Action - 1721 - January 12 - The Crushing Defeat at Port-of-Spain

Ships in Action:

 * James Maddox - HMS Confounder
 * Seth Seaborn - Trinity-class 2nd Rate
 * William Sherrin - Reason-class 4th Rate
 * Richard Moradir - Hercules-class Heavy frigate
 * Roger Berett - Alexander-class 4th Rate

Ememies Six french frigates. Ms Riet was the only name I recognized. Most were 50, I think there was one lev 43. I think there were a couple MC Caps, a Gallant, and some Herc varients.

Action Setup:
After a brief, successful defense of Charlestown, Captain Pastile left our number, and we were contemplating further action. The choices were to join the pvp around Santiago, or attempt to grind down Port-of-Spain, in the red zone.

We were in mostly very heavy ships, and it was decided, perhaps not wisely, to go to PoS in our current group set up. We were a man down and a mix of line ships and frigates. It was not one of our smarter decisions.

The Action Itself:
We traveled into the red and saw the French grinding group's battle in the distance. They had just finished a battle and were popping out. I counted four of them. We knew we'd have to deal with them if we were down here, so we moved to attack with a favorable wind.

I took the lead in my Mercy and called out a center target, but we had a hard time bringing all our guns to bear and we didn't want to fire until we could focus our fire. We finally all focused on a target and brought him down to a low structure, but he ducked behind the Frenchies, disengaging.

I was then the subject of a pummeling and went into the drink. From my wreckage I could watch the battle for 5 minutes. We kept a good line, but the formation was always convex, facing the enemy, so focused fire was difficult. The French were spread out, but they were in lighter frigates and could afford to be. They kept us at a distance, eventually picking off Berret in the rear, then everyone else one-by-one until the Trinity was all that remained.

Seaborn surrendered, which was naturally refused, and was sunk.

The Result:
SGS Losses: Total

French Losses: None that I was aware of.

Lessons Learned:
It's hard to pick the fight apart because everything was done poorly. First, we shouldn't have been there. We didn't even have six ships, yet we thought to risk a 2nd rate in the zone. Second, my Mercy shouldn't have been the lead ship. The first and last ships in a line take the most abuse. We should have planned better. Third, we didn't buff buddy. Fourth, we didn't call out skill combos, or URR a ship in a concentrated way.

It was a very sad loss to the squadron and Captain Dai took us to the woodshed for wasting the Kings blood and treasure on such folly.

We shall be lucky if any of us keep our commissions.