An Affair in Morocco. Part five. “A wolf in wolf’s clothing.”

[Bligh]

Characters introduced into the story thus far.
Algerine and Moroccan Persona.

The Dey of Gizzanoffa: Kamel Mudanyaei.
His Vizier: Amin Giffar.
The Dey’s: Admiral Kulin Bey.
The late Captain of the Al Mukabir: Camel Mujadine
The new Captain of the Al Mukabir: Rashid Suleiman

American persona.
The Squadron commander: Commodore Silas Goldberg.
The captain of USS Constitution: David Frazer.
The captain of USS Essex: Andrew Millington.
First Officer: Paul Swift.
Sailing Master: Hezekiah Bramley.
Essex’s Captain of Marines: Davy Weiss.
Essex’s Master Gunner: Hamish Fyffe.
Essex’s Master Carpenter: Amos Grady

The captain of USS Syren: Lieutenant Gregory Hardman.
Lieutenant Guy Falconer.
Sailing Master: Simeon Prentice.
The Captain of USS John Adams: Cyrus Gregory
John Adam’ First Officer: James Stone.
John Adams’ Gun Captain: Will Bridewell.

Captain of the USS Schooner Enterprise: Lieutenant Andrew Sterett.
New Persona introduced for “A Wolf in wolf’s clothing”.
Captain of an unknown Algerine ship: Mustapha Kamil.
Sterett’s second ic: Lt. Jim Prentiss.
Ships Master: George Varley.
Master Gunner: Jim Cowley.
Ship’s carpenter: George Temple.

Schooner: Captain Richard Glover (nicknamed Iron fist amongst the hands.)
His ships Master Gunner : Ralph Watson.(“ Old deaf head” to his mates.)

[Bligh]

The damage to Enterprise had been horrific and it was incredible that more of her crew had not perished in the action with the Alsaqr.

[Bligh]

By working all night the ships Carpenter George Temple and his team assisted by the rest of the crew had a last plugged all the shot holes after a fashion and managed to jury rig the ship to the extent that she could at least claw her way off the shoal ridden coast and make some headway out to sea.

The result was that she could make headway but only had some very limited firepower.

[Bligh]

It was mid afternoon by the time Enterprise had sufficient sea room to attempt to weather the largest of the outlying headlands, and it was at this point the lookout in the top of what passed for the mainmast reported a sail to the east.

[Bligh]

Captain Sterett. immediately joined him in the tops and brought his telescope to bear on the newcomer. As he focussed his lens, his worst fears were realized.

[Bligh]

It looked like another Polacca of the type that he had encountered the day previous, only this time Enterprise was in an even worse position to defend herself. Even though she had a favourable wind.



Very few of her guns had been remounted, and the Jury rig would not enable her to outrun the enemy much less manoeuvre against her. It looked like an impossible task to do anything save sell their lives as dearly as possible against an enemy who did not know the meaning of the word mercy.

[Bligh]

As she attempted to escape the enemy drew inexorably nearer until it was able to try a long range shot with its bow chaser.

[Diamondback]

Truly a case of "The Kindness of Strangers"... :)

[TexaS]

Nice AAR, Rob, but a lot of pictures does not show.

[Bligh]

That is really strange Jonas. When I clickwed on them just now only about a third of each picture was showing up as if they were loading slowly only they were not! I had reduced them on Photoshop so I know they were not too larg in MB for the site to handle. I clicked off and then back on and they were all complete? I will log off and back on and see what happens.

Rob.

[Bligh]

It has done it again. I shall have to look into this.
Rob.

[Bligh]

Tried it five times approaching it from different settings and it has not malfunctioned once.
I will monitor it from time to time. Let me know if you can now see it.

Rob.

[Bligh]

My techi reports that it is most likely to be due to congestion on the hosting server.

Rob.

[TexaS]

Yes, now they show!

Great!

[Bligh]

Glad to hear that Jonas. These things can sometimes take ages to sort out.
Rob.

[Capn Duff]

Nice action there Rob, with nice converted models.

[Bligh]

Thanks Chris.
I will be using some of the American ships for my game at Doncaster.

Rob.

[Vagabond]

Another exciting game Rob, and a nice twist in the story.

After her previous encounter Enterprise had all her hull boxes full, they carried out repairs and then had 3 free or alternativly 50% free.

I've got a similar situation in my campaign, a frigate has had a fight with a pair of sloops who were guarding a convoy of 6 ships. She defeated and captured the sloops and the convoy ran for it. She is now in hot pursuit knotting and splicing as she chases after the convoy. Using the game rules as I understand them she can repair 1 box of damage during an action.

As the chase will last a couple of hours before she catches the rear ships in the convoy I was going to allow additional repairs to be carried out. I wondered what your rational was with the Enterprise?

I'd also be interested in your thoughts on merchant ships striking when attacked by a frigate. The convoy is mainly normal mercgant men, all armed but poorly, however the Infanta of Spain is being carried in one large armed merchant ship and her Dowery is in another smaller ship. I had just intended to roll a dice when the individual merchant ships were caught. Do you have any specific rules to cover such a situation?

Cheers

[Bligh]

Could you see all the pictures O.K. John?
I have just had to click the edit button to get them all up again.

I just decided what would be a reasonable amount of boxes restored to give her a fighting chance. The other ship which turned out to be British thank goodness could have been any Nationality according to the card draw. I was hoping for an American, but anything other than French, Pirates or Moroccan would have done.

As for Merchantmen I decide on the circumstances. Usually they just hove to, but in the case of Muslim ships, would fight until overcome knowing that they would either be butchered or sold into slavery, so the Med is a bit of a different case. As for the Spanish, I would think that their dignity would make them at least put up a token resistance.

Rob.

[Diamondback]

Pics were gone. Suggestion, have you ever looked at Imgur? I usually post build photos on my rifles and other projects to private albums there then dole 'em out for sharing.

[Bligh]

Really odd DB.
Now I can see them again!
I have never heard of Imgur.
I will ask my Tec support about it thanks.
Rob.

[Vagabond]

The middle pictures 14 to 24 are still missing, 1 to 13 and 25 onwards are there so I don't think it's my slow internet.

Restoring the boxes - I wondered about restoring 1 box per x number of turns spent carrying out repairs but there must be some limit or amount of stuff that can't be repaired at sea. I'll probably do what you did.

Thanks for the effort you've put into this series of AAR's I'm really enjoying reading them.
Cheers

[Bligh]

Now for me they are all there again today. Yesterday I had some half showing some OK and like you a bunch in the mid section missing?
Rob.

[ShadowDragon]

A good read, Rob. The pictures have all come for me before, but I hadn't got around to reading the AAR. Today I had time and most of the pics are gone - just 2 showed up. A third briefly flashed up and instantly disappeared. Pity.

[Bligh]

Something very wrong with this post.
I have tried to sort it out but sometimes the pictures are half there, sometimes all there and sometimes some are missing totally.
Rob.