Why Imry Florent isnt a terrible admiral

[That guy]

People keep saying how Imry Florent is a stupid admiral and that Stannis should have given the command of his fleet to Davos(because a ex smuggler who has had zero experience commanding more then one ship should totally be put in command of the entire invasion fleet, but that's another issue), but does Imry's abilities as admiral really deserve this hate. well after reading the chapters illustrating Imry's plan and how he prepared his captains, and how he set up the battle line. Imry's strategy and foresight was actually pretty decent. 

First lets talk about the main contributor to the destruction of the Baratheon fleet, wildfire. Imry actually warmed his officers about how the Kings Landing garrison force would be armed with wildfire, 

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He grimaced. Burning pitch was one thing, wildfire quite another. Evil stuff, and well-nigh unquenchable. Smother it under a cloak and the cloak took fire; slap at a fleck of it with your palm and your hand was aflame. "Piss on wildfire and your cock burns off," old seamen liked to say. Still, Ser Imry had warned them to expect a taste of the alchemists' vile substance. Fortunately, there were few true pyromancers left. They will soon run out, Ser Imry had assured them.

Yes Imry was wrong about how much wildfire there would be and its effectiveness, but he would have been right if one thing didn't happen, dragons. It is established that the existence of living dragons greatly speeds up the production, and makes it more potent. If Daenerys didn't hatch those dragons then Imry would have been correct about the situation of wildfire. Imry had absolutely no reason to believe that dragons have come to being again, and his assumption about the wildfire situation is as accurate as possible given the information he has available. Imry warned his captains about this possible danger, and on this point shows some competency. 

Imry's battle strategy has also been subject to much critique by many as well. Most people describe it as just throwing all his ships into the bay rashly without any consideration. This isnt really an accurate view of the strategy, 

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He had organized the fleet into ten lines of battle, each of twenty ships. The first two lines would sweep up the river to engage and destroy Joffrey's little fleet, or "the boy's toys" as Ser Imry dubbed them, to the mirth of his lordly captains. Those that followed would land companies of archers and spearmen beneath the city walls, and only then join the fight on the river. The smaller, slower ships to the rear would ferry over the main part of Stannis's host from the south bank, protected by Salladhor Saan and his Lyseni, who would stand out in the bay in case the Lannisters had other ships hidden up along the coast, poised to sweep down on their rear.

This is actually a pretty sound strategy for what he knew about Kings landing, and for what he had available. He sent one fifth of his ships (the ones best designed to fight other ships) of his ships to engage the significantly smaller enemy fleet. Another portion of his fleet landed archers and spear-men to gain a foot hold on the shore and then join the fight themselves against the enemy fleet. This allows them to already have a significant force to maintain a hold on the shore for the main host while adding more ships to further overwhelm the enemy fleet. This also serves to protect the slower ships of the fleet that were to transport the main land force to the shore. The finale part of his battle order was the Lyseni fleet that acted as the rearguard that had the purpose of protecting the fleet's rear against any other ships the enemy might have posed elsewhere. This strategy was actually decent, and had cautious elements to it. If the wildfire production and potency was not drastically increased by dragons, then this strategy would have likely smashed Joffery's fleet and landed Stannis's whole army on the shores of Kings Landing in good time. 

What do you guys think about Imry, or other commanders at Blackwater?

 

[elder brother jonothor dar]

Nice analysis you missed out the boom chain but the fleet was already committed by then and even Davos didn't know what to make of it.

The fleet was smashed but without Tywin falling on Stannis, what ships remained would have been sufficient to ferry enough troops to take the city and win the war.

[That guy]

13 hours ago, elder brother jonothor dar said:

Nice analysis you missed out the boom chain but the fleet was already committed by then and even Davos didn't know what to make of it.

The fleet was smashed but without Tywin falling on Stannis, what ships remained would have been sufficient to ferry enough troops to take the city and win the war.

