Dawn of the

Dawn of the Battleship Version 1.1

Tactical Naval Warfare 1890 - 1905

by

Chris Carlson

Foreword by

Dr. Norman Friedman

edited by

Larry Bond

published by

The Admiralty Trilogy Group

Copyright © 2016, 2020 by the Admiralty Trilogy Group, LLC and Chris Carlson All rights reserved. Printed in the USA. Made in the USA. No part of this game may be reproduced or used in any form or by any means without permission in writing from the pub- lisher.

The Admiralty Trilogy is a registered Trademark by Larry Bond, Christopher Carlson, Edward Kettler, and Michael Harris for their tactical naval gaming system.

The designer of Dawn of the Battleship is prepared to answer questions about the game system. He can be reached in Samplecare of the Admiralty Trilogy Group at [email protected]. Visit their website at www.AdmiraltyTrilogy.com. file This version of Dawn of the Battleship includes all errata and changes through 9 December 2020.

Cover: HMS Goliath, colorized by Irotooko_jr 2 Dawn of the Battleship

Designer’s Note Designing a wargame to accurately capture naval warfare in the late 19th century was a huge eye opener. The complete lack of sensors and fi re control systems, when coupled with early gun design, all strongly argued that a ship had to get really close if it wanted a decent chance of obtaining hits. The early designs, based on cold compressed air, or fl ywheel, propulsion and often lacking a gyroscope to maintain the desired course were even worse. But just how close one needed to get was still a bit of a shock—around 1,500 yards for guns, inside 500 yards for torpedoes. Dedicated to Daniel McDonagh (1953 - 2016) After reviewing the historical accounts of gunnery Fellow naval officer, educator, and game designer exercises and battle reports, it became abundantly clear that the system modeling for Dawn of the Battleship would have to be vastly different from our era naval game, Fear God & Dread Nought. It was a challenge to The Designer create a game that preserved historical accuracy, while at Chris Carlson is one of the lead designers of the the same time keeping play exciting and fast. award winning Admiralty Trilogy game series. A retired Dawn of the Battleship provides the rules to fi ght any senior naval officer and systems and warfare intelligence historical or hypothetical naval battle from 1890 to just after analyst, he has many years of experience in assessing the turn of the century (up to 1905). The game system, how the various pieces of kit on a ship or submarine works. like the others in the Admiralty Trilogy series, tries to strike Coupling his analytical expertise with a love for mucking the right balance between accuracy and playability. To about in dusty libraries and archives has enabled him to be compensate for the dramatic backward shift in technology, the primary technical designer of the various naval combat we worked especially hard on fast, clean combat resolution, models used by all Admiralty Trilogy games. with a minimum of die rolling. This includes a revised critical hit system that reduces the time needed to resolve the Edited by Larry Bond effects of an attack, but without losing the drama this part of the rules brings to any game. We believe we’ve struck the right chord with Dawn of Acknowledgments the Battleship, but any game can be improved. If you’ve Thanks to Andy Doty, Bob Eldridge, Peter Grining, followed the progress of our other game designs over Michael Harris, Ed Kettler, Christoph Kluxen, Dr. Gorka Luis the years, you know we will make every effort to correct, Martinez Mezo, MD, Dave Schueler, Steve Thorne, Rick improve, and expand the Admiralty Trilogy system. If errors Wehler, and Jay Wissmann for their help in developing this are spotted, or if you have suggestions or questions, drop game. us an e-mail or letter. We always answer our mail.

Version Note This version of Dawn of the Battleship, 1.1, has been updated to make its rules consistent with Fear God & Dread Nought, 2nd edition, and to incorporate applicable rule changes from Dawn of the Rising Sun. Chris Carlson November 2020 Sample file Dawn of the Battleship 3

