Galley Battle: A new age dawns (RAR!)

[Zor]

In this scenario you are an admiral with a fleet of one hundred galleys and a five scout-ships. A few months ago your country went to war with one of it's neighbors, so your fleet was prepared and was sent out to intercept their fleet before it could attack your commerce and secure a benchhead for landing troops. Their fleet is of equal size to yours. Both countries have additional forces both in terms of ships manned and ships held in reserve that are being made ready for war.

Each of your galleys is forty meters long and has two masts with lateen sails (with sails being taken down before battle) and a big bronze ram in front. Each ship has a complement of some 180 rowers rowers, twenty non rowing sailors, ten officers and thirty marines. Naval battles have for all of recorded history been a matter of either ramming the enemy ship, boarding enemy ships or setting them on fire. Each of the rowers and sailors has an second hand helmet and either an axe or a boarding pikes. About one in ten of them also has a basic wooden shield, one in twenty has a second hand sword and one in a hundred decided to bring along one of these newfangled handgonnes. Officers have plumed helmets with neck and cheekguards, breastplates, vambraces, greaves and arming swords. The same goes for your enemies. Marines however differ a bit. Both your marines and the enemy marines have chainmail shirts, breastplates, helmets, bucklers, shortswords and warhammers, but you have an edge. Half of your fleet's marines are armed with Yew longbows and are trained longbowmen. In contrast a third of the enemy's marines have arbalest crossbows. These guys have a lower effective range than your guys do and a much lower rate of fire. It is believed by the men that this would have provided you with a critical advantage. The fleet is divided into four flotillas which are sub-divided into five squadrons of five ships. For fleet communication there is a system in place using flags, some flags have commands and other flags are letters.

The Scoutships are also galleys but are smaller and lighter, having a single mast and a crew of forty rowers, five sailors and an officer with a spyglass. They are lightly built, have no rams and are not intended for direct battle. Their purpose is to scout out enemy formations and to act as couriers.

You believe that the enemy will be in Sharktooth Bay and so you sail south to intercept them. After ten days at sea you arrive. You find them there, but your scout ships discover that they have made an upgrade to some of their galleys. They have reported that they have built wooden battlements on the fronts of about a quarter of their galleys, in which they have put some cannons. Cannons are a fairly new idea that has only come up in the last century and have been used to defend and attack castles. The idea of using cannons on galleys had been discussed by your nation's admiralty, but was declined because of general conservatism, added costs and fears of explosions, either in the cannons themselves or in the powder magazines. Each of the cannon armed ship has one to three cannons firing two to three kilogram shot. The cannons are manned by sailors.

This is the position of your fleet and the enemy fleet. The enemy has not sallied forth from the bay as of yet. Each box has 25 ships in it. Your ships are white, their guys are red. Your command ship is in the the rear of your formation, as is the enemy's.



What do you do?

Zor

[Darth Tanner]

Retreat and wait for them to leave the bay before enveloping them.

Attacking them here gives them the advantage of being able to keep me to their front - where their cannons and superior front armour will be of greater advantage than my ability to engage them piecemeal, their forces being split by the central island - indeed if I overcommit to one side of the island they would be free to commit their reserves to the weaker side and envelop me.

In the open I should have the advantage as they have weighed themselves down with cannon and additional superstructure so enveloping them and attacking on the sides shouldn't be an issue. My attack will also use more flaming arrows in an attempt to detonate their ammo stores.

[LaCroix]

Wait for the next storm?
If they have built forecastles and put cannons there, their seaworthiness would be reduced, which puts them at disadvantage.
At the same time, high seas make their aim imprecise as their ships stomp and roll, and along with the rain will make operating their cannons much harder and more dangerous for themselves.

