How Firm A Foundation – Snippet 30
         “I’m not sure how our sudden acquisition of so many galleons is going to affect that decision,” he continued. “On the one hand, we’ve already revealed the existence of the shell-firing smoothbores, and I’m sure that bastard Clyntahn is going to provide dispensations right and left while the Church works on duplicating them. I still don’t see the additional theoretical range being all that valuable in a sea fight, what with the ships’ relative motion, but I’m beginning to think that if Ehdwyrd has the capacity available it might not be a bad idea to begin manufacturing and stockpiling the rifled pieces. That way they’d be available quickly if and when, as you say, we decide to shift over to them.”
         “I’ll look into that, Sir,” Seamount said, chalk clacking as he turned to make a note to himself on the waiting slate. “It’ll probably mean he needs to further increase his wire-drawing capacity, as well, so the additional leadtime would almost certainly be a good thing.”
         Rock Point nodded, and Seamount nodded back.
         “Second,” he continued, “at that same meeting you suggested Commander Mahndrayn give some thought to the best way to protect a ship from shellfire. He’s done that, and discussed it with Sir Dustyn Olyvyr, as well. We don’t have anything like a finished plan yet, but a few things have become evident to us.”
         “Such as?” Rock Point prompted, and Seamount gestured for Mahndrayn to take over.
         “Well,” the commander said in the soft, surprisingly melodious tenor which always sounded just a bit odd to Rock Point coming out of someone who seemed so intense, “the first thing we realized was that wooden armor simply won’t work, Sir. We can make the ships’ scantlings thicker, but even if they’re too thick for a shell to actually smash through them, we can’t make them thick enough to guarantee it won’t penetrate into them before it detonates. If that happens, it would be almost as bad as no ‘armor’ at all. It could even be worse, given the fire hazard and how much worse the splinters would be. Another objection to wood is its weight. It’s a lot more massive for the same strength than iron, and the more we looked at it, the more obvious it became that iron armor that prevented shells from penetrating at all or actually broke them up on impact was the only practical answer.”
         “Practical?” Rock Point asked with a faint smile, and Mahndrayn chuckled sourly.
         “Within limits, Sir. Within limits.” The commander shrugged. “Actually, Master Howsmyn seems to feel that with his new smelting processes and the heavier hammer and rolling mills those ‘accumulators’ of his make possible he probably can provide iron plate to us in useful thicknesses and dimensions within the next six months to a year. He’s not sure about quantities yet, but my observation’s been that every one of his estimates for increased productivity has erred on the side of conservatism. And one thing’s certain — we haven’t seen any evidence that anyone on the other side would be in a position to match his production for years to come.”
         “That’s true enough,” Rock Point conceded. In fact, it was even truer than Mahndrayn realized, although that didn’t mean enough small foundries couldn’t produce at least some useful quantities of armor, even using old-fashioned muscle power to hammer out the plates.
         “Assuming Master Howsmyn can manufacture the plate, and that we can come up with a satisfactory way of securing it to the hull, there are still going to be weight considerations,” Mahndrayn continued. “Iron gives better protection than wood, but building in enough protection out of anything to stop shellfire is going to drive up displacements. That’s one of the problems I’ve been discussing with Sir Dustyn.
         “I understand Doctor Mahklyn at the College is also working with Sir Dustyn on mathematical ways to predict displacements and sail power and stability. I’m afraid I’m not too well informed on that, and neither is Sir Dustyn, for that matter. He’s a practical designer of the old school, but he’s at least willing to give Doctor Mahklyn’s formulas a try once they’re finished. In the meantime, though, it’s obvious hull strength is already becoming an issue in our current designs. There’s simply an upper limit on the practical dimensions and weights which can be constructed out of a material like wood, and we’re approaching them rapidly. Sir Dustyn’s been working on several ways to reinforce the hull’s longitudinal strength, including diagonal planking and angled trusses between frames, but the most effective one he’s come up with uses iron. Basically, he’s boring holes in the ships’ frames, then using long iron bolts between adjacent frames to stiffen the hull. Obviously, he hasn’t had very long to observe the approach’s success at sea, but so far he says it looks very promising.
         “When I approached him about the notion of hanging iron armor on the outside of the ship, however, he told me immediately that he didn’t think a wooden hull was going to be very practical. I’d already expected that response, so I asked him what he thought about going to a ship that was wooden-planked but iron-framed. Frankly, I expected him to think the notion was preposterous, but it turns out he’d already been thinking in that direction, himself. In fact, his suggestion was that we should think about building the entire ship out of iron.”
         Rock Point’s eyes widened, and this time his surprise was genuine. Not at the notion of iron or steel-hulled vessels, but at the discovery that Sir Dustyn Olyvyr was already thinking in that direction.
