Battle of Hampton Roads

[sporticus]

Hi, our wargames group ran through a refight of the Battle of Hampton Roads last night. Went very well. The first day ended up with fairly realistic result with the Virginia having it's smoke stack destroyed and losing a gun. The Congress had managed to move from it's mooring and survive a badly angled ram by the Virginia. The Cumberland was shot to pieces and eventually sank at anchorage.

The second day the Virginia came out and went straight for a ram against the St. Lawrence. This failed to do significant damage and the victim fired a devastating point blank broadside aided by the newly arrived Monitor. She was damaged so badly that she lost drive and was at the mercy of the Union fleet.

The Patrick Henry and Jamestown both decided to try a ram and managed to cripple the Congress who had escaped the first day! They then limped back up the James river nursing their battle wounds and crumpled bows!

Photos: First three show the Virginia just before it's 'glancing blow' ram against the Congress.
Second two show the Jamestown and Patrick Henry ramming the Congress on the second day.
sixth shows a smaller Union ship marking where the Cumberland sank off of Newport News point with Camp Butler in the background. Need to build some sinking ship models!!
seventh shows post match discussion on ships! French ship observing in the background!
eighth The Monitor!!
ninth Fort Munroe!

[Col Von Barring]

Excellent stuff. looking forward to seeing these at PAW 2013 (www.paw2013.co.uk).

[Paperwarrior]

Very interesting. Are the sail&steam ships paper models, also?

Jeff

[sporticus]

No they are based on plastic kits, They use the 'cutty sark' hull. The majority of them use a revel kit and the smaller one is an airfix hull.
They are not the right models for the ships in the game, but are the sort of gunboat that only had deck guns. They are a generic model trying to give the flavour of the ships rather than an accurate model.