[Jub]

Assuming that the current position of the white fleet isn't currently under threat, I'll likely split my fleet into two equal halves. The first fleet will lay anchor just slightly north-west of our current position. The other fleet will sail across the mouth of the bay and anchor a safe distance away. I'd leave my scout ships near the mouth of the bay one or two pulled up on shore with men in position to spy the enemy fleet's actions, and the others ready to signal the main fleet if the land based scouts see anything of note. I'm in the better position for the time being, I have access to the sea and resupply while the enemy has stuck himself in a bay. My goal will be to wait them out and hope that rough seas founder some of their now top heavy ships while I take them out of the war by staying at anchor and holding the better position.

If the enemy wants to leave the bay they will either need to wait for a find blowing them down and out to sea or strike sails and row out of the bay. When the wind makes escape to sea favorable I'll make my fleet ready to engage and bring them closer to the bay's entrance to fight the enemy as they attempt a break out. If there isn't such a wind, or a tide strong enough to have the same effect, it they should be slow enough in getting organized and leaving the bay that I should be able to react. My biggest concern in this regard will be them trying something bold like exiting the bay at night with enough stealth an organization that I am unable to stop them from doing so.

If the destruction of the enemy fleet is more important than keeping them out of the war I would rather try a ruse than fighting them in the confines of the bay where my range and maneuverability advantages are nullified. The most likely ruse would be to have my fleet cover the bay's entrance while my marines march overland to attack the enemy fleet at anchor with flaming arrows. If possible I'll plan my attack for a rainy day in hopes that they won't be able to use cannons due to wet powder while my flaming arrows still work.

If I must attack into the bay I will do so under the worst weather my men can effectively fight in. This will make their cannon armed ships much harder to use as they will inevitably have worse sea keeping than a normal ship. In rough seas, I would also expect a single cannon mounted atop a raised platform to be nearly impossible to score a hit with.

Edit: Looks like LaCroix was on the same wavelength as I was.

[Crazedwraith]

I've preface this with noting I am not a naval tactician and the closest I've got is reading Hornblower.

Is that bay friendly territory for them? Are they able to resupply over land? I wouldn't necessarily bet on my ability to be better supplied by sea. I'm also sceptical that early 6 pounder guns are going to do that much damage to my ships. Are those guns mounted as chasers or broad side? How many are there? What are the fleets firing rate with them?

What are those shore my fleets is next to like? Can I land landing parties? Aside from the tactic of trying to lure them into open battle on the seas, which others have suggested and I think is sound. If they refuse to be drawn. My ideas in would go towards landing tactic and cutting out/burning expeditions in the dead of night. Use scout ships or any smaller crafter we have or can acquire. Close at night and capture (less likely with galleys I guess, but if we can raise the sails...) or just set fire the opposing vessels.

If we can land on the shire and hike around to flank them, that also might be advantageous.

[Eternal_Freedom]

Hmm, I'm going to agree with Crazedwraith on the "sneak in and burn them" idea. Waiting to ambush them out in the open sea or attacking in a storm is a reasonable tactic, we have numerical parity with them and some of their ships are better armoured and armed. So, send parties in small boats under cover of darkness to burn as many ships as possible, especially the ones equipped with guns. Even if we only get 20% of the enemy ships burnt in the attack, suddenly we outnumber them by a quarter which is a significant margin.

Of course, after the first night attack they'll try and take measures to prevent another attack, so the next night I'll deploy marine parties with fire arrows to the shore, and continue whittling away at their fleet strength in this manner. Then, when a favourable tide or storm comes along, I can make my dashing assault into the harbour against a severely reduced enemy fleet. And my men haven't been doing nothing for days, they've been beating the enemy, which will boost their morale.

[Simon_Jester]

Now, before we start subordinating strategy to tactics, let's try and remember what the mission was.

Remember, my mission was "stop them from attacking our commerce or creating a military beachhead." As long as they're penned up in this bay, they're not attacking our commerce, and the only military beachhead they can create is inside this bay, where I can fairly easily cut off any attempt to reinforce the beachhead by sea. So I can probably afford to just let them sit there for a while.

