Lecivius -> RE: Port Blockade (11/1/2013 7:54:35 PM)
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ORIGINAL: Jim D Burns To shut down a port and conduct a brown water blockade you need to take its protective forts down first. After all the forts were built historically to protect the harbor from just such an attempt. Being able to totally shut down the shipping to and from a port by sitting out at sea far enough out to avoid land based guns is all but impossible. That is historically untrue. Britain did just this in their blockade of Europe, They had powerfull squadrons off of major ports to defend against an attempt to 'break' the blockade by French, Dutch, and Spanish naval units. They had inshore squadrons & patrols to interdict merchant traffic. Sailing into range of land based batteries was, with a few exceptions, foolhardy. While small craft & lighters could move about (albeit still at some risk) nothing large could move without being at serious peril. Fortifications protected shipping in harbor, not those on approach. In this game, this is not an option. The Union navy was, and should be, to weak to effectivly blockade the south in the first years of the war. The south had no powerfull units to drive them off, and this was the prime consideration of the ironclads they built. In fact, both Britain and France were very public about it as there were international laws regarding the enforcement of an official blockade, and the impact to neutral shipping. Eventually, and by draconian measures, the north managed to get an effective blockade in place. I have not played this game to conclusion yet to see if such an effort is needed here, and what the cost would be. But the fact that you "have enough" ships to blockade as described by the report, but can't blockade because of estuary access, is an oxymoron. Either you have enough, be it 5 or 50 ships. Or you do not.
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