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ORIGINAL: Director

The Union Navy comprised different ships for different jobs, using deep-water frigates and sloops for heavy combat power (New Orleans, Mobile Bay) and everything from heavily-armed ferryboats to purpose-built shallow-draft double-enders for close-in blockade work. Some of these 'small-boys' were heavily armed for the period with 9" and 11" Dahlgrens and Parrott rifles from 20pdrs to 150 pdrs, and many of them were rapidly brought into service (the first gunboats were called '90-day' for their construction time, and the Eads river ironclads took little longer).

So it really isn't possible to say 'a ship is a ship' if you are comparing a 50-gun 'Merrimack'-class frigate to the gunboat 'Commodore Jones'. If you have to quantify for game terms count the big frigates and sloops as one ship each and the merchant conversions and gunboats as one-half or one-third. Given the forces off Charleston when the Confederate ironclads sortied, that's about 6 'ships'. If you add in the vessels at Port Royal, etc the number is of course higher.

Logically the solution is to give the Union several Fleet structures and allow a 'draft' of commercial vessels into military service. The same one-time 'draft' could be used to create the Confederate river squadrons that fought at Memphis and New Orleans. If that isn't possible by mechanics, then reduce the CS Navy to almost zero (allow some Virginia state ships) and allow the US several naval containers but few ships, or the ability to immediately build containers.

Three good sources: 'Arming the Fleet' by Spencer Tucker. 'The Old Steam Navy' by Donald L Canney )2 volumes), 'Confederate Shipbuilding' by William N Still, Jr.

ORIGINAL: chris0827

On april 19th, 1861 the US navy consisted of 42 ships carrying 555 guns and 7600 men. By jan 1st 1862 it had grown to 264 ships carrying 2557 guns and 22000 men.

ORIGINAL: Mike Scholl

ORIGINAL: chris0827

On april 19th, 1861 the US navy consisted of 42 ships carrying 555 guns and 7600 men. By jan 1st 1862 it had grown to 264 ships carrying 2557 guns and 22000 men.

These being vessels actually "in commission". What about those "laid up in ordinary" which could be re-commissioned in three months or so? We know the Navy had a lot of "spare guns" ashore, because that's where the Confederates got most of what they had during the war (from Norfolk and the like) and which armed many of their fortifications. Do you have equivelent numbers and arms for the South in April of 1861? Or July? or 1 January, 1862? Hard facts and a solid breakdown by ship type or tonnage and of armament afloat/ashore in the early days of the war would be of real use in this discussion.

ORIGINAL: Jonathan Palfrey

Battle Cry of Freedom:

The Confederacy began life with no navy and few facilities for building one. The South possessed no adequate shipyards except the captured naval yard at Norfolk, and not a single machine shop capable of building an engine large enough to power a respectable warship ...

... Mallory proved equal to the task of creating a navy from scratch. He bought tugboats, revenue cutters, and river steamboats to be converted into gunboats for harbor patrol. Recognizing that he could never challenge the Union navy on its own terms, Mallory decided to concentrate on a few specialized tasks that would utilize the South's limited assets to maximum advantage. He authorized the development of "torpedoes" (mines) to be planted at the mouths of harbors and rivers; by the end of the war such "infernal devices" had sunk or damaged forty-three Union warships. He encouraged the construction of "torpedo boats", small half-submerged cigar-shaped vessels carrying a contact mine on a bow-spar for attacking blockade ships ... This is exactly the point I've been trying to make..., that in game terms the South had no "Fleets" or "ships"..., and no real means to build a "blue water Navy". And that what they did have and build is better represented as "improvements" to harbor and fort defenses. Giving the South a "High Seas Fleet" destroys the Civil War "flavor" of the game and just "feels" totally wrong because nothing like "fleet actions" ever occurred during that struggle. Thanks.[/b]

The commerce raiders built in Britain represented an important part of Confederate naval strategy ... At first the South depended on privateers for this activity ... On April 17 [1861], Davis offered letters of marque to any southern shipowner who wished to turn privateer. About twenty such craft were soon cruising the sea lanes off the Atlantic coast, and by July they had captured two dozen prizes.

[By early 1862] Confederate privateers as such had disappeared from the seas ... the Union blockade made it difficult to bring prizes into Southern ports, and neutral nations closed their ports to prizes. The Confederacy thence turned to commerce raiders -- warships manned by naval personnel and designed to sink rather than to capture enemy shipping ... began in June 1861, when the five-gun steam sloop C.S.S. Sumter evaded the blockade ... During the next six months the Sumter captured or burned eighteen vessels before Union warships finally bottled her up in the harbor at Gibraltar in January 1862. Semmes sold the Sumter to the British and made his way across Europe to England, where he took command of the C.S.S. Alabama and went on to bigger achievements. "Raiders" and "Runners" were the South's "blue water naval effort", not traditional fleets..., and the game handles such efforts in other ways. "Ships" and "Fleet Containers" just don't represent the South's naval policy in any realistic way. Again, thanks.

ORIGINAL: Jonathan Palfrey

Wikipedia has a list of ships of the Confederate Navy, with details on each: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ships_of_the_Confederate_States_Navy

Clearly, the Confederacy had a navy, in the sense that it had vessels that could travel on water, carry some armament and some naval personnel, and attack other unarmed or lightly-armed vessels.

What it didn't have were warships capable of fighting the US Navy.

ORIGINAL: Gil R.

And as I mentioned elsewhere, you can modify the start file so that each CSA ship unit has a strength of 1, which will take nine turns sitting in a shipyard to get up to full strength. It's a way of hamstringing the CSA navy initially.

ORIGINAL: jimwinsor
...the same judgment has to be given to the 50 obsolete ships of the Union sail navy.  Which in game terms would slash the Union navy from 9 starting ships to 4.

...it's not to difficult. You don't really need to beg Matrix to do it!

Well, anyone can mod the oob...

ORIGINAL: jimwinsor

"[:-] your just diging yourself a bigger hole buddy.
I suggest you just post: "This is an abstract beer and pretzels game of the ACW, it is not historicaly accurate. Enjoy it for what it is and don't stress out on the small stuff"
That would be alot better than continuing to post nonsense. "

I said pretty much that much earlier in this thread, actually.  If you had been paying better attention you would have noticed that.