Sunday 26 April 2009

55 Days at Sea: Ship List Extra!


A hot-off-the-press addition to my previous post on the British and Japanese ships; more information has come to light, typically just as I thought I had a good list put together!

I should explain my sources somewhat, to show I'm not pulling this stuff out of my hat.  The starting point was Peter Fleming's "The Siege at Peking", followed by Dix's "All the World's Navies in the Boxer Rebellion", and bringing up the rear were the two available Osprey titles. To be honest, though, apart from the major warships, there wasn't that much detail here, so I started looking online, from the Taku forts bombardment page quoted in an earlier post, to the battleships-cruisers website and beyond.

The latest discovery then, is the following:


Scroll down in particular to the entry marked DNS 19 June 1900.

This site has interesting snippets from various English newspaper reports of the period, and is rich in names of the vessel involved. Of course, not everything you find on the web can be regarded as necessarily authoritative, and furthermore contemporary newspaper accounts might be based on speculation or contain factual errors, but having cross referenced as much as possible, this seems like a useful source.

The additional ships, then:

Great Britain:

Sloops: (What Jane's key terms as 'other ships of slight fighting value')

Unfortunately, there doesn't appear to be much coverage of this type or size of vessel in the Navwar range, but for reference:

Daphne, Phoenix: Swallow Class (?)
Redpole, Peacock, Plover: Pheasant Class (?)
Linnet, Swift, Esk: Class unknown

Also mentioned: 6 Gunboats or Torpedo gunboats, 4 River Gunboats, the Tamar 'receiving ship', Wivern 'coastal defence ship' and a 'surveying ship'.

Japan:

Protected Cruiser: Yoshino: Yoshino Class, N5325.

Now, of note in the texts of the newspaper extracts is a large number of references to the ships of other nations, so I'll have to re-jig their lists a bit more too, and post later with the updates.

As always, any feedback will be appreciated, and if I'm going wrong somewhere, feel free to let me know.
One thing I am sure of, another big additional order to Navwar is in the pipeline!





2 comments:

  1. At some point can you please speculate about just how you plan on setting up scenarios?

    Just what's going to happen?


    -- Jeff

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  2. Hi Jeff, yes, sorry, that's quite an important point, I've been a bit tied up in getting the forces correct (too tidy a mind.......), but I promise I'll get round to it soon!

    Cheers, SteelonSand.

    ReplyDelete