Farewell Virginia: It's been fun

We left Charlottesville on Monday to spend time with friends in Montclair. John indulged my desire to get to sites I haven't seen.

See, I was here.  Marker outside visitor's center at Chancellorsville

Tuesday we went to the Chancellorsville battlefield, wandered through the visitor's center and caught the movie. Because the battle was one of movement, John picked up the CD and we took the driving tour. The tour wound through large swathes of rural/suburban Virginia. Though we spent at least a couple of hours and were assisted by a map with written directions, it was a bit confusing to keep track of movements, positions and scenes of fighting. The driving path mostly focuses on Stonewall Jackson's famous flank march.  It is well marked and winds through what is still mostly wooded terrain. Nicely preserved, well presented, Chancellorsville is managed by the National Park Service and the cost is only two bucks.

John and I walked out to see the large monument to Jackson's accidental shooting by his own men, and happened upon a tour led by a park ranger.  She indicated that markers commemorating Jackson were plunked down on the believed site of the incident in the 1870's and again in 1904.  However, an interview with a member of the 14th North Carolina, the unfortunate authors of this famous "friendly fire" incident indicated the locations of these markers were likely incorrect.  Based on this later testimony, the ranger said,the site of Jackson's fatal wounding was likely close to contemporary storm drain located behind the visitor's center.  Of course as we drove about the march route and encountered numerous storm drains, John wondered aloud which soldiers each one memorialized.

1904 marker indicates spot where Stonewall Jackson was wounded, with inscription below.

Thomas J. Jackson memorial storm grate  marks the more likely spot where the 14th North Carolina fired their ill-fated volley that mortally wounded their commander in chief.

Three-inch ordnance rifle marks the Confederate gun lines firing from Hazel Grove.

Wednesday the fourth,  John and I drove down to Manassas and stayed near the visitor's center.  Frankly the weather took its toll on us.  Having spent plenty of time outdoors in temperatures ranging from 95-100+ degrees off and on most of the previous week we'd had enough.  Thankfully the visitor's center is located right on Henry House Hill where most of the climactic action for First Manassas is located.  The visitor's center is okay with lots of period artifacts.  However, most interesting are the pictures of battle participants or their close relatives with  a couple lines regarding their experience in the battle and their subsequent lives.  Some are quite moving, and it adds a human face to man's most terrible proclivity. We also watched the inevitable movie, narrated by Richard Dreyfuss.  The battle is, again, one of movement and on this day we were just too cooked to move much, but trails toward the Sudley Ford crossing and Stone Bridge sites are available for exploration.  The cost for three day pass to Manassas is three dollars.

Equestrian statue of former VMI instructor, Stonewall Jackson

Gun line marks the spot where Jackson's brigade stood like a stone wall. Looking back at Federal positions.

I'm finishing this post from the comfort of my home computer early Friday morning.  We traveled most of the night and I am, shockingly, having a little trouble with sleep.  It's good to be home, mostly because the heat of Virginia was ridiculous.  I saw almost everything I hoped for, and a little more while I was in Maryland and Virginia, and enjoyed myself immensely.  I'm sure if I lived there I'd have become a National Park Service ranger working one of the battlefields.  My desire to see those sights and touch the history was overwhelming.

New Market Battlefield.

New Market was fought on May 15, 1864. It was the first of several important actions that year fought to control the Shenandoah Valley. William C. Davis wrote a wonderful little account of the battle, which has intrigued me ever since. Yesterday, with a little time on my hands, I determined to drive the 85 or so miles to the battlefield state park.

Traveling from Charlottesville, I can assure you the highway is great-interstate all the way-and signs clearly mark the way. The State of Virginia preserved 900 acres to showcase this relatively small battle. The grounds also house "The Virginia Museum of the Civil War" which, in the grand scheme of things is no big deal. However, the do have examples of a Williams Gun, and an Agar "coffee mill," early machine guns that pre-date the better known Gatling. The life-sized vignette of a 12 pound Napoleon and crew was a nice touch too. Along with the artifacts in the museum is a theater with a lengthy movie on the battle, emphasizing the connections with VMI, and rightly so. I didn't stay for the entire presentation because I felt pressed for time.

