some excellent Napoleonic era naval games suitable for solo playing, and without the lumbering 'First-Rates' of the Channel Squadrons.
North to The Baltic
In the Spring of 1812 - which was to prove an interesting year, Horatio Hornblower's small Baltic Squadron, HMS Nonsuch (74 guns), HMS Lotus and HMS Raven (two sloops), HMS Moth & HMS Harvey (bomb ketches) and HMS Clam (a cutter) were an odd mixture of men o' war spared from the massive duties of the Royal Navy world wide. Forester unfolds the Squadron's active campaign in The Commodore, which was Hornblower's rank in command.
Entering the Baltic through the narrows, under Swedish guns, the British ships encounter a merchant vessel Maggie Jones en route from Memel to London; the Captain claims smallpox among the men, but Hornblower boards her, and discovers the crew locked below the hatches, an a French prize crew in control. The ship had been captured by a 10-gun ship-rigged privateer Blanchfleur and with this intelligence; the Squadron goes looking for the enemy.
In a spirited chase, which would make a wargame in itself, HMS Raven runs aground off Stralsund in 'neutral' Swedish Pomerania, and Blanchfleur takes refuge behind a long narrow sandspit protected from attack by a battery and shoal waters. It is safe, even from an attack by small boats which would have to run the gauntlet of the Swedish battery. Hornblower calls up the two 'bombs' and between them they reduce the French Privateer to burning grounded wreck by firing over the dunes and sandspit into the enemy anchorage. In reply, Bonaparte sends 50,000 troops to occupy Swedish Pomerania in order to 'keep the peace'.
The British Squadron sails to St. Petersburg to deliver an emissary. Hornblower meets the Tsar and intent upon mischief against the vulnerable French coastal flank, the squadron heads south-west into the Gulf of Danzig. By now it's June, and the coastal fortresses of Danzig, Konigsberg, Elbing and Pillau are crammed to the gates with French troops and their equipment, building up strength for the attack on Russia.
No possibility for a big ship like HMS Nonsuch to penetrate this lagoon, nor for the smaller sloops, nor even for the bomb-ketches to wreak damage on shipping which was mostly small, steadily moving and distant.
Hornblower decides to us his boats, and after a nighttime reconnaissance of the log boom at the entrance to the Frisches Haff, the raiding force is assembled. The launch and cutter from Nonsuch and the cutters from Lotus and Raven, a 4pdr gun in the launch, and three 3pdr's in the cutters. Each boat packed with marines and seamen, and ample supplies of 'combustibles' for burning the ships taken. The boats pass through the shallows into the lagoon, avoiding the patrolling guard boat in the darkness, and set about their work.
Hornblower aboard his flagship stands in to the boom and makes a feint demonstration attack, while the French reply by rowing out gun-boats to protect the boom. By now, Lt. Vickery in command of the four ship's boats has started to destroy Boney's provision barges.
Chapter 15 of The Commodore takes us with him on a short 2 day voyage which results in the destruction of 11 sail of coasting vessels, 24 barges and a single ship, The Weece Rossof Kolberg, which armed with 4- 6pdr guns made a stiff fight of it, and was taken by boarding. At night, Vickery abandons his four boats and spikes his guns, the raiding party walks across the dunes of the spit, and is picked up safely by the two 'bomb's for hardly any loss.
With the cutter Clam bringing despatches that Bonaparte had invaded Russia, and then immediately despatched for the Thames with the news, Hornblower's force moves to support the Russians in Riga Bay, where Marshal Macdonald with 60, 000 troops is held at the Dvina river in a time consuming and costly siege, en route to St. Petersburg, which he will never reach. Hornblower captures the French chief engineer, in another stiff little boat action, and uses his ships anchored offshore to bombard the French forward trenches at Daugavgriva and captures enemy troop barges in an action intended to outflank the Russian forward fortifications, and once again the Squadron's small boats are in action.
Macdonald's artillery and sappers building a battery at the sea's edge are bombarded by the two bomb ketches, which for the purpose of entering the very shallow waters off the beleaguered city, are 'lightened' by the use of two 'camels', shallow draught barges lashed alongside to lift the keel of the ship between. This develops into a duel between the two little bombs, which destroy the siege battery and a half a dozen batteries of field artillery brought swiftly into action along the marshy shore.
The siege of Riga drifts on to the autumn, and more small boat work comes to the Royal Navy's Baltic Squadron. The British boats convoy a Russian infantry force in a night flank attack on the French positions, and destroy more batteries and stores.
Deserters from Boney's multi-national army begin to appear in the city, starving Spanish troops, and ragged Portuguese. With winter coming, Napoleon withdraws from Moscow and Macdonald's army now ridden with plague, destroys its siege guns and withdraws, leaving the Prussians as rearguard under Yorck. They immediately defect bringing the Baltic Squadron's vigorous campaign to an end. Hornblower does not have to winter his ships in the ice of Riga, where he feared the same fate as the Dutch ships at Amsterdam twenty years before, captured by a cavalry charge across the frozen sea.
From Ushant to Scilly Part 1: Hornblower for Lone Wargamers
- Introduction
The Models
The Scenarios
Map: Action at Straslund
Map: Frisches Haff Raid
Map: Riga: The Siege
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