Yeah i didn't talk about the chain mostly because the damage that the chain did was dependent on the wildfire being as plentiful and potent as it was. If the wildfire was not able to devastate the fleet, then the portion of the fleet designated to ferry troops would have transported the land force. If Tyrion only had the chain which he could then he could have stopped the fleet from attacking from the bay, but it is my understanding that there was other places to land troops as the Lyseni force was able to pick up the survivors despite being outside the chain.  

[The Mountain That Flies]

I do agree that Imry gets more hate than is warranted, but not using scout ships was an arrogant mistake. I've never been on the "Davos for Admiral" train that the OP rightly criticizes, but Stannis is the former Master of Ships and was by all accounts an outstanding naval commander. Either he (or someone in the chain of command) should have made that very fundamental call. Even when you are certain of victory, basic fact checking is always warreneted.

[Lord Varys]

That is a pretty good analysis. Imry had no way of knowing about Aerys' old fruits. And even if he had, the volatile nature of the wildfire would have made it impossible to make use those in a conventional way.

Tyrion successfully burned a huge portion of Stannis' fleet at the cost of destroying more or less what was left of Joffrey's ships. That was a Pyrrhic victory.

4 minutes ago, The Mountain That Flies said:

I do agree that Imry gets more hate than is warranted, but not using scout ships was an arrogant mistake. I've never been on the "Davos for Admiral" train that the OP rightly criticizes, but Stannis is the former Master of Ships and was by all accounts an outstanding naval commander. Either he (or someone in the chain of command) should have made that very fundamental call. Even when you are certain of victory, basic fact checking is always warreneted.

You are right that scouting the river first would have been a good idea. The chain should have made them cautious. And they certainly should have dispatched a sizable contingent of men immediately to seize the tower on southern shore of the river.

[The Drunkard]

The use of scout ships wouldn't have revealed anything that Stannis' men on the southern shore couldn't already see, and even if they were used they'd be shot down or boarded before reaching the fleet waiting upriver, and even if they did reach the ships upriver and return to Imry the sum total of their knowledge would be that there's a winch tower, an absent boom chain and a fleet of ~50 ships waiting for them, which wouldn't have changed the plans. The only real mistake Imry made was leaving the winch tower hostile to his rear, but neither Stannis nor any other commander thought it was critical so the blame isn't only his.

[Trigger Warning]

Just as The Drunkard stated what would scout ships achieve? They would see the Lannister fleet and probably assume that the hulks are loaded with Lannister soldiers, they're not going to get close enough to notice wildfire and they have no reason to risk getting that close unless they were already acting on the assumption that said ships were loaded with ridiculous amounts of the substance. I think it would be assumed that if anything was truly amiss the men on Stannis' side of the river that had been sitting in full view of the Lannister fleet for days would attempt to communicate with them. 

Regarding the the chain the most likely scenario would be that the Lannisters would attempt to cut Stannis' fleet in half, in which case their best option is to get as many ships through quickly to overwhelm the small Lannister fleet, they were already late, Stannis would probably tear Imry a new one if he halted the entire assault and anchored his fleet to deal with a chain tower, if that was anyone's business it was Stannis'. 

Most criticism that falls on Imry simply comes down to hindsight about not anticipating such large quantities of wildfire being used in such a manner. Halting the fleet would have saved it but in any other circumstances he'd be getting chewed out for being incompetent and too cautious, he'd probably be getting blamed for giving Tywin time to attack on this board all the time. 

He has limited room to manoeuvre, he has to smash the Lannister fleet by simply overwhelming them head on since he can't envelop them, even with an open ocean to manoeuvre naval warfare at this technological level wasn't massively complicated once battle was joined. 

[Lord Varys]

Scouts may have been able to goad the Lannisters it setting the ships and the river aflame. If Imry had taken the time to take control of the chains they would either be forced to cancel the entire plan or try to destroy as many ships with the wildfire as they possibly could.

