6 replies to this topic

[Shadowbend]

Good evening everyone
My son and I are enjoying miniature war gaming and I want to introduce him to Post Captain. He really enjoys playing the Russians in all our other games and so I was wondering how I might go about representing Russian ships of the period. Thank you in advance.

Take care,
Skip

[Cpt M]

The main stumbling block to producing accurate ship logs is finding good data.  For the some of the navys (British, French, US and Russian) the data is available, thanks to several very good reference works.  The situation for the other fleets is not nearly as good.  This is especially true for the smaller powers (Swedes, Danes and Dutch).  There are some very preliminary plans for expanding the ship lists, but I can't say with any certainty what will be covered or when that'll happen.        

[Shadowbend]

Thank you for that information.  I was wondering if you could recommend some reference material for the period?  I have copies of the Conway's books for WW1 and WW2 and they seem to help quite a bit.   What would you suggest for the 1793-1815 period?  Thank you in advance.

 

Take care,

Skip

[Joseph Legan]

Shadowbend,

 

Russia fought 2 substantial wars that I am aware of in this period; one with Turkey and one with Sweden. I would start with google and see where that takes you.  Frigates were basically frigates so each type of ship was very similar regardless of the navy.  Use french ones as your guide, but English would work as well.  Carronades would be very rare and all crews would be pretty poor with the Swedes being the best of the bunch.  Hope that will get you started.

 

Joe 

[Lonnie Gill]

G' Day Shadowbend,

 

Been on sabatical for a while, but thought I would add a few comments:

1. We are working on a project that will provide some Russian Ship Logs and scenarios. It will take a few months to complete, but there is some light at the end of the tunnel as they say.  The project will also provide a really informative article on the Imperial sailing navy by a well known author on Russian naval subjects.

2.  Getting data for Russian ships in this period is not easy as there are few sources in English.  Some nice ones in Russian, but that's not much help to most of us.  Capt. M has devoted some tough sledding to trying to ferret out useful data from a couple of these. 

3. However, you can find some useful data in general sources such as The Line of Battle - The Sailing Warship 1650-1840 in the Conway series and Gardiner's Warships of the Napoleonic Era.  And, Winfield's British and French warships in the age of sail series has some good data on a few that were taken by the British and French.  [You'll have to know the ship's names to fnd them.]  James' Naval History of Great Britian and William Clowes' The Royal Navy series have useful armament data on Russian ships engaged by the RN during the Napoleonic wars.  And, the reprint of R. C. Anderson's Naval Wars in the Baltic During the Sailing-ship Epoch, 1522-1850 ha some good data on Russian and other ships engagend in the Baltic.  Not easy to find, but well worth it if you are interested in the Baltic.  Finally, there are some useful posts on Wikipedia data for selected Russial ships and battles. As always, you have to take care with Wikipedia posts, but there are some nuggets to be mined. 

 

The Russians offer some really interestng possibilities for gaming this period. 

 

Cheers,

 

LONNIE 

[schoon]

So, not that I actually need any extra ships at this point, but I do find the Russian navy of the time fascinating.

 

Has there been any progress on this, or have other things been getting the attention it might need?

[schoon]

For those interested in information on Russian, Dutch, and many others, the information in the War by Sail game from the folks at threedecks.org is full of useful information on armament and other factors...