AAR the treasure galleon (Ducky)

Hi to all,

When returned from vacation this week I played the july scenario, bit late....

I used for the AI Spanish treasure galleon; the HMS defence model with its stats.

I used my own captains:

Capt. Zeegers; the courageuse model with its stats... No ability
Capt. Huys; the le succes model with its stats.... Reloading captain ability


The pictures will follow this weekend with a proper AAR.

But in short...

After a few turns Capt. Zeegers blocked the movement of the Spanish galleon and the next turn Capt. Huys joined in and the battle was fought in a relentless mêlee ...

With result of capturing the Spanish ship almost intact after a lot of musket fire and was ended when Capt. Huys decided to board the enemy ship.

Both Dutch captains could return to port without injuries.

The tactic of closing in on the enemy and to keep them under constant musket fire seemed to turn out pretty good.
Otherwise at least one of the Dutch frigates would have sunk....

Cheers,

Thijs (Ducky)

Congrats on your victory!

We got our orders from our Admiral to intercept a Spanish ship named "Buque de Plata" and to retreive its cargo before it got to its destination port or another navy would got the chance to intercept the ship.

We understood from our orders that there should be a lot of currency aboard so we got strict orders not to sink the ship.
We knew the port it was leaving from; and the port its destination port; so we decided it was best to sail to its likely route and wait for the ship, hoping it wouldnt have some escorting ships with it to protect their precious cargo....

We almost lost hope of intercepting the ship as suddenly it got into our sights!

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We quickly gave orders to raise the sails and we headed toward the Spanish ship.
Surpisingly she didn't have any escorting ships as far as we could see; nonetheless we were very cautious...

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When we came closer to the Spanish ship we couldn't see any hostile activity whatsoever so we hoped we could get the first surprise with our cannons.
Capt. Zeegers sailed toward the ship and Capt. Huys would follow in shortly so he could anticipate on the things that would come...

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The Spanjards were well out of range of our cannons so we had to close in!

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Since we were still out of range of the Spanish cannons, Capt. Zeegers decided to close in further to be able to give the Spanjards a good first blow.
Capt. Huys was still to far from the enemy ship to do anything and was tacking with his ship in the wind struggling to get closer; but with his wellknown tactics to give the enemy heavy cannonfire when they would make contact he surely would be instructing his crew on the decks to make sure they could do a quick reload when the mayhem would start...

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But the Spanjards surely knew what was happing responded with a surprise shot from their bow cannons!
Capt. Zeegers hadn't seen that one coming and was overwhelmed by the sudden mayhem on board of his ship!!!

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Capt. Huys managed to turn his ship and sail towards the ship of Capt. Zeegers to aid him.
Capt. Zeegers yelled at his crew to stay with their the cannons and replace the casualties with the guncrews and to be ready to return fire to the Spanjards.
He had to make a sharp turn to get a good return volley of his cannons!

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Surpisingly the Spanjards were very agressive and were able to follow his turn so they were right behind him and very closeby!
Capt Zeegers ordered his crew to fire the stern cannons to keep the Spanjards at distance... but the Spanjards were so close they were giving it all they had with their muskets!
The deck was hellish with als the lead bullets flying around and his crew took some heavy casualties; but the men weren't stupid and returned fire with their muskets aswell...

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Capt. Zeegers had to come up with a backup plan to get some grip on the situation.... we he saw that Capt. Huys was closeby and could come to his aid.
In the mayhem he disregarded the wind so the ship slowed down with the Spanjards closing in! He hoped Capt. Huys would be bold enough to join in the mayhem, so if they were lucky the could box in the Spanjards a could give them all they got.

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Capt. Zeegers told his men to hold fast because contact between the ships would be made and they could expect a new volley of Spanish cannonballs soon as he could see the Spanish crews working like mad at their cannons.

But Capt. Huys also managed to join the mayhem and was able to fire his cannons at the Spanjards and due to his preparations he knew his men would be able to give them a quick following shot aswell!

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And mayhem it was, with all the woodsplinters, cannonballs and musketbullets flying around it seemed Capt. Huys had been able to box in the Spanjards.
Now it had to be fought out at close range... we knew that would be the situation where we would have a greater chance to take over the enemy ship without sinking it and get our hands on its precious cargo.

Both our ships were able to give the Spanjards another volley of our cannons and muskets.

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We made preparations to enter the Spanish ship and both our crew were ready for boarding.
But the Spanjards were able to remove the hooks and ropes that were coming from Capt. Zeegers ship;
The crew of Capt. Huys managed to get some hold with their entering hooks....

Almost helpless the Spanjards gave us another volley from their cannons but this could stop us.

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The crew of Capt. Huys's ship boarded the enemy ship and took out the last resistance from the Spanjards. We were also able to capture the enemy Captain and he was taken to our ships while we examined the enemy ship.

The enemy ship was riddled with dead crew but was in surprisingly good condition. We then realised that lady fortuna was on our side because if it would have come to a longe range firefight we would have lost one of our own ships....

We took the ship and its cargo back to homeport and the admiral was very pleased!

He had lost none of his own ships, get hands on the precious cargo and even had a ship in its port that after some repairs could be used for further use in the Dutch navy!!!

Capt. Zeegers (uninjured) returned to port with a completed mission.
Capt Huys (uninjured) returned to port with a completed mission and a captured enemy ship.

Hope you all liked the AAR ;)

Cheers,

Thijs (Ducky)

Nice follow up with the excellent photos and battle description. Thanks!! :thumbsup:

Total victory in 7 turns. Impressive :thumbsup:

Well done the Dutch Squadron Thijs.
Carried out with the elan of the famous Dutch Admirals. Shades of Admiral De Ruyter or Maarten van Tromp.
Rob.