By Jingo: Great Britain AAR

[Procopius]

We don't want to fight but by jingo if we do...
We've got the ships, we've got the men, and got the money too!
-- Gilbert Hastings Macdermott ("The Great Macdermott"), "Macdermott's War Song" (1878)

We don't want you to fight but by Jingo if you do,
We will probably issue a joint memorandum suggesting a mild disapproval of you
-- Punch, c.1935 (during the Abyssinian Crisis)


I'm beginning my second playthrough of RTW2, having finished my first UK playthrough with stratospheric prestige, a beautiful balanced fleet, and my enemies more or less manageable. Take my word for it! Now I'm going to try it again, before a live studio audience -- that's you -- and what could possibly go wrong?

The game starts in 1900, with historical budgets, designing my legacy fleet and very large fleets (only way to play, if you ask me -- though legacy fleet builds are optional). Here's the state of the world on January 1, 1900:



That's weird. It would seem British dominance of the seas has been so total, so complete, that other powers simply opted not to build battleships. Hurrah!

The Royal Navy at present consists of a dozen first-class battleships of the Collingwood class, displacing 14,500 tons, capable of a breakneck 20 knots, and armed with four twelve-inch guns in two turrets and a battery of fourteen six-inch guns protected by thin gunshields and mounted on the weather deck, a controversial decision of the Director of Naval Construction, the aging and ailing Sir William Henry White KCB etc etc. They're also somewhat lightly armoured, though safe enough against most hits from the guns of their contemporaries, with an immunity zone of between 5,000 and 12,000 yards.



There's a thirteenth battleship, unlucky, I know, HMS Redoubtable, an effort to produce a ship suited for colonial duties. She's a half-sister to the class, 13,000 tons and fitted for overseas duties, and is 2 knots slower.

There exist also the six 11,000-ton heavy cruisers of the Norfolk class, fast and powerful ships for their time, armed with four ten-inch guns and copying the fourteen six-inch gun battery of the Collingwoods for ease of production by Vickers.






There are also twenty-two light cruisers of the Curacoa class, small 22-knot ships with a mixed battery of four six-inch and six five-inch guns meant principally for colonial duties, as well as for screening the fleet. Another ship is under construction, despite general disappointment in both the expense of the class and serious reservations about how capable they'll be in combat.



Lastly, there are the twenty-seven 500-ton destroyers of the Derwent class, whose heavy gun armament of two three-inch and four two-inch guns supplements their two torpedo tubes. The Royal Navy emphasizes gunnery, and the principal duty of these ships in war will be to deter enemy torpedo boats from closing with the fleet.


The Royal Navy presently disposes of several major commands and postings:

The Channel Squadron
Vice-Admiral Sir James Arbuthnot "Jackie" Fisher KCB
12 battleships
1 armoured cruiser
1 protected cruiser
24 destroyers

The Pacific Station
Rear-Admiral Lord Charles William de la Poer Beresford
1 battleship
2 protected cruisers

The Mediterranean Squadron
Captain Sir Percy Scott CB
1 armoured cruiser
2 protected cruisers

The North American Station
Sir Archibald Berkeley Milne, 2nd Baronet
1 armoured cruiser
2 protected cruisers

The West African Station
Captain Sir George Astley Callaghan
1 armoured cruiser
4 protected cruisers
2 destroyers





So then, let's begin.

[Procopius]

Admiral Lord Walter Kerr, the First Naval Lord, has been bombarded for months by Vice-Admiral Fisher, his commander of the powerful Channel Squadron, over the perceived weakness in gun power of the small protected cruisers of the Curacoa class, and so after further prodding, design studies for a "heavy-gunned" protected cruiser were commissioned. Germany's Stettin was known to displace 3,600 tons with a top speed of 21 knots and eight six-inch guns, so the new cruiser would need to at least match this enemy cruiser and be capable of fighting it out with the big 6,000-plus-ton French cruisers with a staggering ten 6-inch guns, also capable of 21 knots (and armed with a brace of "anti-aircraft guns" whatever those were, to boot). Cost would also be a concern. After much haggling, four ships of the Philomel class were laid down in April of 1900, armed with eight six-inch guns:



Given the shortage of armoured cruisers for home service duties (and the desirability of the class as a flagship for foreign stations, three more Norfolks were ordered as well.

