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This is Topic: Naval
Following are the News Items published under this Topic.
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Naval: Busk's Navies of the World - 1859 - Britain
Posted by: Angus McLellan on Friday, May 07, 2004 - 07:35 PM
Naval
| | Hans Busk wrote a book entitled "Navies of the World" in 1859. This book was reprinted twice, in the 1950's and as a facsimile of the original in 1974. It provides possibly one of the best discussions and descriptions of early modern navies, covering as it does the navies in transition from the wooden wall, the ship of the line with a number of broadside cannons to the turreted vessels of the 20th Century. Angus McLellan has provided a summary of the contents of the book and this summary is presented across a number of parts. Note that the Downloads Section of Thomo's Hole has ALL the parts combined into a single PDF file.
Due to the size of the piece on Britain, it has been included as a separate HTML page. Click on the link here and the article will open in a separate window. Note that the page is 120K in size so will take 30 seconds to load on a quickish connection, so will take a bit longer on a 56K modem connection or slower. The British Navy in 1859.
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Naval: Busk's Navies of the World - 1859 - the Americas and Asia
Posted by: Angus McLellan on Saturday, May 01, 2004 - 12:02 AM
Naval
| | Hans Busk wrote a book entitled "Navies of the World" in 1859. This book was reprinted twice, in the 1950's and as a facsimile of the original in 1974. It provides possibly one of the best discussions and descriptions of early modern navies, covering as it does the navies in transition from the wooden wall, the ship of the line with a number of broadside cannons to the turreted vessels of the 20th Century. Angus McLellan has provided a summary of the contents of the book and this summary is presented across a number of parts. Note that the Downloads Section of Thomo's Hole has ALL the parts combined into a single PDF file.
This fourth part then deals with the Navies of the Americas and Asia circa 1859. Angus notes that originally he thought this would just be the Americas, but there are
two navies in Asia as well.
Hans Busk's "Navies of the World" was based on the world naval situation in 1859, or on those parts of it that Busk thought would help his case for an even bigger Royal Navy, official support for the volunteer movement and an enlarged Militia. The first two did happen, but it's unlikely that Busk deserves blame or credit for this turn of events.
If there are any obvious errors, or things that don't make any sense, please
don't hesitate to ask or to let me know
and I'll pass your comments and questions on to Angus.
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Naval: Busk's Navies of the World - 1859 - Northern Europe
Posted by: Angus McLellan on Thursday, April 29, 2004 - 07:05 AM
Naval
| | Hans Busk wrote a book entitled "Navies of the World" in 1859. This book was reprinted twice, in the 1950's and as a facsimile of the original in 1974. It provides possibly one of the best discussions and descriptions of early modern navies, covering as it does the navies in transition from the wooden wall, the ship of the line with a number of broadside cannons to the turreted vessels of the 20th Century. Angus McLellan has provided a summary of the contents of the book and this summary is presented across a number of parts. Note that the Downloads Section of Thomo's Hole has ALL the parts combined into a single PDF file.
This third part then deals with the Navies of Norther Europe circa 1859.
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Naval: Busk's Navies of the World - 1859 - Southern Europe
Posted by: AngusMcLellan on Sunday, April 25, 2004 - 01:09 AM
Naval
| Hans Busk wrote a book entitled "Navies of the World" in 1859. This
book was reprinted twice, in the 1950's and as a facsimile of the original in
1974. It provides possibly one of the best discussions and descriptions of early
modern navies, covering as it does the navies in transition from the wooden
wall, the ship of the line with a number of broadside cannons to the turreted
vessels of the 20th Century. Angus McLellan has provided a summary of the contents
of the book and this summary is presented across a number of parts. Note that
the Downloads Section of Thomo's Hole has ALL the parts combined into a single
PDF file.
This second part then deals with the Navies of Southern Europe circa 1859.
Hans Busk's "Navies of the World" was based on the world naval situation in 1859, or on those parts of it that Busk thought would help his case for an even bigger Royal Navy, official support for the volunteer movement and an enlarged Militia. The first two did happen, but it's unlikely that Busk deserves blame or credit for this turn of events.
If there are any obvious errors, or things that don't make any sense, please don't hesitate to ask or to let me know and I'll pass your comments and questions on to Angus.
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Naval: Busk's Navies of the World - 1859 - The French
Posted by: AngusMcLellan on Saturday, April 24, 2004 - 11:46 PM
Naval
| | Hans Busk wrote a book entitled "Navies of the World" in 1859. This book was reprinted twice, in the 1950's and as a facsimile of the original in 1974. It provides possibly one of the best discussions and descriptions of early modern navies, covering as it does the navies in transition from the wooden wall, the ship of the line with a number of broadside cannons to the turreted vessels of the 20th Century. Angus McLellan has provided a summary of the contents of the book and this summary is presented across a number of parts. Note that the Downloads Section of Thomo's Hole has ALL the parts combined into a single PDF file. Due to the size of the piece on the French, it has been included on a separate HTML page. Click on the link here and the article will open in a separate window. Note that the page is 79K in size so will take 22 seconds to load on a quickish connection, so will take a bit longer on a 56K modem connection or slower. The French Navy in 1859.
