War of Åland - The Battle of Bomarsund - planning - part 1

Please refer to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Bomarsund for basic information regarding the conflict.

Now, as for wargaming purposes, the battle seems to be rather dull. Take 25 British ships, anchor them and gradually pummel the fortress to smithereens. Not very exciting, but this is more or less what really happened - in addition to the fortress also being besieged from land.

Given that the folk song concerns this specific battle, I have no good reason to skip it, so perhaps it's time for a bit of alternate history - a "what if" -scenario.

The core elements will involve:
- Bomarsund fortress (obviously)
- A relief fleet of Russian ships / Finnish merchant ships that are inferior to the British ones, but still able to put up a decent fight (this never happened, but I want a naval wargame, so something like this is needed).
- make an assumption that the French and British infantry hadn't destroyed the towers of Brännklint and Notvik so that Bomarsund would have it's contemporary power at use at this "what if" -battle
- as in history, the Bomarsund tower cannons will have worse effective range than the British fleet, so this will have to be represented somehow and to be both exploited by the British fleet and used as a tactic by the Russians.

The victory conditions for the British fleet will be to either a) destroy the 3 towers or b) drive off the relief fleet. The Russian side will attempt to drive the British fleet more within range of the tower's cannons thus getting their real firepower into use and eventually drive the British off.

Map showing a bit of the geography of the area and the arrival of the British fleet

The British arrive from the South as is historically accurate and the Russian relief fleet would arrive from the North. The logical assumption of their origins would be Uusikaupunki, where at least in the summer of 1855 there were Russian troops positioned there 7 km from the town commanded by colonel Engelhard. Mind you, this was a year after the destruction of Bomarsund, but that would provide a viable naval base from where the relief would operate from and there exists a naval route via Vargatafjärden from the North that connects to routes leading to Uusikaupunki. Not that far-fetched hopefully.