[Procopius]

As enemy powers race to lay down battleships (six are building in Germany alone), Lord Salisbury, the Prime Minister, can think of nothing but cruiser tonnage. "Is it unreasonable for me to expect," he angrily writes Kerr, "that His Majesty might have become king with rather more cruisers at his disposal? Other Powers in Europe have a far greater tonnage, built and building, and none of them depends upon the sea as we do." Kerr suspects the hand of Fisher behind all of this, and reluctantly approves the mammoth 16,000-ton Black Princes, armed with twelve ten-inch guns and capable of 23 knots. Four ships are ordered: Warrior, Defence, Minotaur, and Black Prince herself, expected to be completed in late 1903.

[aeson]

Good luck with your Black Prince class, though I'm not terribly fond of the hex arrangement or very large CAs, myself. At least they're early enough that they'll probably have a couple years of dominance before the battlecruisers turn up.

[Procopius]

May 24, 2019 20:12:08 GMT -6 aeson said:

Good luck with your Black Prince class, though I'm not terribly fond of the hex arrangement or very large CAs, myself. At least they're early enough that they'll probably have a couple years of dominance before the battlecruisers turn up.

I generally don't tend to build large cruisers at all, but I'm trying something new. As it happens, they're doing okay so far. War broke out between Britain and France in 1904 after a period of slowly rising tensions; the build-up was long enough that there was time to recall the eight first-class battleships sent to the American East Coast and the Caribbean in anticipation of a possible war with the Americans, and to refit at least some of the fleet's capital ships with the new Dreyer Table central firing system. 

With the promotion of Fisher to the position of First Sea Lord, and Vice-Admiral Beresford assuming command of the Channel Squadron, it was assumed by the British public that the Royal Navy's First XI were now in place, and that an immediate, annihilatory victory against the French could be anticipated, "a second Trafalgar". When, in the opening days of the war in June, Beresford's eight battleships and hosts of supporting cruisers and destroyers managed to sweep the Channel and completely fail to make contact with four French battleships and seven cruisers, a great hue and cry arose. Beresford blamed Fisher, for failing to give the Fleet adequate intelligence of the enemy. Fisher blamed "that d___ed mean old squeak 'Charlie B' (who as you know is in it only for himself)" to anyone who would listen and began to search for a replacement for him. 

Public opinion was only slightly mollified when one of the three new submarines ordered by Fisher managed to torpedo and damage a French cruiser ("we are celebrating slapping a wrist when we ought to have had the head off at the neck," grumbled F. E. Smith), but the following month, the public got a little of what they wanted.

The First Cruiser Squadron (HM cruisers Black Prince, Warrior, and Minotaur, their sister Defence then being refitted with a Dreyer Table), under the command of Captain D R Beatty, flying his flag on HMS Warrior, supported by three protected cruisers leading almost the entirety of the Channel Squadron's destroyers -- 23 ships -- began a sweep of the Channel, and around six in the morning, made contact with three French armoured cruisers covering a protected cruiser and six destroyers sent out in an effort to disrupt the coastal trade.  







The smaller, slower French cruisers stood no chance, and were pounded to pieces one after the other over the course of a six-hour running battle. Unable to beat the British to Cherbourg, they were sunk in sight of crowds of onlookers along the Cotentin peninsula, including the American war correspondent Richard Harding Davis. 

"It is, we think," wrote the normally sedate Times, "the most perfect victory seen in the Twentieth Century so far, and may scarcely be equaled for the remainder of it." 

Fisher, though pleased, blamed Beresford for not having anticipated the French maneuver and for having failed to put to see himself "with all EIGHT of our splendid battleships. It is positively CRIMINAL that 'Charlie B' did not support Beatty with them and the thought that even a single cruiser escaped makes my blood boil. WHEN WE MEET THE ENEMY HE SHOULD NOT RETURN TO PORT."

[Procopius]

The war ended quickly; while the French offered territorial concessions, the Balfour government was reluctant to accrue further overseas responsibilities, and settled on financial reparations. Within the Royal Navy, meanwhile, the Admiralty was ascertaining the lessons of the war.

Fisher believed firmly that the July 1904 cruiser action, where the eight-gun broadside Black Princes had won a decisive victory, unlike the August action where three Norfolk-class cruisers had pursued a single French armoured cruiser and blazed away at her for hours, scoring ten hits with 10" shells but failing to slow her enough to catch her, showed the critical importance of a heavy big-gun armament. The DNC had recently calculated a way to incorporate four centerline turrets on a capital ship, and the First Sea Lord ordered an immediate program to construct a battleship with eight centerline-mounted twelve-inch guns of the latest type.



Begun in February of 1906, it was anticipated construction could begin by June. "It is not a perfect ship," Fisher candidly admitted, "but it is the best we can build at the present & I am certain it is better than anything anyone else has in mind."