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Naval: Naval Campaigns and Battles - World War II - to May 1941
Posted by: ThomoTheLost on Wednesday, August 13, 2003 - 08:41 AM
Naval
| | One of the joys of Naval Wargaming the Second World War Period is the number of different battles and campaigns that are available to be played. These vary from large carrier actions in the Pacific between, principally, the US and Japanese Fleets, Atlantic actions based around the Royal Navy attempting to track down and eliminate German Raiders, to the Mediterranean Sea with French, British (including Commonwealth) and Italian ships squaring off against each other to the Indian Ocean with Japanese vessels squaring off against the Royal Navy. These Battles may be large affairs with many vessels and aircraft on each side (such as the Battle of Midway); medium sized actions where the hunter becomes the hunted, and then becomes the hunter again, such as the Battle of Matapan in the Mediterranean; or small actions such as the hunt for the Graf Spee and the Battle of the River Plate, involving four ships.
I will admit that some of the ship collections I have are the result of purchasing a battle pack from Navwar (Philippines Sea and Matapan are two of these). Others are the result of collecting the ships necessary for the smaller actions.
The smaller actions will be detailed in separate little articles like this. They are likely to be in no particular order at the moment. The ship lists will refer to the vessels that were there, or that could conceivably have got there in time for the battle. At some point in the future I'll work out how to put up naval maps and maybe include those - changing the structure of this to an article per battle. This is will probably end up doing anyway, sort of a scenario article, as I will include technical details of the vessels involved as well as their General Quarters definition. These articles will probably be published as a PDF file and sit in the downloads section of Thomo's Hole. Check in there from time to time.
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Naval: HMAS Vendetta is Towed from Singapore
Posted by: ThomoTheLost on Saturday, August 09, 2003 - 08:42 AM
Naval
| It was on the General Quarters email news list that a question was asked about Towing naval vessels and the repair times for capital ships. The question posed was:
"Oh, an interesting question--how often does it happen that a ship's engines are completely out but the ship can still float and the ship is towed back to base over a considerable distance?
Where it's relevant in my scenario is determining the feasibility of towing a crippled ship to a better port."
My answer to that was the example of HMAS Vendetta at Singapore harbour in World War II and it follows.
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Naval: The Scrap Iron Flotilla
Posted by: ThomoTheLost on Saturday, August 09, 2003 - 08:27 AM
Naval
| At the commencement of World War II, Australia supported Great Britain and was at war with Germany and Italy (later with Japan). The initial support provided by Australia to Great Britain was provided by the Royal Australian Navy. On receipt of the signal by telegram, "Total Germany repeat total Germany", the Australian Navy knew that is was at war in support of Britain against Germany. The signal was received on Sunday, 3 September 1939 and 9:50 p.m. This started the mobilisation of the Australian Navy reservists and the conversion of civilian vessels to wartime use. Within a month of the signal being received, three armed merchant cruisers were in commission and Australia's only destroyers had left Australian waters heading for the Mediterranean Sea.
In particular, five old World War I vintage destroyers were sent to the Mediterranean. The destroyers were HMAS Stuart (a Scott Class destroyer leader) and four V&W class destroyers, HMAS' Vendetta, Vampire, Voyager and Waterhen. This flotilla had been described by the German propoganda minister, Goebbels, as the "scrap iron flotilla" because of the age of the vessels. It is true, they were old ships, built at the end of the First World War, but they proved to be tough in action and have a very distinguished battle history. Later, Admiral Sir Andrew Cunningham commented: "Nobody will appreciate the 'scrap' better than the officers and men of the Australian destroyers." [For non English as a first language speakers, 'scrap' is also slang, especially in the 1940's, for a fight or brawl].
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Wargames: Naval: Russian Japanese War of 1904-1905
Posted by: ThomoTheLost on Thursday, July 31, 2003 - 11:37 AM
Naval
| One of my other major enjoyments in wargaming is the age of the pre-Dreadnought battleships. In particular, the Russian Japanese War of 1904-1905. It was this war that caused some consternation amongst the European nations as the Japanese Navy systematically defeated the Russian Navy of the time. In fact, what made the feat even more remarkable was that at the time, the Russian Navy was considered to be the second most powerful navy in the world, behind the British Navy.
The rules I am using for this are the General Quarters rules, published some 20 years ago. These rules are still reasonably popular, even after such a time, as a similar, simple mechanism for resolving Naval combat have not been written. The rules are designed for naval warfare from about 1900 through to the end of the Second World War, although they do concentrate on the First World War and the Second World War to a large extent. There is a website devoted to those General Quarters Rules as well as a site that has a lot of information about Small Navies (naval wargaming). Both link off to a number of other sites. There is a Naval Wargaming page as well.
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Wargames: Naval Wargames and History
Posted by: ThomoTheLost on Wednesday, April 09, 2003 - 05:18 AM
Naval
| I really love Naval Wargaming. It is probably my favourite era to paint miniatures in and my second favourite to play in. In one of my by now famous quotes, I recall talking to my friend Wally in Australia about naval wargaming, and noted how much I enjoyed playing with ships that sail and how good my abilities were when using them. Wallace noted that he rather preferred triple expansion engines and large guns. Since that time, I have never won a sail based wargame against him and he has never won anything with gunpowder weapons and screw driven vessels. Ah, such is life. Enough of this however. As I mentioned, I really love naval wargaming. I love it in all periods of history, from very ancient up to World War II. Particular favourites are the Russian Japanese War of 1904-5 and the ironclads of the American Civil War.
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