[That guy]

On 17/07/2017 at 7:38 AM, Lord Varys said:

Scouts may have been able to goad the Lannisters it setting the ships and the river aflame. If Imry had taken the time to take control of the chains they would either be forced to cancel the entire plan or try to destroy as many ships with the wildfire as they possibly could.

The purpose of the scouts would have been to just survey the bay before the battle, so it is unlikely that they would have gone beyond the chain, so the wildfire would have most likely not been used on the scout ships. In regards to the idea of them taking the winch towers, it is extremly difficult in a medieval naval battle for an admiral to give new orders to ships that are not his own. It would also break up the battle formation and greatly delay the assualt if a portion of the fleet had to anchor off the wench towers and attack with sufficient men to capture them. Keep in mind that the first wave of ships did not carry troops prepared to fight on land, so the first wave would have had to deal with the enemy fleet themselves while the portion of the fleet deals with taking the towers and landing their soldiers on the shore. This delay potentially could have inflicted significant casualties on the first wave. It is also extremly uncommom for a captain to act on his own initiative and divert from the battle strategy which would have been required for the capture of the towers, which could have appeared as just lookout towers to the fleet.

[Lord Varys]

@That guy:

That is all correct. The only thing one could say should have been done was to first scout the river mouth and surrounding area while the fleet was anchoring out in the bay before they finally made their battle plans. Making plans back at Storm's End - which seems what they did - wasn't all that good an idea considering they had no good intel at that time.

The fact that they had the chain there and did not use it to block access to the river should have got them thinking. The only tactical use of the chain if it wasn't used to prevent them from taking control of the river would be to lure them into a trap.

I'm not sure taking control of the southern winch tower would have helped all that much. If Tyrion was smart - and he is smart - he would have had no winch in the southern tower but only on the northern shore. In the southern tower the chain could have been simply mortared into a huge rock or stone, preventing Stannis' men from actually lowering it again after the men in the northern tower had blocked the river mouth.

But in general - neither Imry Florent nor Stannis himself had any chance to figure out how much wildfire Joffrey's people had left or recently produced. And they could only have expected Tyrion's stratagem if they had had that information.

[Universal Sword Donor]

No one would ever be able to convince me Imry is a good commander. I know I wrote one before, and apparently that one was a rewrite of another post I couldn't find. Apparently it's a fairly popular topic

*************

Can't find a post from a similar thread, but yeah there are a bunch of reasons to send scouts.

1) Imry knows from fishermen that the chain towers have been constructed (or at least started):

“The dwarf had been busy building some sort of boom to close off the mouth of the river, though the fishermen differed as to whether the work had been completed or not.”

If he sends scouts in he can determine, as one would want to, whether or not his ships would be trapped in the harbor by a giant chain they can't control.

2) His battle plan involves 40 ships going to attack the KL royal fleet, which we know is bigger. He might not. That's useful information considering that he is trying to use the first 40 ships to "smash the boy king's fleet" while landing men with his next three lines. Having 5-10 warships with unfettered access to troop ships isn't grand strategy.

3) Being trapped by a chain might not seem like a big deal -- they can just attack and seize the towers after KL -- but Imry himself knows that KL will have scorpions. He orders their sails furled. He clearly recognizes that counter-siege weapons are a danger.

“Ser Imry had decreed that they would enter the river on oars alone, so as not to expose their sails to the scorpions and spitfires on the walls of King’s Landing.”

Yet he still doesn't send scouts ahead to see if the chain is functional, fully exposing his entire fleet to counter-siege weapons like scorpions, ballistae, catapaults, trebuchets, burning pitch, and others with the possibility of being jammed together in the narrow river mouth. Even ignoring the wild fire, that is pants on head retarded. 

The worst part is he delivers people to the mud gate, which is entirely unnecessary and a bad idea when thinking of the chain. They can safely deliver men to the north bank and the Iron gate while completely avoiding being trapped by the boom.

tl;dr: I think Imry is a complete moron and I don't even think I listed everything I wrote up last time

[Trigger Warning]

14 hours ago, Lord Varys said:

Scouts may have been able to goad the Lannisters it setting the ships and the river aflame. If Imry had taken the time to take control of the chains they would either be forced to cancel the entire plan or try to destroy as many ships with the wildfire as they possibly could.

