All Guns Blazing — September 2009

Page 1 of 3 Pages All Guns Blazing! Newsletter of the Naval Wargames Society No. 185 –September 2009 Editorial Well, gentlemen, August was rather a busy month for your humble scribe, with lots of scurrying hither and thither around Europe. First off, the family Wimpenny went to visit a retired drummer friend of ours who has retired to a little place near Murcia, in southern Spain. Lots of sun, sand and…well let’s just leave it there, eh? However, our friend and his wife are also very close to the port and naval base of Carthagena; lots of lovely yachts, etc, in the harbour, but the main reason they took me was to see the old, 1880s submarine designed by Isaac Peral. Peral’s electrically driven boat was quite successful and even had a torpedo tube. Nevertheless, the Spanish Navy showed little interest. The Isaac Peral in Carthagena. My next port of call wasn’t quite so glamorous. I had to work for a week in Belfast. Now aside from the fact that you can get some excellent Guinness even north of the boarder and more fried food than you shake a stick at, Belfast has an almost forgotten little gem: HMS Caroline—the last survivor from Jutland! Yes, Jutland! A light cruiser of around 4,000 tons, Caroline was part of the 4th Light Cruiser Squadron on that famous day and went into action screening Jellicoe’s battlefleet. She is now the head quarters of the local Royal Naval Reserve, and as such she has been preserved (afloat) in the Alexandra Dock. (Note the different summer skies!) Anyway enough of my travels, on with some news submitted by Rob Morgan about an excellent deal to be had on ‘Pirates’ merchandise. Yours piping up spirits! Richard Wimpenny wimpenny@talktalk.net

Page 2 of 3 Pages Pirates! ‘The Works’ bookshop (www.theworks.co.uk) chain has recently acquired a mass of packs for the several different games and scenarios on the ‘Pirates!’ series of model ship cards and sundry other odd items. They are now retailing at 99p a pack and many of the packs contain six or even seven basic sailing ship construction models in hard plastic. Worth investing in for a number of reasons, the models are fairly robust, easily put together, and exactly the sort of model ships you can use with novices or interested youngsters you wouldn’t trust with your ‘Peter Pig’ 1/450ths. Scale, oh say 1/1200th-ish, and they look well enough on the tabletop. Ship models are a mixture, in a fiver’s worth I ended up with 34 ships, and they fitted into four different scenarios. Galley warfare c. 1600, Pirates and King’s ships c. 1720, French/Spanish/English c. 1750, and a small Viking scenario, with only four vessels in total. The game pack also includes useful pieces for ‘proper’ naval wargames, including islands about 8cm by 5cm, reversible into icebergs, fog banks, reefs and atolls. Other useful ‘bits’ were a mass of pennants 15mm long which could be used on my medieval fleets. You can’t go wrong at that price. Rob Morgan. (An island example sent in by Rob) NWS Events and Regional Contacts, 2009 NWS Northern Fleet – Falkirk East Central Scotland Kenny Thomson, 1 Excise Lane, Kincardine, Fife, FK10 4LW, Tel: 01259 731091 e-mail: kenny.thomson@homecall.co.uk - Website: http://falkirkwargamesclub.org.uk/ Falkirk Wargames Club meets each Monday night at 7pm with a variety of games running each evening. Naval games are popular with 2 or 3 run each month. Campaign games sometimes feature in our monthly weekend sessions. Games tend to be organised week to week making a 3- month forecast here a waste of time. Please get in touch if you’d like to come along. • Popular periods – Modern (Shipwreck), WW1 and 2 (GQ), WW2 Coastal (Action Stations), and Pre-dreadnought (P Dunn’s rules) NWS North Hants [Every 3rd Sunday] Jeff Crane 31 Park Gardens, Black Dam, Basingstoke, Hants, 01256 427906 e-mail: gf.crane@ntlworld.com

Page 3 of 3 Pages NWS Wessex [Bi-Monthly Meetings] The Wessex Group has gone into (hopefully) temporary abeyance for the moment. If anyone living in the Bath / Bristol / Gloucester area (or further afield) would like to take on managing the group please contact myself or any of the other NWS officials.