Black Waters: The Toys!
Part One
By Mike Bennighof, Ph.D.
November 2009

Some years ago, we did business with a printer who — our production manager and I believed — made a serious error on a print run. But we had signed the blue line proof, making any such problems our fault since we'd approved their error. Ultimately, this cost us about $10,000, an awful lot of money for a business as small as ours. The accounting manager at the multi-billion-dollar enterprise that made off with our ten grand had no sympathy for my outrage.

"Education," he chortled, "is expensive."

I had lunch with a friend the other day who works there, and she passed on that that charming executive was recently laid off after 30-some years with the firm and basically lost everything. Sometimes karma takes her time, but she does keep her teeth sharp for when she finally comes around.

I've been thinking back to those days when looking over the proofs for our Great War at Sea: Black Waters book. Black Waters sprang onto the schedule instantaneously, as I unloaded boxes of counters from the truck that brought them from our old facility in Virginia Beach to our new warehouse in Alabama. Among them were several boxes of counters and maps for Great War at Sea: U.S. Navy Plan Black, a game that had fallen of our inventory sheets years before. Up until that moment, I believed that no parts for it still existed.

After a couple of hard years, we can't afford to be in the business of warehousing game parts. Everything in that warehouse needs to be contributing to the bottom line. And those boxes did not hold enough parts to justify a reprint of the full game, but were enough around which to create a book supplement. I had the book's title and outline in mind before I put the first box down.

Black Waters includes the counter sheet from the old Plan Black game, something I never expected to see again and certainly did not intend to reprint. It comes from an earlier age of Avalanche Press, when we treated games as almost living beings to be loved and nurtured instead of what they really are: products. Plan Black's counter set was designed to dovetail with those of other games rather than to stand on its own, and that means some odd decisions were made in choosing what to include and what to leave out.

I've since learned not to do that: a boxed game has to stand on its own, VP Lys Fulda preaches, and she's exactly right. Don't worry about future games, don't worry about past products. Assume that the customer will only ever play this one game and give them the best possible fun experience within the game's physical limits. It took a while to learn that, and it was indeed an expensive lesson, but at least we're still around to apply it.

The U.S. Navy

Pre-Dreadnoughts

Plan Black includes the most modern of the American pre-dreadnoughts, the Connecticut class. These followed the semi-dreadnought design concept common to ships drawn up after the Russo-Japanese War, but before the advent of HMS Dreadnought (a period of less than two years). Medium-caliber guns, the war's lessons seemed to show, could do almost as much damage to enemy battleships as the bigger weapons and could maintain a much greater rate of fire.

Connecticut and her five sisters carried four 12-inch guns in two twin turrets mounted fore and aft, like almost all pre-dreadnoughts. They also had eight 8-inch guns, in four twin turrets located at the "corner" positions. American battleships had carried the 8-inch gun as far back as the first such ship, Iowa, laid down in 1891. The secondary battery was also upgraded from the 6-inch guns of previous classes to a 7-inch weapon, and spotters found it impossible to distinguish the fall of 7-inch and 8-inch shot.

Connecticut was fairly large as pre-dreadnoughts went, and Congress sought to restrain costs by mandating a reduction in displacement from the 16,000 tons of Connecticut to 13,000 for the next pair of ships. Idaho and Mississippi — not present in the game set — were quickly judged to be failures and sold off to Greece. The next pair of battleships authorized returned to the 16,000-ton displacement of Connecticut.

South Carolina and Michigan are generally considered to be the U.S. Navy's first dreadnought-type warships, and in fact were designed before HMS Dreadnought. But where Dreadnought was a radical new design, South Carolina was in many respects an improved Connecticut. Early design studies simply replaced the twin 8-inch turrets of Connecticut with single 12-inch mounts, with an eye toward upgrading the six Connecticuts to the same standard.

That would eliminate the problem of confusing 7-inch and 8-inch splashes, but testing showed that the ship's structure could not stand the added strain of the larger weapon's firing from that location. The designers then hit on a super-firing arrangement, mounting another twin 12-inch turret above and behind those already in place. Some feared that the crew of the lower turret would be killed by the blast effects of 12-inch guns going off so close over their heads despite the turret's armored roof. Testing on board a modified coast defense monitor showed no ill effects to assorted livestock jammed into the lower turret, and the design went forward.

Dreadnoughts

The first true American dreadnought, Delaware, represented a huge leap in fighting power. She and her sister, North Dakota, showed clear influence of HMS Dreadnought — though their plans had been completed in early 1906 when Dreadnought had just been laid down. Even while under construction, a Navy commission found a host of problems with the design: the 5-inch tertiary battery was sited too low, hot steam pipes encircled the magazine of Turret Number Three, the two after turrets were too close together and were at the same height, the main battery carried the same model 12-inch guns as the pre-dreadnoughts, and the armor scheme had numerous flaws. Even so, construction went forward lest Congress balk at the cost.

As completed, Delaware could match Dreadnought in speed (21 knots) and was somewhat larger and better-protected, and could fire all 10 of her guns in a broadside where Dreadnought could only bring eight to bear.

Wyoming and Arkansas, the last American battleships with 12-inch guns, also disappointed the admirals. Other nations had already increased the caliber of their main guns, and the Wyoming design with a dozen 12-inch guns was chosen over a similar ship with ten 14-inch guns. Arkansas would serve until the end of World War II, shelling Normandy and various Pacific atolls, while Wyoming ended up as a gunnery training ship.

The next class of American battleships, New York and her sister Texas, followed the 14-inch design rejected for Wyoming. They made one major change, reverting to reciprocal engines rather than the turbines that had powered the previous dreadnoughts. The older type of engine gave less power, but was more reliable and this was considered important for trans-Pacific operations. During the 1920s their engines would be replaced by turbines intended for the battleships cancelled by the Washington treaty.

By 1916, American battleship design had reached the cutting edge, with the radical "all or nothing" protection scheme and a group of seven ships all carrying a uniform armament of a dozen 14-inch guns in four triple turrets. The three-ship New Mexico class had a rakish and very modern appearance thanks to their clipper bows and sleek lines, but were actually very similar to the preceding Pennsylvania. All three served in the Second World War.

Finally, the game includes three examples of the first South Dakota class, big and very powerful ships cancelled in 1922. We took a close look at them in a previous Daily Content piece, found here.

Now that we're moved in at our new home, we're not likely to find any more such orphan counter sheets. But at least we're able to get these back into circulation for those who missed the original game, and to provide a whole raft of new scenarios for those who did pick it up back then. We'll look at more of the toys involved in Part Two.

Don't wait to add these ships to your collection! Click here to order Great War at Sea: Black Waters NOW!