broadside manning and demasting from being in irons

[Snoopy]

[maturin]

And if both broadsides need to be fought at once, the second-most senior man in a French gun crew becomes the gun captain for the second gun. Information from Boudriot again.

 

French regulations called for enough men to fight both sides, although this was often not realized, resulting in crews smaller than Naval Action defaults. (A Trinc would have usually carried a crew the size of Renommee's, for instance.)

 

 

Edit: Now, realistically, what we need is a Reload Priority button.

 

The prioritized broadside should be exempt from Sailing focus and crew loss penalties (as long as we have enough men left to man it fully), while the opposite broadside's reload rate may slow to a crawl depending on situation.

 

This would make it viable to sail around with smaller crews, as we could maneuver just as well, while effectively limiting ourselves to fighting one broadside at a time.

[hoarmurath]

Various sources indicate that the norm was one manned broadside, but you keep trying to present your logic as how men should be used in a warship of the era. Get out of my topic, go being logic somewhere else. Thx. Now i have to look how to ignore someone... Go away, leave, now...

[Hugh Latham]

I have tried to use backing of sails on different headings and it doesn't always seem to behave as it should. I know backing was used tactically to gain positional advantage in real battles.

[Hugh Latham]

Various sources indicate that the norm was one manned broadside, but you keep trying to present your logic as how men should be used in a warship of the era. Get out of my topic, go being logic somewhere else. Thx. Now i have to look how to ignore someone... Go away, leave, now...

weird response, are you being humorous? I think a logical and factual discussion is well in order here.

[hoarmurath]

weird response, are you being humorous? I think a logical and factual discussion is well in order here.

 

No, it's not even humorous... The guy isn't logical anymore but he has stopped thinking  for some posts now. This can only end in some sort of flame war, unless someone stop it now... I just did..

 

Let's be logical... How many men in a gun team. Depending on the gun size, it can be up to 14, let say 12 on average (not all guns weighs 4 tons). For a full broadside of a 74, that's 37x12 = 444 men... if you take a half team to start doing something on the other broadside, that's 666 men. I won't even start wondering the time necessary for only a half team to reload a gun. So, 666 men... fine, out of a crew of 750 on average. The officers don't man the guns. The petty officers, others than those affected to gunnery, won't man the guns. The domestics won't man the guns. the kids are not manning the guns, but they can bring the powder. The marines are supposed to be in position to fire their muskets at ennemy ships, prepare to repel boarding, or prepare to boarding. They aren't manning the guns. Their officers aren't manning the guns. So, how many men can man the guns? 497 seamen aboard a french 74, you add 41 master gunners and gun captains, that's 538... You're already short. Of course, if you don't need them, you can take the 93 marines. This isn't their primary job, but even if you do it, that's 635 men manning the guns. You're still short. And this is with no men actually sailing the ship, i affected not a single seaman to anything else but gunnery.

 

You want to be logical, you take a calculator, and you see that the various sources saying that the two brooadsides weren't manned at the same time have a damn good chance of being right. Of course, you don't need a full team to actually fire the guns, so if your two broadsides are loaded, you can fire them at the same time. After that, you have the men to reload only one at a time.

[Young]

Ok Well. One Op As stated i think the realism vs gameplay scale would be push too far to the realism side for most people so im going to say no. Secondly I would have to admonish you for your action in the last few days. I have found you very helpful to new players and i thank you for that. Here and in game on one occasion i found you being very argumentative to veteran players. Please have civil debates with everyone involved.

[marecek05]

Although I am not as knowledgable as others on these forums, I dare to present some of my observations:

 

1. Everyone is insistent on firing full broadside, while in case you need to fight both sides, you could just man every other gun, or even only some of the gundecks. Lets say a 74 has a 750 men, and 12 men per gun on average, with 100 men to operate sails and 75 marines not operating the guns. That leaves 575 men to fight the guns, which is 48 guns. However if I chose to man only 2 out of 3 guns per side, I can fight on both sides. Which still leaves me with plenty of firepower at close range on both sides. This also seems evidenced by the painting as ships seem to be firing randomly as the guns are loaded (which also makes sense in melee).

 

2. In case there is an urgent need, I would think that guns could have been operated by fewer men (due to causalities being unavoidable), therefore If you chose to man every gun, you could fight them all, however with only 8 men per gun. I believe that would be extremely tiresome, their reload time would fall to crap after first couple of shots, the guns would be sooner made unoperable, but you would be able to fire both sides.

