Napoleonic Naval

British: Mike, Chris & Steve each had a squadron of 3 ships. with with crews
French: Jim had a squadron of 4 ships & a squadron 3 ships with regular crews.
Spanish: Mark had a squadron of 4 ships with raw crews.

Random deployment put Mark's Spanish in the far LH corner, Mike's Brits in the far RH corner, Chris & Steve's brits on either side & Jim's French in the near RH corner.  Chance decreed the wind to be coming from the wast - the end of the table nearest the camera. 

We had to move the ships 12" to the north twice to keep them on the table as the ships generally moved that way.  
Chris sailed down on the Spanish as they sailed north away from Mike.
Jim descended on Steve & with 7 ships to 3 soon sunk the Brit 3rd at the end of the squadron.  

Chris crossed the rear of the Spanish squadron & sunk the tail end ship, but the Spanish wore ship & engaged to inflict significant damage on the Brits.
Steve's 2nd ship had to strike it's colours as the admiral made his escape.

The Spanish broke off from Chris' squadron, but the brit squadron was so badly damaged it too stayed out of further action.
Mike & Jim's 1st squadron engaged each other as they came past the island.  The French thought that with 4 ships to 3 & 2 more coming up they had a good chance of a great victory, but the combination of superior British gunnery, damage inflicted by Steve & better British dice soon turned the tables on the French.  They inflicted serious damage & one Brit ship even had to strike its colours, but all eventually all 4 French ships of the squadron had to strike.

The Brits recovered one of their struck ships, but lost one sunk & one captured plus every ship had serious damage while they captured 4 French ships.  
The Spanish considered themselves having done really well to get away with only one ship lost & having severely damaged a British squadron.  
The French lost a whole squadron of 4 ships captured, but the 2nd squadron sailed home with only the flagship having significant damage & a captured British 3rd rate & news of sinking another.
So clearly a British victory in the Times while le Bulletin & el Mundo didn't have to stretch the truth as much as usual to also claim a victory.

The lesson we learned from this battle was that the weather gauge is a two edged sword.  If you have it, you can control the action & have scope for decisive action, but if things go bad, you cannot get away.  Once Mikes' squadron got on top of the French to windward of their line, the French couldn't break off the action by turning & running away downwind.