This sounds like you're suggesting that the scouts are going to be acting under the assumption that those hulks are stuffed with wildfire. The scouts would have a look, see the fleet and and the towers and then return to Imry. They have absolutely no reason to get close enough to spot the wildfire unless they were already looking for it. Even if they take the winch towers they still have to engage and destroy Tyrion's fleet to continue with the landing, either that or ferry troops to the North which I doubt Stannis will allow since there's no apparent need to do so, Tyrion's not going to unleash the wildfire until battle is joined, in any case all this is doing it costing time which is precisely what the defenders need. 

 

 

1 hour ago, Universal Sword Donor said:

snip

Honestly the reason why I disagree with the scouts is because the plan is moronic with or without them, everything from marching off with inadequate supplies for siege (Ahh we'll just capture a walled city with a citadel with thousands of defenders through an assault, no worries) to just flat out trying to storm the city mid river crossing, the entire idea is just rule of cool for GRRM to have a naval battle before the walls of King's Landing. With or without the scouts and the chain he still has to smash his way up the Blackwater Rush, really they should have just landed North of the city or Stannis should have just crossed up river. 
 

The Blackwater always seemed to be inspired by the fall of Constantinople in 1204 but with much less nuance. 

[Universal Sword Donor]

8 minutes ago, Trigger Warning said:

Honestly the reason why I disagree with the scouts is because the plan is moronic with or without them, everything from marching off with inadequate supplies for siege (Ahh we'll just capture a walled city with a citadel with thousands of defenders through an assault, no worries) to just flat out trying to storm the city mid river crossing, the entire idea is just rule of cool for GRRM to have a naval battle before the walls of King's Landing. With or without the scouts and the chain he still has to smash his way up the Blackwater Rush, really they should have just landed North of the city or Stannis should have just crossed up river. 
 

The Blackwater always seemed to be inspired by the fall of Constantinople in 1204 but with much less nuance. 

Well I don't disagree with that line of thinking. Simply landing near the iron gate would have mitigated literally all of these problems if they were dead set on attacking KL (and then hopefully running).

[Trigger Warning]

The ridiculous thing is that Stannis made no attempt to take the chain tower on his side of the river at all, would have been no easy task but he was the bloody Master of Ships, he knows that thing is new and he knows full well how he intends to cross the river. It just comes across as being written out of character, we're told that Stannis is a solid commander but if that's the case this strikes me as a character acting dumb to fit the spectacle that's already been laid out. If it was a case of the tower being too strong to capture in the time given (which isn't ridiculous considering the struggle such fortifications represent) then how does he expect to ferry an army across the river under opposition and not only carry the walls but also the citadel. 

Basically the Blackwater's dumb, it's fun to read, it's not fun to analyse. 

[direpupy]

They only reason i see to send (scout) ships ahead, is to lay contact with Stannis and the forces already there to learn wheter anything has changed since they last spoke at Storms End. And to beter coordinate the attack by not just showing up and hoping Stannis forces are standing ready to be ferried over. Getting 20000 men to move from there camp into the right position is no mean feat and actually takes a lot of time.

[Coolbeard the Exile]

Yes i dont see why everyone would want Davos as their master of ships. He has very little experience when it comes to violence and he certainly has no education when it comes to warfare or leadership. Also his low status though not to his own fault makes him uninspiring.

Imry and Stannis really should have taken the winch towers immediatly but other than that his plan was as good as it could be. It was doing it the way he did it or going to the iron gate.

[Universal Sword Donor]

1 hour ago, Coolbeard the Exile said:

Yes i dont see why everyone would want Davos as their master of ships. He has very little experience when it comes to violence and he certainly has no education when it comes to warfare or leadership. Also his low status though not to his own fault makes him uninspiring.

