Quote Originally Posted by Slyspy
Generally speaking a ship in a fight of that nature would be under minimum sail in order to free up crewmen and in order to minimize the risk of fire.
I disagree. I take your point about minimizing damage for sails that aren't actually needed, but the sails are the ship's "engine," and you'd want enough way on to maneuver under the prevailing sea and wind conditions. It might make sense to fight mostly reefed like that in a gale, but notice how the other ship has full sail on. That's what doesn't make sense.

Going into irons, while extremely risky, could and did happen. Usually, of course, by accident.
Arrrhhhh, not on MY fleet! Or I'll have the captain in a different sort of "irons." More to the point, I hope we won't be fighting AI captains that don't know how to tack in combat, and that there's a semi-realistic wind/sea model that actually requires it.