in 1904 (and then initially applied mainly to secondary- battery guns). This is the period during which naval officers had to work out the implications of steam power. The era of sailing warships had taught them to fight in line ahead, because that concentrated fleet firepower (broadsides) and also because it was the easiest formation to manage. It also made for inconclusive battles, which is why Nelson famously broke his line at Trafalgar. Steam seemed to offer a freedom of maneuver unknown since the use of oared galleys centuries earlier. How would that freedom be used? Should a fleet form into something like a line abreast? That line ahead was the best battle formation was by no means obvious. The adopted it after Admiral Sir John Fisher conducted extensive experiments as CinC Mediterranean Fleet in 1899-1901, near the end of the period Dawn of the Battleship covers. His predecessors had other ideas. As if rapid technological change were not enough, the Dr. Norman Friedman period up through 1905 also witnessed the rise of entirely new (or revived) sea powers. Italy, a major sea power Foreword by 1905, did not even exist as a unified country before The period covered by this game must have been 1861. Japan did not undergo its crucial political shift (the among the most exciting in naval history. Technology Meiji Restoration) until 1868. The United States did not changed so rapidly that a first-class fleet built in, say, 1870 begin building a new steel navy until 1883, and it did not was worse than third-rate fifteen years later. At the same shift to a battleship-centered (rather than warfare) time, there was very little experience of naval warfare, strategy until about 1889, if not later. The Germans did not so although officers wrote extensively about tactics, and decide to build a large battle fleet until they approved the maneuvered fleets to match, no one had a clear idea of first of Admiral Tirpitz’ Navy Laws in 1898. Russian naval what a naval battle would be like. This period is, if you like, modernization (to overcome the effect of the Crimean War) book ended by the Battle of Lissa in 1866 and by the first began only in the 1880s. (inconclusive) engagement of the Russo-Japanese War, This was also a period of rapid national expansion the Battle of the Yellow Sea, in 1904. The two major battles and of near-wars over colonies and other issues. The one in between, Yalu River and Santiago de Cuba, could be major war, in 1870 between France and Prussia, involved dismissed by many professionals. navies only peripherally, as the French Navy blockaded At the Yalu, the well-trained Japanese force with the German coast virtually without opposition (or impact modern guns bested a Chinese fleet beset by obsolete on the outcome of the war). Russia and Turkey did come weaponry, poor training and, it was said, enormous to blows in 1877, and a British fleet ran up through the corruption. At Santiago the Spanish ships were poorly in a snowstorm – but there was no war. There equipped and maintained, but US gunnery performance was another war scare between Britain and Russia in was apparently so poor that no insightful conclusions 1884. Finally, Britain and France nearly went to war in 1898 could be drawn. The first really decisive battle after Lissa to over colonial competition in the Sudan. To modern eyes, demonstrate modern technology was Tsushima in 1905. that seems a very poor reason for risking a big war, but At Lissa, gunnery was so ineffective that the most British records include war orders drawn up at the time. dramatic event in the battle was the sinking of the Italian This is aside from the lengthy wars in South America, which flagship by ramming. Those who looked back at the involved substantial navies and might have drawn the battle tended to see, not the special conditions which had British in because the Royal Navy was expected to keep made ramming possible, but the revival of a weapon that the maritime peace (to support trade). would dramatically change naval warfare. Ramming had a For any wargamer, the sheer variety of crises and psychological component that seems to have made it far near-wars provides far more scenario opportunities than, more attractive than it should have been, to the extent that say, the run-up to World War I or the period between the a senior Royal Navy officer seriously advocated building two world wars. ships armed entirely with rams, without guns. The ram was The advent of ironclads and heavy guns made it an underwater weapon, and torpedoes might be seen as its possible for countries, which previously had negligible direct descendants – except that they were usable where sea power, to build up at least the appearance of naval rams were not. power surprisingly rapidly – the three main South American By the mid-1890s it must have been fairly obvious that republics are a case in point, as is Japan in the late ships would rarely get close enough to ram, and navies nineteenth century. Conversely, the sheer cost of modern Samplebegan to omit ram bows from their . The crucial ships forced some of the older Europeanfile sea powers, such change came late in the 1890s as power loading permitted as Sweden and Denmark, out of the ranks of major naval heavy guns to fire dramatically more quickly. Once they powers. In the case of the South Americans and Japan, could do so, it was worth while to invest in much better fire they were so far from European waters that even if they control, a development which began in the Royal Navy only were outnumbered on paper, any European fleet facing 4 Dawn of the Battleship them would lose much of its strength on the way out to face the idea that something would have to be done to provide them. That was demonstrated dramatically at Tsushima, what we now call situational awareness was a very new when a Russian fleet steaming half way around the world and alien one – as the experience at Jutland showed. lost most of its fighting power. Conversely, the main point of It is a pleasure and an honor to introduce game rules sending the “Great White Fleet” around the world in 1907-9 reflecting so exciting a time. Because there were so few was to show that the US Navy would not lose much of its battles during this period, it is up to the player to imagine capability if it had to steam all the way to the Far East. That how they could have turned out; there is often nothing valid happened just after the period these rules cover, but the for comparison. But all of the world’s governments imagined Great White Fleet was very much a product of the period what would happen if they clashed, and that imagined before 1904. set of outcomes helped determine how the governments All of this meant that the strategic character of sea navigated the many crises that arose during this period. power changed enormously. Many of the naval wars that were quite imaginable in, say, 1903 were inconceivable twenty or thirty years previously. For example, in 1903 the German Kaiser seriously asked for a war plan against the United States. Two decades earlier he would not have had the means to carry out such a plan (it can be argued that he also lacked the means in 1903, but he did not understand that). Indeed, because there had been so little actual combat experience, it seems that few if any naval Dr. Friedman is a renowned naval historian and commanders at sea before Tsushima realized just what recognized authority on many naval topics, including fire they were facing, and how well their fleets were likely to control, ship construction, weapons, and seapower. He has perform in battle. Not only was Tsushima a surprise (not written over thirty books on naval topics, many of which are least because Europeans looked down on the Japanese considered definitive works. before that) but events during World War I continued the Two of his more recent titles are British theme: no one expected what happened. - From the Earliest Days to the Second World War, and It took Tsushima, for example, to show, apparently for British of the Victorian Era. A book on Victorian the first time, how badly the combination of funnel smoke era battleships is forthcoming. You will find the two books (from coal-burning ships) and gun smoke would obscure mentioned above, and may other works by Dr. Friedman, a naval battle area. No one in 1905 or earlier understood in the bibliography for this game as well as others in the that an admiral standing on a bridge could not possibly see Admiralty Trilogy game system. or understand an entire battle area, particularly once gun range opened beyond 3,000 yards. Even a decade later,

