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Thursday, June 19, 2008

Luck and Skill

This is Steven Petrick posting.

Long, long ago I used to play a lot of Wooden Ships and Iron Men by Avalon Hill. I was the "odd man", running a frigate when almost everyone else captained a "ship of the line".

She was a Carronade Frigate; big guns but very short ranged.

Ah, but I was very good with the frigate. I was constantly able to maneuver my small ship into position to pound, at close range, enemy warships in situations where I received very little return fire. Heavy broadsides ripped the rigging from many an opposing ship of the line, forcing them to strike their colors to my mere frigate.

It took a lot of skill to get in close to use those big guns, but I did it quite successfully for a while in the numerous small actions (squadron level, rarely more than five ships on a side) we fought. I never had to fight in a big "fleet level slugfest".

The day finally came, however, when things did not go well.

The opposing squadron commander knew my reputation, and knew how I operated. The engagement massed three ships of the line and one frigate on each side. One of theirs was the largest Ship of the Line France ever built, the Paris (the squadron's flagship).

As was my custom, I saw a gap in the opposing line that I could exploit and moved my speedy little frigate to do so. Only to find that the captain of the Paris had precisely predicated what I was going to do, and maneuvered his ship, even though it meant breaking his own line, to meet mine.

At pointblank range the Paris let loose a full broadside after very nearly crossing my "T".

The effect was so devastating that my ship quite literally "blew up".

At that point, you could say my "luck" had run out. While I had maneuvered quite skillfully previously, I had been lucky that none of my opponents had anticipated that a speedy little frigate playing with the Ships of the Line would move in such a hazardous manner.

So, was it truly skill, or merely luck that my ship lasted so long in the campaign and captured so many enemy ships of the line?