Jane's Naval Wargame

The following discussion regarding the naval wargame produced by Fred Jane, author of the well-known annual Fighting Ships, appeared originally on MARHST-L in December 1999, and is reproduced here by permission.


From Richard Pelvin (rpelvin@hotmail.com)

Fred Jane's naval wargame dates back at least as far as 1898 when he read a paper on it to the United Services Institute. This may possibly be found in the Institute's journal of that time.

The journal _The Engineer_ Vol 86, 9 December 1898 published a description of the game which is reproduced in Donald F. Featherstone _Naval War Games_ London, Stanley Paul, 3rd impression 1971. This book devotes a whole chapter to Jane's game. It refers to Jane's book _How to Play the Naval War Game_ published in 1912 and extracts the principal points of the rules from it. I seem to recall that Jane published some rules in early editions of _Fighting Ships_ but this may be a trick of memory. Featherstone doesn't mention it.

[editor's note: certainly the 1905-06 edition does indeed have a set of revised rules]


Last Updated: 2 January, 2000.

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