Sample file Dawn of the Battleship 5

2.2.4.4 Detection Phase 2-5 2.2.4.5 Reaction Fire Phase 2-5 2.2.4.6 Resolution Phase 2-5 2.3 Ship Size Classes 2-5 2.4 Target Aspect 2-6 2.5 Command and Control 2-6 2.5.1 Command 2-6 2.5.2 Loss of Command 2-6 2.6 Communications (optional) 2-6 2.6.1 Visual Signals (optional) 2-6 2.6.2 Communication Procedures (optional) 2-7 2.6.3 Fog of War (optional) 2-7 USS Indiana, 1896 3.0 Ship Movement 3-1 3.1 Ship Movement 3-1 3.1.1 Speed Change 3-1 3.1.2 Astern 3-1 Table of Contents 3.1.3 Course Changes and Turning 3-1 3.1.4 Effects of Weather 3-3 The Designer 2 3.2 Torpedo Movement 3-3 Acknowledgments 2 3.3 Collisions and Ramming 3-3 Designer’s Note 2 3.3.1 Resolution 3-3 Introduction by Dr. Norman Friedman 3 3.3.2 Collision Damage 3-4 Table of Contents 5 3.4 Restricted Waters 3-5 Abbreviations 6 3.4.1 Grounding 3-5 Ship Types 6 3.4.2 Harbor Booms 3-5 Subject Index 7 3.4.3 Steaming in Marked Channels 3-5 Naval Technology 1880 - 1905 8 3.5 Towing 3-6 3.6 Getting Underway 3-6 1.0 Introduction 1-1 3.7 Arrival of Units in the Battle Area 3-6 1.1 Background 1-1 3.8 Errors in Navigation (optional) 3-6 1.2 Scope 1-2 4.0 Detection 4-1 1.3 Players 1-2 4.1 Making Detections 4-1 1.4 Game Scale 1-2 4.1.1 Sighting from Ships 4-1 1.4.1 Turns 1-2 4.1.2 Sighting Torpedo Launches 4-4 1.4.2 Distance 1-2 4.1.3 Sighting in Intermediate 1.4.3 Speed 1-2 Turns (optional) 4-4 1.5 Materials 1-2 4.1.4 Identifying Visual Contacts (optional) 4-4 1.6 Organization 1-2 4.2 Information Sharing (optional) 4-4 1.7 Playing Pieces 1-3 4.3 Weather Effects 4-4 2.0 Game Mechanics 2-1 4.3.1 Sighting Conditions 4-5 2.1 Preparing for Play 2-1 4.3.2 Storms and Squalls 4-5 2.1.1 Filling Out the Ship Reference Sheet 2-1 4.4 Searchlights 4-5 2.1.1.1 Ship Data 2-1 4.5 Smoke Effects 4-5 2.1.1.2 Damage and Speed Breakdown 2-1 4.5.1 Using Smoke for Detection 4-5 2.1.1.3 Sensors 2-1 4.5.2 Battle Smoke (optional) 4-6 2.1.1.4 Weapons 2-1 4.6 Spotting Targets on Land 4-6 2.1.1.5 Weapon Firing Arcs 2-1 4.7 Camouflage 4-6 2.1.1.6 Remarks 2-3 5.0 Combat 5-1 2.1.1.7 Communications (optional) 2-3 5.1 Surface Gunnery 5-1 2.1.1.8 Maneuvering Data 2-3 5.1.1 Gunnery Procedure 5-1 2.1.1.9 Example 2-3 5.1.2 Overconcentration 5-2 2.2 Turn Sequence 2-3 5.1.3 Light Battery 5-2 2.2.1 Turn Concept 2-3 5.1.4 Line of Fire Restrictions 5-4 2.2.2 Transition Between Intermediate 5.1.5 Rangefinders 5-4 and Tactical Turns 2-3 5.2 Torpedo Attacks 5-4 2.2.3 Intermediate Turn Sequence 2-3 5.2.1 Straight Running Torpedoes 5-4 2.2.3.1 Plotting Phase 2-3 5.2.2 Torpedo Movement to Target 5-8 2.2.3.2 Movement Phase 2-5 5.2.3 Resolving Torpedo Attacks 5-8 2.2.3.3 Detection Phase 2-5 5.2.4 Reloading Torpedoes 5-8 Sample 5.2.5 Torpedo Nets file5-8 2.2.4 Tactical Turn Sequence 2-5 2.2.4.1 Plotting Phase 2-5 5.2.6 Spar Torpedoes 5-8 2.2.4.2 Movement Phase 2-5 5.3 Coastal Defenses 5-9 2.2.4.3 Planned Fire Phase 2-5 5.3.1 Coastal Defense Fortresses 5-9 6 Dawn of the Battleship