Imry and Stannis really should have taken the winch towers immediatly but other than that his plan was as good as it could be. It was doing it the way he did it or going to the iron gate.

The winch towers were pretty formidable. I don't blame Stannis for not trying to take it.

“He could see three links of a huge chain snaking out from a hole no bigger than a man’s head and disappearing under the water. The towers had a single door, set a good twenty feet off the ground. Bowmen on the roof of the northern tower were firing down at Prayer and Devotion.”

Seriously I can't understand how the Iron Gate wasn't an option.

http://awoiaf.westeros.org/index.php/King's_Landing

An unopposed landing outside of the walls leaves you a few hundred yards from the iron gate.

[That guy]

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1) Imry knows from fishermen that the chain towers have been constructed (or at least started):

“The dwarf had been busy building some sort of boom to close off the mouth of the river, though the fishermen differed as to whether the work had been completed or not.”

If he sends scouts in he can determine, as one would want to, whether or not his ships would be trapped in the harbor by a giant chain they can't control.

As far as Imry knows, Kings Landing has a vastly inferior fleet, 57 ships, so they have no reason to suspect a trap. Wildfire became extremely ineffective and difficult to produce after the extinction of dragons. As far as Imry knows this is still the case. So Imry has no reason to think tat Kings landing could enact a trap on them. When they saw that the chain was not raised to block them from accessing the river, it would have been perfectly reasonable for Irmy to assume that the construction on the chain was not completed.All scouts would have saw was two towers, and unless they were wildly incompetent as scouts and got close enough to see the the chain itself, they could not have judged the progress of the construction of the chain.

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2) His battle plan involves 40 ships going to attack the KL royal fleet, which we know is bigger. He might not. That's useful information considering that he is trying to use the first 40 ships to "smash the boy king's fleet" while landing men with his next three lines. Having 5-10 warships with unfettered access to troop ships isn't grand strategy.

Sending 40 ships against the 57 the Lannister's had would have been enough to hold them while those three lines landed archers and spear men. After they landed these these troops, ships from those three lines were to engage the enemy fleet. This would have 100 good quality ships against the 57 ships the Lannister's had that was comprised of ships taken from traders and inexperienced sailors that evidently in the Davos chapter describing the initial stage of the battle, were not able to hold against Stannis's ships. This would left the remaining ships to freely ferry the land force across the river. 

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3) Being trapped by a chain might not seem like a big deal -- they can just attack and seize the towers after KL -- but Imry himself knows that KL will have scorpions. He orders their sails furled. He clearly recognizes that counter-siege weapons are a danger.

“Ser Imry had decreed that they would enter the river on oars alone, so as not to expose their sails to the scorpions and spitfires on the walls of King’s Landing.”

Yet he still doesn't send scouts ahead to see if the chain is functional, fully exposing his entire fleet to counter-siege weapons like scorpions, ballistae, catapaults, trebuchets, burning pitch, and others with the possibility of being jammed together in the narrow river mouth. Even ignoring the wild fire, that is pants on head retarded. 

The worst part is he delivers people to the mud gate, which is entirely unnecessary and a bad idea when thinking of the chain. They can safely deliver men to the north bank and the Iron gate while completely avoiding being trapped by the boom.

How exactly would scouts find out if the chain is functional, again all scout would see is the towers. No matter what he did his fleet would have been exposed to these things,and without the possibility of finding out if the chain is functional, he has no reason to believe his fleet will be caught in the river. Even if the chain never existed, their fleet would have been exposed to anti siege weapons, that how amphibious assaults work. In regards to landing at the Iron Gate, while the fleet had some archers and Spear men, the main force commanded by Stannis was across the river and if you look at the map of king Landing you can see how deploying ships to the iron gate would leave Stannis’s force stranded on the wrong side of the river. The force that the ships carried was too small to capture the Iron gate. To get the soldiers needed to breach the walls they needed to ferry Stannis’s soldiers across the river which required going past the chain.                    

