The USS Constitution's "Great Chase"

Here a link to the Constitution museum's story about how the Constitution escaped from a British squadron:

https://ussconstitutionmuseum.org/ma...tish-squadron/

ALSO here is this week's installment of Historian at Home video on the subject of teamwork onboard Old Ironsides:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L10F9EWu5Lc

BTW -- at about the 10:30 mark of the video showing sail being set you will see a tall monument in the background -- this is the Battle of Bunker Hill monument on Breed's Hill (where the battle actually took place).

Thanks Bill. I will hit those as soon as I get a quiet half hour.
Rob.

Thank you for sharing those with us, Bill.

Escaping the British squadron must have been pretty Kedge to Captain Hull. In fact you could say he left them hull down, although I could not possibly say that of course Bill.
Also thanks for pointing out the Breed's Hill Monument. We actually did that battle at Sheffield Triples many moons ago, and I still have a good number of the game boards at home in storage, plus the Brick Kilns and the wall on the beach, so pointing out that particular feature was very poignant to me.
Rob.

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Originally Posted by Bligh

Escaping the British squadron must have been pretty Kedge to Captain Hull. In fact you could say he left them hull down, although I could not possibly say that of course Bill.
Also thanks for pointing out the Breed's Hill Monument. We actually did that battle at Sheffield Triples many moons ago, and I still have a good number of the game boards at home in storage, plus the Brick Kilns and the wall on the beach, so pointing out that particular feature was very poignant to me.
Rob.

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I'd say you took a couple of ranging shots with those puns, Rob......I too have gamed the Bunker Hill Battle -- it is a real slog for the British troops. I've always wondered why in the actual fight the Royal Navy wasn't used to engage the works while the assaulting troops were rowed around to the neck of the peninsula cutting off the Rebels retreat route, and enabling an assault from the rear on the works. I know hind sight is 20/20, but it seems so obvious to me -- I wonder why it wasn't obvious to the British high command?

As I understood it the Royal Navy were having trouble with the ties and allowed the ships to drift too far down to be able to work back up again. Cutting off reinforcements across the neck would be what any sensible wargamer would do. I finally took the Redoubt from the Charlestown side with my Marines, but at great cost. The LI never got anywhere along the beach at all, and as for my frontal attacks best not mentioned. Captain Kiwi and our friend Matthew as the Americans gave me a very good drubbing until the final breakthrough late in the afternoon, and then just retreated to the neck more or less intact. They even got off one of the field pieces from the redoubt.
Rob.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Bligh

As I understood it the Royal Navy were having trouble with the ties and allowed the ships to drift too far down to be able to work back up again. Cutting off reinforcements across the neck would be what any sensible wargamer would do. I finally took the Redoubt from the Charlestown side with my Marines, but at great cost. The LI never got anywhere along the beach at all, and as for my frontal attacks best not mentioned. Captain Kiwi and our friend Matthew as the Americans gave me a very good drubbing until the final breakthrough late in the afternoon, and then just retreated to the neck more or less intact. They even got off one of the field pieces from the redoubt.
Rob.

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My experience was about the same -- the Light Infantry on the beach were stymied and the multiple frontal attacks were brutal for the entire game until one finally broke through -- although the Rebels did fight a somewhat orderly retreat across the neck. This was the first game in a two year campaign game I played in several decades ago at The Compleat Strategist in New York City. We used the Avalon Hill 1776 game as the grand strategic map and reduced local movement to large hex paper maps done by one of the players from a map book compendium of maps from the period. I played on the British side and while we won most of the tactical battles, the strategic situation was impossible for the British to solve -- just too much land and too few troops.
Bill

PS -- We fought the AWI battles in 25mm -- at the conclusion of this campaign game we did a one year long campaign game using the board game Napoleon at Bay as the strategic map and fought the tactical battles in 15mm -- both campaigns were great fun!

We used the Redcoat Campaign game. The BicentenniaL Wargame by Scotty Bowden and the Campaign rules by Scott Berschig. I still have them in a case under my bed.
Rob.