"Firing into the Brown" #87 - "call that 6 inches?", Rebel gold, and stuff..

"So Carnehan weeds out the pick of his men, and sets the two of the Army to show them drill and at the end of two weeks the men can manoeuvre about as well as Volunteers. So he marches with the Chief to a great big plain on the top of a mountain, and the Chiefs men rushes into a village and takes it; we three Martinis firing into the brown of the enemy".

Kipling "The Man Who Would Be King"

Time for another update..

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A mate and I went down to the Portsmouth Historic Dockyard for a look around the other day and I was delighted that I could finally get that closer look at the forward gun on M33, the WW1 era Monitor [clicky] that I'd wanted - the weather has always meant that the covers have been closed on previous trips....  😏

During the years (and years) that M33 had luckily been surviving by constantly changing function and purpose, the original guns had long been removed (certainly pre-WW2 I think), but during conservation they had managed to find two suitable replacements - and the forward gun (following) is by far and away the more accurate of the two*.

Note the date and the brass bit over the breech..

It's a Mk. XIIB gun and came from the gunnery training school, HMS Excellent, on Whale Island. Per the markings W.B. & Co were William Beardmore and Company ( a Clyde based engineering conglomerate) and it was made in 1917 - this was Britain's most modern 6-inch naval gun when World War I began and was usually the main armament of the light cruisers so the Monitors had teeth! The original guns on M33 had originally been intended for the Queen Elizabeth class of battleship (where they were secondary guns) but they were surplus to requirements following design changes in the battleship..

I was talking to one of the volunteers and he said that they had used this particular one to test different charges, in most cases way over the manufacturers specifications - if you look in the picture at the brass item above the breech, I believe this was to allow (very) remote firing, to protect crew against the effects of perhaps blowing the block, or the gun exploding..

Breech block..

It's on a MkIX mounting - following - no idea who would have made this but I guess Vickers, or maybe even Beardmore's again.. 

Gun layers position (following)..

...and that canvas bag on the side - following - is an example of what the powder charge would have been delivered in - so in order, shell first, then canvas/charge bag, and then detonator/initiator in a cup in the breech block..

Fascinating and my thanks to the volunteer on duty that day - really approachable and informative guy..  ex-matelot of course! 😊

* The rear gun, while the right type, came off a Chilean battleship - but that's a rabbit hole for another post.. 😁

Further reading:

• BL 6-inch Mk XII naval gun - Wikipedia
• M29-class monitor - Wikipedia
• HMS M33 - Wikipedia
• Britain 6"/45 (15.2 cm) BL Mark XII and Mark XX - NavWeaps

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Following the recovery of their old friends nest egg [clicky], Robbie and Zeke decided that life had been more than exciting enough just lately, and decided it was time to keep their heads down.. 

There was no reason they couldn't to be honest, they'd heard through the grapevine that the rest of boys in the Biggs Gang had been handled pretty roughly while trying to rob a stage coach up north (only they could have picked the one stage coach full of - heavily armed - Pinkerton men) so either way, they weren't going to bother them or Tex any time soon... even if they'd wanted to...

Three or four weeks later though, back home and bored, Zeke was having a beer with one of their old comrades from back in the day - his friend was having a rough time, and was heading south with trouble hard on his heels, but then he told him about the gold...

"Gold!?" Zeke exclaimed

Turns out that just before the war had come to a close one final small gold shipment had been made by the Confederacy - back pay for some of the few remaining soldiers still in the field. Zeke's friend had been one of the small guard party, but they'd been ambushed and killed to a man except for himself, and he had only just managed to escape though badly wounded.

His friend been aware enough to see that his small guard party had done themselves proud, and all the ambushers were also dead or badly wounded.. as far as he knew the gold was where they'd left it all those years ago, but what with one thing and another, and now with all that trouble on his heels he'd never managed to get back and he wanted to know if Zeke could help him out.. he'd give him the location in return for a share of the proceeds...

Zeke pondered (for almost ten seconds 😏) before agreeing, but only if he could also cut Corp and Robbie in on the deal - after all, he might need some backup... his friend agreed, told him where to send his share of the loot, and gave him the location...

Little did his friend know though, that one of the ambush party had actually survived...

Additional Complications 😁:

• the other survivor was one Dave Jones - a Jayhawker at the time, but now the leader of a moderately successful outlaw gang 
• for one reason or another - that, trust me, are now unimportant - it had taken Dave until now to be able to get the time to go back and investigate what those damn Rebs had fought so hard for, but now he's got time on his hands and is also in need of a little success to bolster his position in the gang
• the ambush had been sprung near the end of a now disused branch line - when the shots had rung out all those years ago the Confederates had taken refuge in an old hut, if the gold is still there, it's where they hid it in the hut
• no one knows that the hut is now occupied by an old timer - Zebediah - who moved in a couple of years before. Zeb runs a still, the proceeds of what he sells to the local Saloon make him enough to live on, but also ensure he is almost always mildly and happily drunk...  Zeb is armed, but his actions will entirely depend on how he feels when one or the other side starts shooting (I'm going to run his reactions by dice 😏)

Game mechanics/setup:

• I'm using Ruthless [clicky] again - Ruthless-Fastest-Rules-in-the-West-3.pdf (fireballforward.com) ..they're free gratis, but more importantly they drive a fantastic narrative (and for me - with most of my wargaming being solo - the narrative is becoming more and more important, if the rules don't make a good narrative then I lose interest 
• Ground is considered good - bushes, logs and railway don't block line of sight but provide cover, the dunes, the cabin and the horse do block line of sight and also provide cover.
• Neither/all parties knows that the others are there
• Zeb's shotgun is in the shack - he needs to go there first - who he then shots at no one currently knows! He won't react until he spots one of either of the two main parties
• Finding the gold requires two actions in the shack - not being shot at, and not doing anything else..

Table as follows - Jones Gang bottom left - the Jolly Boys top - Zeb next to his horse and completely unaware:

Dramatis Personae:

Stay tuned for the game... 😀

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Laters, as the young people are want to say...