[Universal Sword Donor]

19 minutes ago, That guy said:

As far as Imry knows, Kings Landing has a vastly inferior fleet, 57 ships, so they have no reason to suspect a trap. Wildfire became extremely ineffective and difficult to produce after the extinction of dragons. As far as Imry knows this is still the case. So Imry has no reason to think tat Kings landing could enact a trap on them. When they saw that the chain was not raised to block them from accessing the river, it would have been perfectly reasonable for Irmy to assume that the construction on the chain was not completed.All scouts would have saw was two towers, and unless they were wildly incompetent as scouts and got close enough to see the the chain itself, they could not have judged the progress of the construction of the chain.

Other than the fact he knows there is a possible boom that goes across the river AND he warns his captains to furl their sails because of the siege weapons? Sure let's go with that. Your definition of "wildly incompetent" is pretty far removed from reality, but worse came to worse they could rendezvous with Stannis and ask him since his men were within easy bowshot of the walls.

19 minutes ago, That guy said:

Sending 40 ships against the 57 the Lannister's had would have been enough to hold them while those three lines landed archers and spear men. After they landed these these troops, ships from those three lines were to engage the enemy fleet. This would have 100 good quality ships against the 57 ships the Lannister's had that was comprised of ships taken from traders and inexperienced sailors that evidently in the Davos chapter describing the initial stage of the battle, were not able to hold against Stannis's ships. This would left the remaining ships to freely ferry the land force across the river. 

 

Those 50+ ships would have the advantage for an hour or more. Do you realize how long it would take to land over a thousand men? Then reorganizing under fire from the walls and siege weapons? Look at the defensive details again man. Communication under those circumstances is basically impossible and you're asking ships to drop off men and then sail against the other half of the fleet to come back out to the bay and fight piecemeal.

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How exactly would scouts find out if the chain is functional, again all scout would see is the towers. No matter what he did his fleet would have been exposed to these things,and without the possibility of finding out if the chain is functional, he has no reason to believe his fleet will be caught in the river. Even if the chain never existed, their fleet would have been exposed to anti siege weapons, that how amphibious assaults work. In regards to landing at the Iron Gate, while the fleet had some archers and Spear men, the main force commanded by Stannis was across the river and if you look at the map of king Landing you can see how deploying ships to the iron gate would leave Stannis’s force stranded on the wrong side of the river. The force that the ships carried was too small to capture the Iron gate. To get the soldiers needed to breach the walls they needed to ferry Stannis’s soldiers across the river which required going past the chain.                    

The chains stick out of the tower. If it is completed, it will stick out of both towers:

“He could see three links of a huge chain snaking out from a hole no bigger than a man’s head and disappearing under the water. The towers had a single door, set a good twenty feet off the ground. Bowmen on the roof of the northern tower were firing down at Prayer and Devotion.”

Split up the scout ships to go north and and south of the river mouth. OR just play it relatively safe and drop off the men near the iron gate and then ferry Stannis' men over. Nothing is stopping them from ferrying the men over. And the men on the troop ships were spearmen, men-at-arms, and archers. They had plenty of heavy infantry to storm the walls (or merely just even split the forces inside the walls.

[Coolbeard the Exile]

11 hours ago, Universal Sword Donor said:

The winch towers were pretty formidable. I don't blame Stannis for not trying to take it.

“He could see three links of a huge chain snaking out from a hole no bigger than a man’s head and disappearing under the water. The towers had a single door, set a good twenty feet off the ground. Bowmen on the roof of the northern tower were firing down at Prayer and Devotion.”

Seriously I can't understand how the Iron Gate wasn't an option.

http://awoiaf.westeros.org/index.php/King's_Landing

An unopposed landing outside of the walls leaves you a few hundred yards from the iron gate.

Im sure Stannis thought of it but it makes sense to attack the closest point just by the sound of it.