5.3.1.1 Battery Types 5-9 Sidebars 5.3.1.2 Searchlights 5-9 Standing Orders 2-5 5.3.1.3 Rangefinders 5-10 The Three-Minute Rule 3-1 5.3.2 Controlled Minefields and Mining 5-10 Expanded Critical Hit Tables 53 6.0 Ship Damage Results 6-1 Ship Reference Sheet (DoB Form 1) 57 6.1 Applying Damage 6-1 Tactical Log Sheet (DoB Form 4) 58 6.1.1 Speed Reduction 6-1 Bibliography 59 6.1.2 Critical Hits 6-2 6.1.3 Effects of Massive Damage 6-2 6.1.4 Effects of Armor 6-2 The illustrations throughout this book are taken from 6.1.5 Armor Penetration Die Roll (optional) 6-3 Brassey’s The Naval Annual from the years 1896 through 6.1.6 Torpedoes & Target Aspect 6-3 1902. These gorgeous black and white drawings were done 6.1.7 Sinking 6-3 by Mr. W. Fred Mitchell and Mr. G.P.C. Bray. 6.2 Effects of Critical Hits 6-3 Abbreviations 6.2.1 Fire & Flooding Critical Hits 6-3 6.2.2 Effects of Other Critical Hits 6-5 AP Armor-Piercing shell 6.3 Repairs 6-6 APC Armor-Piercing Capped shell 6.3.1 Weapon Mount 6-6 Com Common shell 6.3.2 Communications 6-6 CP Common-Point shell 6.3.3 Fire 6-6 CPC Common-Point Capped shell 6.3.4 Flooding 6-6 D6 Six-sided die 6.3.5 Engineering 6-6 D10 Ten-sided die 6.3.6 Bridge 6-6 D100 Percentile dice (2 D10 read as tens and ones) 6.3.7 Rudder 6-6 HE High Explosive shell 6.3.8 Cargo 6-6 kts Knots 7.0 Attacks Against Land Targets 7-1 kyds Kiloyards or thousands of yards 7.1 Land Structure Damage Points and Mk Mark (variant or version) Size Class 7-1 nmi Nautical Mile (approx 2,000 yards) 7.2 Armor Ratings 7-1 SAP Semi-Armor Piercing shell 7.3 Damage to Land Structures 7-1 SAPC Semi-Armor Piercing Capped shell 7.4 Coastal Defense Batteries 7-1 yds Yards 7.5 Attacks on Coastal Defense Batteries 7-2 7.6 Resolving Land Structure Critical Hits 7-3 7.7 Shore Battery Critical Hits 7-4 7.8 Rallying Roll 7-4 Ship Types 8.0 Mine Warfare 8-1 BB Battleship 8.1 Mine Types 8-1 CR Cruiser 8.2 Mine Employment 8-1 CL 8.2.1 Minefields 8-1 CS Scout Cruiser 8.2.2 Independent Minefield Attacks 8-1 DD 8.2.3 Controlled Minefield Attacks 8-1 PB Patrol Boat 8.2.4 Damage from Mines 8-2 PC Patrol Craft 8.2.5 Minelaying 8-2 PG Patrol Gunboat 8.3 Minesweeping 8-2 TB Sample file

French armored cruiser Pothuau, 1898