         “I can see where that would offer some advantages,” he said after a moment. “But I can see a few drawbacks, too. For example, you can repair a wooden hull almost anywhere. A shattered iron frame member would be just a bit more difficult for the carpenters to fix! And then there’s the question of whether or not even Master Howsmyn could produce iron in quantities like that.”
         “Oh, I agree entirely, Sir. I was impressed by the audacity of the suggestion, though, and the more I’ve thought about it, the more I have to say I believe the advantages would vastly outweigh the drawbacks — assuming, as you say, Master Howsmyn could produce the iron we needed. That’s for the future, however. For the immediate future, the best we’re going to be able to do is go to composite building techniques, with iron frames and wooden planking. And the truth is that that’ll still give us significant advantages over all-wooden construction.”
         “I can see that. At the same time, I’d be very reluctant to simply scrap all the ships we’ve already built — not to mention the ones we’ve just captured — and start over with an entirely new construction technique.”
         “Yes, Sir. As an intermediate step, we’ve been looking at the possibility of cutting an existing galleon down by a full deck. We’d sacrifice the spar deck armament and completely remove the forecastle and quarterdeck. That should save us enough weight to allow the construction of an iron casemate to protect the broadside guns. We’d only have a single armed deck, but the guns would be much better protected. And we’ve also been considering that with shell-firing weapons we could reduce the number of broadside guns and actually increase the destructiveness of the armament. Our present thinking is that we might completely remove the current krakens and all the carronades from a ship like Destroyer, say, and replace them with half as many weapons with an eight or nine-inch bore. The smaller gun would fire a solid rifled shot somewhere around a hundred and eighty to two hundred pounds. The shell would probably be about half that, allowing for the bursting charge. In an emergency, it could fire a sixty-eight-pound round shot, which would still be more destructive than just about anything else currently at sea.”
         “Rate of fire would drop significantly with that many fewer guns,” Rock Point pointed out, and Mahndrayn nodded.
So they’re discussing ironclads now. Neat. Yet another (iron) nail in the Church’s coffin.
why not use wooden bulkhead construction? bulkhead architecture is better than what they’re using
Iron sailing ship… I wonder if they can start building catamarans, trimarans, SWATH ships…
Their going to need a way to get the accuracy of the guns up though. Hmm, how to introduce gyroscopic stabilization? Also clearing the castles from the main deck might allow that schooner mounted chase armament to be moved onto the Ships of the Line. You know, that one with a 270 degree firing arc mentioned in previous books.
If you clear the castles and build with iron, might you not use iron spars, and casemate construction above the waterline? (tumblehome hulls)
Being in any other navy is beginning to sound dangerous.
Being in any other navy is beginning to sound dangerous.
@6
“Being in any other navy is beginning to sound dangerous.”
Correction.
“Being in any other navy is beginning to sound SUICIDAL.”
This recreation of history of naval and military engineering is frankly far more interesting to me than the bland characters that drone on for hours about politics. And certainly much more than the daily life of an average 17th century sailor.
About gyroscope stabilized guns – it may be possible to set up a very limited gyroscope stabilization system for guns. The gyros would have to be manually spun up, and the mount itself would be quite complex, but I think it is doable – in theory. The system may be too fragile to work well in battle.
I think they should instead put the effort in to creating heavier guns with more accurately timed shells. Hopefully breech loaders as well. With accurate-enough timing fuses even a near-miss would produce damage with shrapnel.
Chariss at this moment technologically roughly equivalent to Earth 1800-1850’s. At least judging from the talk of ironclads and explosive shell artillery. So the time is ripe for a breech loader. With one or two simple clues from Merlin they should be able to create a very reliable breech system that would double or quadruple the firing rate.
Interesting that Elim Garak thinks the political “droning” is boring, while the naval engineering is interesting. I like them both, but get more bored when the technical details go on too long. Without the politics/etc, the series becomes just another mindless boom-boom, bang-bang. But to each their own.
As for the Go4, they obviously can never catch up. I wonder if Merlin could hasten their fall if he focused more on the other Vicars to convince them of the eventual fate of the Go4, and that those Vicars might share that fate if they don’t oppose the Go4 more?
Bet the first railroad system is in the works as we read…
The fire control problem of ship movement wasn’t fully solved until the late 1930’s with the stable vertical, analog-mechanical computers, centralized fire control plotting, director control and remote power control, though as early as 1910, director control and central plotting were becoming practical.
Trying to stabilize each gun would be expensive and time-consuming and was abandoned for director control and stabilizing the sights and rangefinders. And as you point out, the technology doesn’t exist to waterproof and sailor-proof such a device.
