The Plan Taking Shape

A rather attractive poster that Mr Fox found online. He kindly sent me a digital version of this and guess what I found on it?

The Turkish ironclad Messudieh - sister ship to HMS Superb, both of which will be featuring in the Anglo-Turkish War of 1880

Work on 24 of the 16 models I am building for the Anglo-Turkish War of 1880 continues, albeit at a rather leisurely pace. The Turkish lower hulls are complete whilst the RN are awaiting the white boot strapping - this is not difficult but it is fiddly and time consuming and one really needs to be at the top their game when doing it. I am not quite there yet as the chesty/throaty thing lingers on although not as bad as last week. In any event, I am waiting on Warbases for some bits and pieces for the RN models - well, five of them - so the Turks will probably be finished first.

The battle report that will feature in Developing the Portable Ironclads Wargame now has a pair of commanders for the opposing sides. Messrs Fox and Huband will be commanding the Royal Navy and that of the Sublime Porte respectively - for which I am hugely grateful as it means I can concentrate on making sure everything runs smoothly and that the all important after action report is as accurate as possible. I am more confident of the latter than the former though!

The battle will consist of both sides having around 8 ships each and so this will the largest game undertaken using the rules. It will also be fought on a square grid rather than hexagonal.

Each commander will be able to choose eight ships for their respective fleets with the umpire being able to swap out one or two of them, to add a little variety to the set up. I am thinking of running a smaller game beforehand just so Messrs Fox and Huband can get a handle on the rules - in my experience there is no substitute for actually moving the models about rather than relying solely on the written word so to speak.

Anyways, the ships available to either side are as follows:

Royal Navy

HMS Monarch

HMS Devastation

HMS Superb

HMS Hercules

HMS Agincourt

HMS Minotaur

HMS Audacious

HMS Invincible

HMS Swiftsure

HMS Triumph

HMS Belleisle

HMS Orion

Of the ships above the first two are turret ships whilst the final pair are coastal defence rams. HMS Superb, HMS Belleisle and HMS Orion were originally intended for Turkey but were purchased as a result of the potential war with Russia arising from the Russo-Turkish War of 1877/78. 

Turkey

Mesudiye

Osmaniye

Mahmudiye

Assar-i Tevfik

Assar-i Sevket

Necm-i Sevket

Luft-u Celil

Hifz-ur Rahman

Avnillah

Muin-i Zafer

Feth-i Bulend

Mukaddeme-i Hayir

Mesudiye is the sister ship of HMS Superb and was eventually sunk during the Great War. The two ships were the largest broadside battery ironclads built and whilst both were equipped with a full sailing rig neither were ‘sailed’ as such. Apparently HMS Superb was so unmanageable under sail that she never had a sailing manual produced for her! I noticed that the Turkish navy reduced the sailing rig on their ironclads pretty quickly - I have no information as to why but suspect that perhaps manpower may have been a factor. 

There is an interesting mix of types in both fleets and so the resulting action should be a lot of fun in an anarchic kind of way. As ever, victory will go to whoever makes the best use of what they have to hand, along with the occasional smile from Dame Fortune. 

Once again, my thanks to Neil Fox and Nick Huband - I only hope they know what they have let themselves in for!