The battle was smallish, 6,200 Union and 4,100 Confederates, and the park preserves the complete action, which straddles I-81. It was a very hot, humid day (95 degrees) and I spent a bit more than an hour walking the field. Informational maps are available from the museum which correspond nicely with markers on the field.

The terrain east of the interstate is accessible by a tunnel and most closely represent conditions on the day of battle. The western side of the battlefield is mostly grass. On the rainy day of battle many soldiers struggled through plowed, muddy fields that became known as "The Field of Lost Shoes." in the middle of the field is the nicely preserved Bushong farm which served as a hospital for both sides.

The state of Virginia did a great job of preservation with the New Market site. The cost for touring the battlefield is $7 and another $3 to visit the museum.

The road to Charlottesville: Hollywood Cemetery

Friday was a travel day as we drove from Baltimore to Charlottesville in the Virginia hills. We decided to stop in Richmond, where I-64 parts from I-95 and heads west to Charlottesville. Despite wandering a bit through the city, we did make it to Hollywood Cemetery. This beautiful, well-kept burial ground contains the graves of 18,000 Confederate war dead. There is a special section set aside for the dead of Gettysburg. Resting with them is General Richard Garnett, killed with many of his men at Pickett's Charge.

From there it was on to Charlottesville and the rehearsal for my niece's wedding. I'm reading a poem during the ceremony, so had to be there. It was about 95 degrees with about the same percentage of humidity. Hotter today, with chance of thunderstorms for the outdoor wedding. Can't wait, right. Actually couldn't bear to miss the festivities.

Sometimes History Gets the Better of Me

 When I began miniature wargaming forty years ago I played WWII armor.  I think everybody starts there.  We played with Roco minitanks because they were cheap back then, and later we played with GHQ micro armor.  What was everyone's favorite tank?  The German King Tiger of course.  They were big, nasty, had a wicked 88mm gun and could easily slay T-34's or Shermans.  That there were only 200 plus of them made while thousands of Panzer IV's, Panthers, or the previously mentioned Russian and American vehicles were manufactured in the tens of thousands made little difference.  King Tigers were cool.

Yesterday when I got home from our game, I began to have that nagging King Tiger feeling. In our Wilmington game I'd try to apportion the Confederate guns reasonably, so that there were about 50% rifled guns and 50% smoothbores.  In Fort Anderson there were five total guns.  Of those, one was a 7" double banded Brooke rifle and another was a 6.4"  double banded Brooke Rifle.  Battery Johnston, near the board entry for the Union, also had a 6.4" double banded Brooke Rifle.  The Martello tower had a British 100 pdr Blakely rifle, and Battery Trimble near the opposite entry point for the Yankees had a 30 pdr Parrott rifle.  The Confederate ships also had some rifled artillery.  The rebel ironclad, modeled on the Raleigh, a Richmond inspired ram mounted four 6.4" Brooke Rifles.  The Morgan, according to the Ironclads board game mounted a pair of 7" Brooke double banded rifles.  Silverstone's Warships of the Civil War Navies disagrees and gives the Morgan 7 inch rifle and a 6.4 inch gun.

So, in yesterday's game there were nine Brooke rifles.  Why is this important and what does this have to do with King Tigers?  More than you might think.  Brooke rifles were considered the finest rifled guns of the American Civil War.  They were more accurate and had longer ranges than the Federal Parrotts, and were also less prone to bursting than the numerous Parrotts.  We know the first Brooke rifles were mounted in the Virginia when it fought the Monitor in 1862, and they appeared in the James River flotilla when they fought the Federal fleet on the James River at Trent's Reach in February 1865.  The CSS Atlanta was armed with them (we know because the captured guns are on display the Washington Navy Yard), the Tenessee II was armed with them at Mobile Bay (we know because they are on display in Alabama.)

