Turning into & away from the wind (and tweak suggestion)

[DeRuyter]

Ken:

First of all great quote. It highlights the difficulty sailing to windward in a square rigged ship, which of course is why shipping routes developed the way they did, ie; following the trade winds and so forth.

However there is a distinction between maneuvering a warship in battle and having to sail to a windward destination (port). While you would need more crew at their sail (maneuvering) stations, I can tell you from having tacked in square rigged ships that it would not take your whole crew. Which goes more to firing guns or doing other actions whilst tacking. As your quote does note what makes windward performance tricky is a combination of the state of the wind, water and rig, and crew experience. The disadvantages of being in the leeward position was not necessarily a function of the inability of a ship to perform the maneuver; rather you won't be able to return fire whilst working to close the distance. I think there are examples of ships having to beat to windward, especially in single ship actions.

What strikes me most about the OP experiment comes down to the sailing angles IMO. The ships in SGN are able to sail too close to the wind (I know this topic has come up here before). My solution would be to increase the "red" zone on the ship cards, which would make it harder to come across the wind in one or even 2 turns. I would also agree that a ship should have to build up speed after a tack. I use the backing sails line for ships that have collided the prior turn for similar effect.

The bottom line for SGN as Ed noted is the nature of the game. Too many additions and it is no longer a beer and pretzels style game.

[Kentop]

Ken:

I can tell you from having tacked in square rigged ships that it would not take your whole crew.

Moving all sails on all masts nearly simultaneously doesn't take the whole crew? I can't even imagine how you could do it without letting one entire side of running rigging let fly while hauling the entire other side in any kind of wind at all! I would think that you would need everyone available to accomplish that. Fighting ships didn't have people laying around whose only job was to man the guns. Everyone had double and triple duties to perform. For moving all the masts, you would need an officer for each mast and someone in charge of each gang hauling on the ropes and/or letting the opposite side ropes go. There were no winches for sails in those days. You had pulleys and/or belaying pins, and there were a hundred belaying pins, almost all of which had to be adjusted when swinging a yard with an open sail through 40 degrees. On the HMS Victory at Trafalgar, even the Marines were required to man the sails, and it had three decks of guns!