 

If this to be incorporated ingame, it would have to be through management presets: you would chose in ports, which guns you want to man with how many men and save it as a preset. Then switch presets during the battle as you switch crew focus. For example:

 

1. Long range engagement in battle: you use preset 1, which is fully manning 1 broadside, with extra men replacing losses on the side, thus never getting an undercrew penalty (which should be more severe)

2. You close in to melee with another ships of similar size, but only plan to pass them briefly: you use preset 2 which is manning all the guns, but suffering undercrew penalty

3. You decide to continue to melee with other ships: you use preset 3, which is manning fully 2/3 of your guns, without any undercrew penalties (also gun loss penalties would be mitigated until the loss reaches the number of manned guns).

4. You decide that you don't have enough punch: preset 4, you man only lower and upper gundecks.

 

We already have something similiar, the thing is that the game crew penalites don't count per gun, but per all guns on the ship (as far as I know)....

Crew of guns should be also handled in a way that incorporates exponential penalties, e.g.:

 

36-pounder needs 14 men to fire every 60 seconds

with 12 men, it will fire every 60 seconds for 2 shots, then every 90 seconds for 2 shots, then every 120 seconds

with 10 men, it will fire every 60 seconds for 2 shots, then every 120 seconds for 2 shots, then every 180 seconds

with 8 men, it will fire every 60 seconds for 2 shots, then every 180 seconds for 2 shots, then every 300 seconds

with 6 men, it is inoperable. The gun counts as disabled, men are transfered to another guns....

Edited August 26, 2015 by marecek05

[Young]

again i am all for the sail sim but we need to think of the game play side of things the playability side of it. How can you market a flight sim style age of sail sand box MMO to the masses?

[DazednConfused]

A compromise then? 

 

As a semi-skilled player (if that), i have found that i know well before time in duels or battles with smaller numbers which broadside i am going to fire.

 

With this knowledge if i had 3 options for gunners - load left, load right and man both (full spd reload for 1 side - half spd for man both) i don't think my gunnery would be affected from what it is now. 

 

In traf style battles i would obviously require to man both sides once it turns into a melee - which would cause the battles to last twice as long.

 

For gameplay reasons then i don't recommend any more changes to reload speed.

 

 

Respectfully

 

Dazed

[maturin]

Let's be logical... How many men in a gun team. Depending on the gun size, it can be up to 14, let say 12 on average (not all guns weighs 4 tons). For a full broadside of a 74, that's 37x12 = 444 men...

I'm going to stop you right there. It's not 12 men average. 12 men is pretty much maximum for a gun crew. At least 10 of those guns are carronades or light guns that require less than half as many men.

 

And the officers DO fight the guns. Most of the petty officers have functions that aren't needed in battle, and the midshipmen (in the RN) and some Lieutenants are on the gundecks supervising individual batteries.

 

No one ever said that there were enough men for each gun to have a full crew. But a full complement was capable of fighting both broadsides at a reduced rate of fire, if they were well-trained. That is what we have in-game, where you have to choose between maximum rate of fire and having men to handle sails quickly.

 

There are dozens and dozens of references to ships firing and reloading both broadsides, but you seem to be on some sort of arrogant flatearther power trip in "your" thread, having clearly demonstrated that you don't read sources except when challenged, and prefer to get your knowledge from boardgames. It has nothing to do with logic. No display of 'logic' from you can overcome your ignorance. The professional historians prevail, whether you understand them or not.

 

Jean Boudriot is the world's most renowned historian of the 18th Century French navy. He very clearly lays out how gun crews would go about reloading both broadsides at once (and this by dividing the single crews, without even taking into account the surplus manpower that a full-complement ship would have between one broadside's crews and the other men). Do you think he's... wrong? But you're right?

[DazednConfused]

got this info for interest

 

For British ships of war, the usual practise was to have a single gun crew allocated to the guns on both sides of the ship. If the ship was fighting on a single side then the whole gun crew worked the gun on that side. For the great guns this was between 10-14 men depending on the size of the cannon.

If fighting both sides, the gun crew split so that a smaller number of men worked both guns. The ideal would be to have the guns working out of sequence so that one was being run out while the other was being sponged, wormed and loaded. This allowed men to swap between guns as they were needed (in effect having a full team for each gun), rather than having half the team working one gun and half the other.

