WesWorld

Folks:

Over in the Navalism sim, my nation (Gran Colombia) currently occupies the upper Amazon, with a modest port at historical Manaus, Brazil. That far up the river, the Amazon's still a few kilometres wide and can handle ships with drafts of less than five metres. Gran Colombia has deployed two small protected cruisers, four torpedo-boat destroyers, and some lesser gunboats into the river, with several requisitioned auxiliaries in support.

The focus of Gran Colombian activity is supplying and supporting a land campaign, using the watershed as a highway system and denying it to the enemy, a city-state north of the river. Logistics are a significant issue, as the region is (apart from the enemy city-state) pretty much untamed rain forest.

It's very possible that Gran Colombia will soon find itself warring with the resident superpower, France, for control of this area. My question to y'all is: how would you foresee naval combat on the Amazon taking place with 1904-ish technology and equipment?

I don't know about regular combat in a relatively confined space, but the closest examples I can think of are American Civil War based on the Mississippi River.

Riverine craft can be fairly well armed, but that was for the much smaller cannon. Larger warships did operate up river a ways, but the Amazon is far larger I would think.

Space and speed are your restrictions. There would probabaly be boarding actions, though I don't know if you want your enemy getting on your ships.

Boarding will be avoided where possible...

I can see that river currents will affect both ships and torpedos - as the "local", I think this will be mitigated to some degree with the assumption that I've collected some current estimates along the river and can account for it, to a point, when moving or aiming torpedoes. Still, I expect torps to be less accurate than usual.

Short ranges because of the river meanderings. Often attacked from shore. Probably hard for your possible enemies to move artillery along the river bank but a possibility.

I'd go with a couple of 152mm guns for use against targets on the ground. Main batteries of 102mm guns as they fire quicker. Shouldn't be much different at 1-2km range. Lots of a autocannon, either 1.5pdrs or 3pdrs should fit the bill. They have enough range to blanket likely targets. Torpedoes are probably a bad idea with the current, and I'm not sure there will be anything worth torpedoing.

Something similar to the British river gunboats of the period.

Torpedos would be of little use though some ships such as the Brazilian 800 ton Tiradentes shiped 2x14" tubes.

You will need lots of small arms though, Maxims or an equivilent.

Maxims would be good, as would Hotchkiss and Nordenfeldt guns for shooting at larger soft targets. I would think along the lines of gunboats or river monitors rather than deep-sea designs, a couple of larger guns (around 6", depending on what you're using), then a number of smaller guns to supply additional fire. Torpedoes are too likely to hit a sand bar or be carried off-course by the current to be of much value, but a ram bow might occassionally be of value.

In the longer term - if I don't get booted out - purpose-built river monitors are in the works. I do have three small gunboats in service, but the situation was, overall, not anticipated and I had to improvise with what ships I had on hand.