Sunday 21 September 2008

Gloucester Point break-out 1781

Work in progress - comments please

A nice what-if game. On the night of 16-17th October 1781. Cornwallis attempted to move his force across from Yorktown across to Gloucester Point to break out of the siege. Unfortunately the weather deteriorated and the rest is history. But what if the operation went ahead? The British have to break out within a time limit before the main American/French army could react and block their escape route.

British Forces

In Gloucester Point
Hessian Von Bose 1x 5sp
British Legion (Dragoons) 2 x 5sp
Queens Rangers (LI) 1 x 6sp
Artillery (6/12pdrs) 20 guns in 3 fixed batteries?

1st Wave arrives move 2
LI Abercrombie (LI) 4 x 5sp
Guards O'Hara 2 x 5sp

2nd Wave arrives move 4
Yorke 17th/23rd/33rd/71st Foot 4 x 4sp

3rd Wave arrives move 6
Dundas
Erbprinz 2 x 4sp
43rd/80th Foot 2 x 6sp
NC Volunteers 1 x 2sp

French/American

Weedon - Virginia Militia 6 x 5sp (Mercers unit is veteran militia)
Dabney State Legion 1 x 4sp

Lazuns Legion
Infantry 1 x 5sp
Cavalry 2 x 5sp
Guns?

Choisey
French Marines 4 x 4sp
Guns?

Deployment, etc.

I'm trying to find details of the terrain outside of Gloucester Point. Certainly to the east is the "Cedar" swamp blocking movement in that direction

4 comments:

Steve-the-Wargamer said...

Hi Will - welcome back... re. terrain at Gloucester Point - I had an interesting Google around and only came up with one (very small) reference...

http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=6Es8AAAAIAAJ&q=gloucester+point+terrain&dq=gloucester+point+terrain&lr=&pgis=1

AJ (Allan) Wright said...

Nice start. I'm also interested in doing a Gloucester break-out what-if game. I'll be following this closely.

Snickering Corpses said...

Not related to this post, actually, but something I'd like to see a little post from you on is how you typically go about your conversions of reloading guys to standard bearers.

Frostydog said...

I tried one of these a while back and being unable to find info on the area, I made it up. From memory I hade the British breakout after Cornwallis had got a sizable force accross from York. Part of the French and American armies followed while the other part were transported by the French fleet and carried out an amphibious landing ahead of the British. Meantime, Clinton had sent a relief column. Ended up as a four player game with the British winning a resounding victory. The seabourne landing did not occur due to storms. The Clinton and Cornwallis joined turned and crushed French American army in pursiut. You need to be careful the storm really ended any chance for the Allies and left a player out for the whole game. But being a "ficticious" game you have a lot of freedom. Go for it!!