Setting And Objective

You are the captain of a battleship at the time of Nelson. You have been ordered to proceed with all speed to the Baltic.

In the past 3 months, several of His Majesty's cargo ships have been waylaid and looted by French Privateers. These cargo ships were carrying essential munitions to the troops in the Baltic area and your mission is to find and destroy the said privateers as soon as possible.

Playing

This is in three stages:

1. Your first task is to round Jutland, where intelligence reports a strong enemy gun battery. You can proceed no further until this battery has been knocked out. As your battleship would make too easy a target, you must achieve this with the small gunboat also under your command. This gunboat is armed with a mortar and you must signal to it; the angle of elevation (in degrees) of the battery and the time delay in the fuse. BE WARNED! - you have only one gunboat and so if this is sunk the mission will be aborted.
2. Having successfully dealt with the shore battery, you must attempt to intercept enemy privateers (one at a time) before they reach the safety of the port. To manoeuvre your ship you use the four arrow keys (5, 6, 7, 8). Due to bad lookouts it sometimes takes a long time for the privateer to be sighted and battle stations to be entered. You must, therefore, manoeuvre your ship to within a couple of squares of the enemy and maintain this distance for 2 or 3 seconds. Your task is made more difficult by an unfavourable wind which blows directly from port. You must allow for this in your manoeuvering. There are several privateers. If one escapes, therefore, you will probably still have the opportunity to intercept another. (up to five).
3. On intercepting a privateer, battle stations are entered and you will fight a direct gun battle with the enemy ship. When battle stations are entered, you must wait for Mr. Bush to tell you that the guns are ready to fire. Failure to do so may result in damage to your guns. When told your guns are ready, as quickly as possible, you must select the point of aim (1-9) across the screen and press the appropriate key. As a rough guide, '5' is about half way across.

Spectrum Features Only

In phase 1 you have an escape route to by pass the shore battery. If, however, you elect to follow this route then your final score of Privateers you have sunk will be reduced by 1. In phase 3 the Privateer may be sailing in either direction whereas in the ZX81 they will always sail from West to East.

Criteria for Success/Failure

Your objective is to sink as many of the Privateers as possible, your future promotion depends on your success in this mission.

Loading

See cassette shell.

Side A of the cassette is for the Spectrum 48K.
Side B of the cassette is for the 16K ZX81.

Follow the instructions in the relevant user's manual for your machine, always ensuring that the cassette recorder head is clean and the volume control and leads are correctly adjusted.