As casualties were expected in battle, the best trained gun crews rotated their positions so that each man, if not expert, was capable of performing in any position in the crew. That way the loss of any single man would not cripple the gun.

 

ref: Shipboard Life and Organisation 1731-1815, NRS vol 178 (1998), ed. B. Lavery. pg 274

 

With regard to the idea that ships of the line were "understaffed", it's worth bearing in mind that, in most cases, the gun crews made up 80-90% of the ship's crew. Also these were ships that, by modern standards, would be considered uncomfortably overcrowded as they were.

Therefore, if you wanted to have a full crew per gun, you'd almost double the crew. Not only would you have to find accommodation for those extra men, and carry extra supplies of food and water, you'd also have to find jobs for them to do for the long periods when they weren't in battle or drilling on the guns. The benefit of the extra men would only be felt in a battle when both sides of the ship were engaged.

Finally, to address a comment on another answer, the ship's marines very often provided men for the guns. I believe that, traditionally, they manned the guns and carronades on the quarterdeck. However in some cases, such as on board the 74-gun HMS Goliath, they were used throughout the ship. The quarter bill (which shows the stations of every man in battle) for the Goliath, shows that every gun crew on the main and lower decks had 2 or 3 marines assigned to them.

 

ref: Shipboard Life and Organisation 1731-1815, NRS vol 178 (1998), ed. B. Lavery. pg 276-287

[maturin]

French gun crew sizes:

36-pdr - 14 men

24-pdr - 13 men

18-pdr - 11

12-pdr - 9 men

8-pdr - 9 men

6-pdr - 5 men

4-pdr - 5 men

(Carronades probably have the same crew as 6 and 4-pdrs)

This means that a Temeraire-class 74, with 36- and 18-pdrs for main armament, had about 450 men in its gun crews at full complement of 700.

Recall that it takes around 250 men to make large sail changes or tack/wear when carrying all plain sail. 450+250=700

Once you take out some of the officers, marines and non-combatants, you might be a little short. But a 74 can still carry out very complex maneuvers while maintaining a high rate of fire on one broadside. Furthermore, those same gun crews can fight both sides at a reduced rate of fire, if well-drilled. One powder monkey can easily supply cartridges for both guns, and all that manpower is only really needed when the gun is being run out or aimed. For the actual action of priming, worming, sponging and loading, you really only need 3-4 men apiece. So the problem is coordination, more than manpower.

Now imagine that the ship isn't trying to tack under full sails, but maintaining it's place in the line of battle under topsails, spanker and foretopmast staysail. Your sailhandling requirements have suddenly plummeted. The only operation that requires serious manpower is throwing sails aback when it is necessary to suddenly reduce speed. It's not out of the realm of possibility to send 200 sail handlers below to reinforce the guns (ie, Gunnery Focus). That's an increase of 45%, meaning that each 36-pdr can have 10 men permanently assigned to it, no running back and forth.

Furthermore, there are 585 rated seamen in the complement, enough to man the guns and the battle sails without the help of a single marine or petty officer (many petty officers, such as the gunner and his mates, would help fight the ship, of course).

Bellona will only have 230 men to handle sails because of her smaller complement. 80-gunners like Pavel and Bucentaure, however, only need 530 of their 850 men (about 65%) to man the guns. A bit of latitude for fighting both sides there, although the sails and yards are bigger.

[jodgi]

... Now i have to look how to ignore someone... Go away, leave, now...

Much rood

 

...unless someone stop it now... I just did..

Very gentleman

So confuse!

[maturin]

Correction to my earlier post, after re-consulting my sources:

 

The French actually regarded about 295 (not 250) men to be necessary for tacking or wearing a 74-gun ship under courses, topsails, t'gallants, some staysails and two jibs.

However, if you brail up the courses before tacking, by my calculations you can do away over 50 of those men. And of course, brailing up courses is exactly what they usually did in battle.

 

 

Anyways, I went and found some info on British gun crew sizes. 

 

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1ZlHjd3bbIhthMD8VcYeO9vsmu0JiBIn6hc48d4OWC9U/edit?usp=sharing

 

This source (Nelson's Ships), also shows that the British split their gun crews in halves to fight both broadsides.

 

I scanned two pages of statistics for all these calibers, in case anyone wants the info.