As noted, it matters if this bay is in friendly or enemy territory. Since their fleet is apparently on the strategic offensive, I'm guessing "no." In which case they can't resupply overland very well, and will need to detach large shore parties to make their anchorage secure from attack from the landward side.

[Otherwise I'm in the awkward position of having to reenact the Battle of Salamis... as the Persians.]

As is often the case, Zor left out an important piece of information, namely... the strength of the enemy fleet! Determining this will be a priority before I settle on any other course of action.

I will observe that even light cannons are powerful enough to penetrate a lightly built galley, and pose a legitimate threat to my ships.

[Zor]

Is that bay friendly territory for them? Are they able to resupply over land? I wouldn't necessarily bet on my ability to be better supplied by sea.

The bay is technically in neutral territory between your two kingdoms, belonging to a small independent principality who has been persuaded to turn a blind eye to the enemy fleet laying anchor in the area on the grounds of "we don't want any trouble from your big huge fleet twelve times the size of ours". There is a small fishing village inland which has been selling fish and bread to them, they also have a few supply unarmed supply ships loaded with biscuits and salt beef.

Are those guns mounted as chasers or broad side? How many are there? What are the fleets firing rate with them?

The cannon armed galleys have forward chase cannons. There are 100 enemy galleys (equal to your galley force in terms of hulls and sailors), 25 of them have cannons with two cannons per ship on average. Some have three, others have just one.

Zor

[LaCroix]

I highly doubt that fire arrows will be working from shore - the distance should be ~1km to the fleet, which is too long. The most you could hope to achieve would be like 300m, under optimal conditions, best equipment and highly trained troops. Rowing over to shoot at the boats would be suicidal, too, I'd never expect any of these raiders to return.

[Jub]

Arrows from shore would work fine at night when the enemy has his galleys pulled up on the beaches or anchored much nearer to the shore. If I recall correctly galleys tended to pull up to the shore at night so their crews could sleep on the beach.

[Purple]

Why not strike at them at night than? Pick a moonless night and just sail your fleet into the port whilst they are sleeping. Even if they can mobilize fully to fight you their ships will be too close to the coast to properly maneuver and target you with cannon until you are upon them.

Also, we should be researching diplomatic options with the locals to see if they would help with this assault in exchange for protection from further bullying.

[Sinewmire]

I would blockade them long enough for their sentries to get bored, then sneak in one night with ship's boats and a raiding crew and cut out their pickets (assuming they've made some attempts to block the twin entrances to the bay) and sacrifice a few vessels to send is as fireships.

This is assuming their numbers are reasonably similar or superior to mine.

[fgalkin]

This seems fairly straightforward. You can't fight them on their turf, and you can't outlast them (people talk about supply in the enemy fleet- what about YOUR fleet?)

So....wait until the wind and tide are in your favor, then send in a dozen fireships. Try to grapple with the forecastles, or if they try to turn, ram them amidships. The burning wrecks will be pushed further into the harbor, forcing the enemy to lift anchor and flee outside, where the rest of your fleet will be waiting for them

Have a very nice day.
-fgalkin

[fgalkin]

To add to the above, split the rest of your fleet in two, and position the two parts to the side of and just beyond the entrances to the harbor, so they are ready to take any enemy ship leaving the harbor in the vulnerable side, while neutralizing their firepower advantage (since they apparently can only shoot forward). If you do it at night, the enemy ships will be backlit by the burning fleet behind them, making them easier targets, while your ships will be concealed by darkness until they engage.

Your marines will have an advantage in the melee, so try to take the enemy ships as prizes to make up for the ships that were sacrificed.

Have a very nice day.
-fgalkin

[Simon_Jester]

Is that bay friendly territory for them? Are they able to resupply over land? I wouldn't necessarily bet on my ability to be better supplied by sea.

