Alternate Histories

Achieved a couple things today. First, I finally got in a round of Junior General's Hampton Roads scenario at work.

There were fourteen fourth graders expecting an activity, and the children's librarian was busy. I checked with the teacher and she was amenable - though I presented it as "sea captains and pirates" to begin with.

I divided the kids by color of shirt - five black, nine blue - into teams. (Since Monitor has fewer guns, this is fairer than it sounds.) Then I just went person to person. Each turn, one kid would move a ship, and the rest would take turns "firing". Next turn, whoever was next in line would be "Captain" for the turn and the cycle continued. The firing mechanism is Fred T. Jane's original "pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey" routine, using the bamboo skewers seen in the above photo.

The photo is old, by the way, and I didn't have the storytime rug. Would've come in handy, actually, since the kids were naturally crowding each other; but in general they took turns and learned the procedures quickly. I was limited to the floor-carpet, but it is a blue-grey mix of angled shapes so still quite sea-like.

For presentation, I asked if they'd been studying black history, and they had. I explained that this was based on a real battle from 160 years ago, and that it might take a while or even be a tie because these ships were special. Among the first to be made of iron, cannonballs would usually bounce off! (There were "ooooh"s at this.) I taught them the ship names as well, though I used Merrimac just because it sounds funnier.

I misplaced the rules for casualties (D6 per penetrating hit), but there are other ways to win, by either hitting the waterline, the gunports or Monitor's pilot house. The Virginia took an early lead with a hit on Monitor's turret that knocked out one gun. That slowed return fire. There are two sheets of silhouettes - one short range, one long - and the Union players learned quickly to stay far away where their "crackerbox on a shingle" was too tiny to hit, and Virginia's lower speed and maneuverability made it harder to catch up. Monitor got lots of hits on its bigger target.

However, they eventually learned to present their four-gun broadside, and the few hits they got were eventually crippling. The pilot house was hit once (twice and the captain is blinded and the ship must retreat) and after half an hour they knocked out the second gun. Monitor had to retreat.

Every hit resulted in cheers, and kids were even encouraging their opponents. I had to quiet them down and tell them to sit back and not interfere with each other, but their enthusiasm was infections. The target sheets, punctured in many places, will have to be replaced.

The other thing was that I finished Gordon of Khartoum by Peter Johnson. What caught my eye was that is is part of an "alternative history series" by the publisher, Patrick Stevens Limited or PSL. It's quite enjoyable.

Most of the volume is simply a short history of the actual events of the Gordon Expedition, but the last portion is a what-if. In this one, Captain Lord Beresford doesn't have a boil on his arse, isn't abed during the crucial last week of Gordon's life, and pushes the expedition to rescue him.

While Gordon is rescued, the rest of Khartoum isn't. The British force that went for him is overextended, and the result is disaster. (This isn't quite a spoiler, it's on the book jacket.) What I found most interesting was the reaction of the rest of the world - in particular a Russian push in Afghanistan while the British government is distracted by Africa, and the French and Italian colonies also get drawn into the Mahdist War. There are real possibilities for Imagi-nation campaigning here, and I am itching to use my Central Asian Wofuns again.

The "alternate" story is told in letters and journals from officers and journalists. I've always liked "epistolary" fashion in writing. After the battles are over, it returns to potted history, but even the political possibilities are absorbing. There is a taste of yellow journalism all through the book; journalists played a major part in the actual campaign, one even being commissioned as an officer in a pinch.

I am looking for other books in this putative series, but haven't found them yet. "PSL" is too common a phrase for Google. If anyone has seen other books from them, please let me know!