The problem is, Brooke naval and seacoast guns were scarce as hen's teeth.  The number of Brooke rifled guns was something under 150 tubes.  Brooke rifles were cast and bored at the Tredegar ironworks just outside Richmond, and at the Selma foundry in Alabama.  Though Tredegar cast more than a thousand cannon, less than a hundred were Brooke rifles.  Spencer Tucker in his excellent Arming the Fleet states the Tredegar works cast less than 83 rifles and 16 smoothbores.  Tucker goes on to claim the Selma foundry cast 53 rifles and 18 smoothbores.  Edwin Olmstead in his book Big Guns: Civil War Siege, Seacoast, and Naval Artillery, breaks the quantities down even further:

 6.4" Brooke Rifle

Only four 8-inch rifles were cast at the Tredegar works.
Tredegar produced 26 single banded 7-inch guns, 36 double banded 7 inchers, and three triple banded guns.  Selma produced 54 7-inch tubes, but shipped only 39 due to casting flaws.
Tredegar also produced 35 single and double banded 6.4" rifles, while Selma managed 15 usable 6.4" guns.
Some flawed 6.4" and 7" castings were rebored as 8" smoothbores.

This is a problem for me as a scenario designer.  So many of the vessels in the Ironclads rules call for Brooke rifles, and that just can't be, there weren't enough to go around to all the ships and coastal fortifications that often find their way into our wargames.

Tucker reminds us the Confederates captured the Gosport Naval Yard at Norfolk in 1861.  In addition to the hull of the USS Merrimack and the magnificent drydock needed to convert her to a massive ironclad, rebel forces also captured nearly 1,200 heavy naval guns.  Though some were modern shell guns, including 52 IX- inch Dahlgrens, not one was a rifled gun.  Additional guns and naval stores fell into Confederate hands when they captured Pensacola.  So there was a passel of guns out there, many of them quite modern, but rifles would have to be imported from Great Britain (Blakely's, Whitworths, or Armstrongs) or they'd have to be made.  Tucker relates the Confederates favorite conversion was to bore out a 32pdr and band the breach.  Voila, instant rifle, that is covered and rated in Ironclads.

I've done a bit of a search to determine the gun types present at Fort Sumter during the unsuccessful sea assault in April of 1863.  At that time the fort mounted some forty pieces of artillery.  They can be seen here. Not one Brooke rifle is listed.  The only rifles appearing are rebored 32 pdr and  42 pdr smoothbores, or "James" rifles that fired 64 and 84 pound rifled projectiles.  These appear in the Ironclads rules as the Army rifle. The 42pdr was a standard seacoast weapon which appeared after the War of 1812.

Collection of James Rifles.  32 pdr on field carriage, and 42 pdr on fortress carriage in the background

In any case, it seems to me I'll need to give some thought to redesigning the fortress armament for the Wilmington defenses.  I don't want anyone to leave the game feeling like they'd been King Tigered.

Closing Wilmington Revisited

Today was the last of our Truants wargaming days I'll be able to attend. I'm back in the classroom on Monday with students arriving on Thursday.  There's little question I'll try to organize another Truant session next summer all things being equal.

I tweaked the ACW naval game from July and ran it out on the table.  Fellow truants expressed their interest, and the game was successful enough that I wanted to try it again.  Two changes were suggested for the scenario.  One was forcing the Union ships to the middle of the table.  The other was changing the already simple infantry rules to forego the roll for command pips.

