Action - 1721 - January 19 - Defending Charlestown

Captains in Action
British Captains:

Captain Avis Faegun - MC Capri

Captain Ryan Thomas - MC Capri

Captain Chris Pheonix - MC Tigre

Captain James Blei - MC Capri

Captain Alex Delarge - MC Capri

Captain Tom Langstone - Hercules Sleek

French Captains:

Rene Silver

Rorik Le Viking

Ivan Eperon

Fernand Alvert

Ricardo Le Barnabos

One or two other French Captains who's names I cannot remember. The ships they sailed where equally matched by our own. MC Capri's, a Dauntless, a couple of Herc Sleeks and an Expedition Packet Boat at one point in our various fights.

Action Setup
With the council meeting just beginning, the French made an attack on the British Port of Charlestown. After a breif council meeting Brogsitter called for groups to be setup to make a defense well in the red of the Antilles. Three groups where in the area. Eddy Coyotee setup a light frigate group. Brogsitter had a heavier group and our group, lead my Windward Squadron setup another light frigate group. We met at Ruddy Cove and caught the currents into Charlestown.

The Action Itself
We made port at Orjanestad straight away moving to Charlestown shortly after with reports of one French heavy fleet and another light frigate group in the area. Ubert, Boris, Poyraz being in the heavier group. We where shortly told of the French frigate group engaging 3 British merchants just outside Charlestown. We made sail and entered the fight with good wind. The French lined up alongside four of us, with the other two heading around to get on their sterns. With little effort we sunk the first victim, a Raa MC. Abit of maneuvering later, and having not suffered very much damage, our group sunk its next victim, a Herc Sleek. By now the French had decided to try and run, we also found that James Blei had gotten split from our group and was ahead of the French group (See screenshot). With some excellent sailing, he turned to sail through their group and with very little structure left, found myself and Tom for cover. We then set our sights on the Dauntless of Ivan Eperon. He was demasted, and soon sunk. The rest of the French, badly beat, up managed to get out.

Seeing that the points where still increasing on Charlestown we grabbed a few NPC's expecting company each time. We instead learnt that Brogsitter's group went head to head with the heavier French group and lost without sinking one enemy ship. Apparantly there was some foul play from the French (Brog sinking while under Invincible). Upon leaving one of our fights with NPC's we saw that the French frigate group had returned to the area. We immediatly turned and was engaged for the second time. This time we where joined by Uncle Albert T in his Herc frigate. Much like the first fight, we lined up and without suffering much damage sunk another Raa MC (although missed by myself, I was told later we sunk two in total) and forced them to turn tail and run. I was to hunt down Fernand Alvert and strip him of his sails with Alex Delarge while the rest of the group went after Rene Silver in his Herc Sleek. After five minutes of chasing, Alvert's MC Capri was dead in the water and me and Alex quickly sent him to the bottom. Mean while the others had caught Rene Silver in the same fashion and managed to sink his Herc Sleek as well. The rest got away.

We continued to kill French NPC's, hitting a 12 pack in the cause of the evening which was soon joined by a mixture of the French heavy group and two or three of the faster ships. Knowing we where out gunned, we left the fight without casulties. A little while later I had to call it a day. The French had Charlestown to 3.5k and it was 1AM in the morning when I logged off. Ubert had already told us that they where going to night flip it, and we could defend it or not. Just dont cry.

Result
In all, it was an a brilliant success for our group. Not losing one ship the whole evening, and sinking in all;

x2 Raa MC's

x2 MC Capri's

x2 Herc Sleek's

I havnt been online since too see if the French did indeed flip Charlestown. But I believe they paid more for it then they did on their last few flips. Well done to our group, a good mixture of players!

Lessons Learned
I am glad I turned up to defend the Port. Seeing that much red on the OS can be daunting but it was a night well spent. Being in a group with two well experienced players (Ryan Thomas and Alex Delarge) was really good as I learnt quite alot, which I am sure will help if I find myself leading a SGS PvP group on the OS!

Captain Avis Faegun

Misc