The bay is technically in neutral territory between your two kingdoms, belonging to a small independent principality who has been persuaded to turn a blind eye to the enemy fleet laying anchor in the area on the grounds of "we don't want any trouble from your big huge fleet twelve times the size of ours". There is a small fishing village inland which has been selling fish and bread to them, they also have a few supply unarmed supply ships loaded with biscuits and salt beef.

So in essence, while they have a supply of food and maybe limited supplies of things like timber and cordage to repair damage, they don't have a strong supply chain. That fishing village almost certainly does not have the supplies to feed ten or twenty thousand men for any great length of time.

In the short term, it would seem feasible to besiege the enemy in the harbor and attack them when they try to sortie. In the long run, as fgalkin notes, it can't last... but since we control the entrance to the harbor mouth, we COULD intercept their supply ships if we had reasonable assurance of supply ships of our own.

The cannon armed galleys have forward chase cannons. There are 100 enemy galleys (equal to your galley force in terms of hulls and sailors), 25 of them have cannons with two cannons per ship on average. Some have three, others have just one.

Zor

Ah, so the enemy fleet has roughly the same number of ships and men as me. Thank you for that very important information you entirely forgot to share before.

Arrows from shore would work fine at night when the enemy has his galleys pulled up on the beaches or anchored much nearer to the shore. If I recall correctly galleys tended to pull up to the shore at night so their crews could sleep on the beach.

True, but by the same token, at night the galley crews form an armed camp of ten or twenty thousand men, who presumably post sentries. And if this settles into a multi-day affair, they might start fortifying their camp.

I mean heck, properly defending your camp so the enemy can't sneak up on your galleys and set them on fire is such an old trick it predates the book; the Iliad started out as an oral tradition before the advent of Western literature.

Why not strike at them at night than? Pick a moonless night and just sail your fleet into the port whilst they are sleeping. Even if they can mobilize fully to fight you their ships will be too close to the coast to properly maneuver and target you with cannon until you are upon them.

Because your ships might well run into random rocks and shoals in the harbor entry in the dark?

This seems fairly straightforward. You can't fight them on their turf, and you can't outlast them (people talk about supply in the enemy fleet- what about YOUR fleet?)

So....wait until the wind and tide are in your favor, then send in a dozen fireships. Try to grapple with the forecastles, or if they try to turn, ram them amidships. The burning wrecks will be pushed further into the harbor, forcing the enemy to lift anchor and flee outside, where the rest of your fleet will be waiting for them

If the geometry permits fire ships that would be a good idea. Ideally you want sail-powered fireships... can we get ahold of some big sailing merchantmen to go with the galleys?

[fgalkin]

Ah, so the enemy fleet has roughly the same number of ships and men as me. Thank you for that very important information you entirely forgot to share before.

Uh.....he totally does

Their fleet is of equal size to yours.

and

They have reported that they have built wooden battlements on the fronts of about a quarter of their galleys, in which they have put some cannons

This seems fairly straightforward. You can't fight them on their turf, and you can't outlast them (people talk about supply in the enemy fleet- what about YOUR fleet?)

If the geometry permits fire ships that would be a good idea. Ideally you want sail-powered fireships... can we get ahold of some big sailing merchantmen to go with the galleys?

Definitely not- merchantmen of that era were very difficult to maneuver, any galley would run circles around them. Fortunately, the galleys have sails (another thing you seem to have missed). I would use the useless "scout" ships, assuming they actually catch up with the fleet by the time the battle starts, plus the oldest and most fragile of the galleys.

Have a very nice day.
-fgalkin

[Purple]

Because your ships might well run into random rocks and shoals in the harbor entry in the dark?

That's why trying to recruit some locals is vital. They should know where I need to go and where I must not.

[Simon_Jester]

Ah. Your pardon, fgalkin. And Zor.

I had somehow overlooked the part where he put up the enemy's numbers in the OP, and when I asked nobody answered right away, so I assumed he'd forgotten it.