I addressed both those issues in the scenario redesign.  First I added a partial across river shoreline and stuck a two gun battery on it.  I believed it would force the Union vessels more toward the middle of the table and give them more to think about.  It would also give the Confederate gunners better opportunities to engage Union ships at more effective ranges. I also did something daring and near the far end of the table put an island surmounted by a Martello tower mounting a Blakely rifle.  I know Martello towers were not common to the United States, but there was one on Tybee Island guarding the approaches to Savannah, so it would not be out of the question to have one guarding Wilmington.  Besides, I had one, it looked cool, and it is just a game. The tower could fire into the center of the table, and once again give something else for the Yankees to think about.

I made two additional changes.  First I simplified the command for the infantry rules.  Each brigade commander had a four inch command radius rather than rolling for pips a la DBA.  I also wanted to make the Confederate naval presence a bit more formidable.  In the previous game the Richmond class ironclad was accompanied by two small Maury gunboats and a torpedo launch. Though the ironclad gave as good as it got the escorts were easily dispatched at a considerable distance.  I replaced the three small vessels with the gunboat Morgan from Mobile Bay.  I figured it would be a bit more of a challenge, and rightfully so as it turned out.

There was one complication to the game and that was the light attendance. Mark Waddington, Al Rivers, Tom Bieker and Darin Howard made their truant excuses and escaped to play.  It happens, it's nobody's fault.  The game is designed for 7-8 and we only had four.  I figured I could fairly play a Confederate gunner, so I let Tom Bieker run the Confederate squadron and most of the guns. Al, Mark and Darin ran the Union vessels.

I actually love this scenario because it puts the Union players in such a tizzy.  The decision making is all on them.  The Confederates have few choices to make.  The timetable decides for them. With all decisions made and the table set up, the Yankees moved their vessels on to the table.

With two batteries facing the entries, the Union fleet decided to capture one with their naval landing party, and pound the other to rubble.  In this they were pretty successful.  By turn six of the game, the two batteries were either silent or nearly so.  The naval landing party was on its way to capture the western battery, and the Union fleet was headed for the middle of the table. Most of the rebel fire targeted the leading Union vessel, the double-ender Miami.  Though the gunboat suffered some light pecks and pokes, nothing serious seemed to slow her down. The two rebel ships, however, were also moving downstream to engage the leading Union vessels, and that's where things got interesting.

First, Darin, commanding the three 90 day gunboats in the squadron, made a boo-boo and stepped into the clearly marked minefield with USS Huron.  He made a couple of die rolls, and struck a mine which was, happily, a dud.  Unfortunately, his movement didn't take him safely out of the field.  A second turn of moving through the danger zone didn't turn out so well and turn seven saw the Huron engulfed in a bright flash and disappearing rapidly to the bottom of the Cape Fear River.

Turn seven also saw the loss of USS Miami's good luck charm.  Two telling shots from the Martello tower and the Brooke rifle in Fort Anderson did significant damage.  However these were followed by a shot from the Morgan that exploded in Miami's magazine, resulting in the instant sinking of the vessel.  Not an easy shot by any means, and one we rarely see in the game. We played through turn eight, as the luck decisively turned in the Confederates' favor.  The monitor Montauk had a waterline seam opened up and suffered flotation damage, and the Union fire could not seem to shake loose the last gun crew from Battery Trimble at the mouth of river.  Despite hitting the battery ten or twelve times, the fire would scatter off the remaining gun (only a 33% chance of it doing so.)

It was agreed that with the loss of two ships and accumulating damage to others the Union would pull safely back and concede a Confederate victory. The game actually started out very much like the first game.  The Union fleet seemed completely capable of dispatching the Confederate batteries, then their die rolling went cold.  Though the Confederates occasionally hit the Union vessels, they seemed incapable of turning the hits into something decisive against the wooden vessels.  About   turn six the Yankees went south and the Confederates got lucky.

This is a game I'd like to run at Enfilade, but I'd like to play test it some more.  I started out with the idea it could be a twenty turn game.  However, it's more likely to be something on the order of twelve turns, so I'll need to rethink the objectives and victory points a bit.  Maybe allow the Union to set up on the table rather than move on, which might require some change in battery placement.