What you are looking at here is something like “Gloire”, though she was wooden framed and iron plated. A protected citadel for the guns, the guns being Paxhains, or shell firing muzzle loading smoothbores. The British went one step further with “Warrior” being built out of iron, but one step to far with her breech loading artillery. The Armstrong guns repeatedly failed because of the omplexity of the breech mechanism and the inability to fully seal the breech. The other problems were that the available recoil systems made the breech loader no more faster in firing than a muzzle loader and the use of black powder forced a reduction in rate of fire, both because of fouling, which will increase with a rifled bore and with fire control, since the gun captains have to wait for the smoke to disperse in order to acquire and engage targets. Muzzle loading rifled guns (Parrots)were used in the American Civil War for chase guns and as anti-“iron-clad” armamment, though the big Dahlgrens were more effective. Range didn’t increase until effective centralized fire control was introduced. (The ranges at which the USN engaged the Spanish navy in 1898 were not significantly greater (nor accuracy) than the ranges at which Trafalgar was fought because of the lack of effective fire control despite the theoretical ballistic range of the guns involved) The answer may be Dahlgrens, smooth bore muzzle loaders that fired shot and shell and were produced in sizes from eight to twenty inch bores. The XV inch Dahlgren put a solid shot through the CSS Virginia II on the James River in 1865, penetrating six inches of railroad iron and 20 inches of wood at point blank range. Of course, on the other hand, CSS Virgina was armed with Brokes muzzle loading rifles when she sank USS Cumberland and USS Congress, though she had a little bit more trouble with USS Monitor.
Actually, the galleons had given over to the ship of the line long before this period. High poops, quarterdecks and forecastles had been elminated by the early 1700’s, producing the lower profile of the sailing warship at its apogee. Take a look at the profiles for the HMS Victory and USS Constitution compared to HMS Soveriegn of the Seas or the “Golden Hind”.
The spar deck was a late inovation of the sailing age and would be an anachronism in this context. Before the big American frigates, all warships with multiple decks had their upper most continuous deck surmounted by partial decks fore and aft, the forecastle and the quarterdeck. These were connected by narrow gang ways, though these has gotten larger as the period went along. In the big frigates, the Americans created a continuous “spar” deck which ran over the main deck while retaining the forecastle and quarterdeck. Eventually this deck also became fully armed, but that was when ship design improved, as early attempts to arm the area between the quarterdeck and forecastle simply fouled the sails, masts and yards and stressed the hull. The advantage with this was that the length of a wooden ship was contrained by the number of continuous decks she had. The more decks, the longer she could be, as each deck became a strength member in the hull. This is why long ships such as the American 44’s or the French 80’s had problems with “hogging”, where the ends of the ship begin to “droop” blow the keel from a lack of support. This limited frigates and two deckers to around 180 and three deckers to just over 200 feet on the gun deck. Two technical solutions which failed were the “diagonal riders” and butting the frames (leaving no space between frames). The techincal solution, that pushed wooden ships over three hundred feet, was both the Symonds transverse framing and the use of iron strapping (iron bands were run along the hull across the framing around the ship pulling the frames together and preventing the usual movement (all wooden ships “breathed”, the wooden components moving together and seperately, and so they leaked, always. Pumping the bilges was a constant feature of ship management before “water-tight” metal construction).
The iron ship didn’t solve all problems. Since such ships were bolted and then eventually rivetted together, there was the problem of bolts seperating, nuts coming lose or rivets parting under fire and becoming projectiles themselves. Then there is the quality control problem as “brittle” iron can shatter and produce splinters like wood. And the attachment systems have to be effective. Large round shot might not penetrate some thickness of iron armor, but the impact could break off pieces or snap the rivets or bolts and force a sheet or panel off its mounting. (This was called “racking”). And while you may not be able to put large smooth bores to sea, you can certainly mount them in forts, like the US Rodmans.
…and while we’re on the subject of smoothbore weapons, can we invent some really nice shotguns? I think Sharley would really enjoy some skeet, sporting clays, maybe a Vicar-Tower– Oops, Duck-Tower…
I see Amazon has set a date for -Rising Thunder-. When, oh when, will snippets from it start appearing?
All of those captured ships could be used as troop transports for an army. Also, did you notice the cover art? Am I reading too much into the depiction of the low, sleek, black hull? Looks a little bit like a Constitution class frigate.
The captured ships presents an opportunity to use them as troop transports for a major attack against the church. Also, check out the cover art. The low sleek black hulled ship looks something like a constitution class frigate. It could be a new design or I may be trying to read too much into the cover art.
What is EISING THUNDER? What author? What series?
I meant RISING THUNDER!
Nevermind. The BN website says RT is the next Honorverse tome by D. Weber.
Summertime, _A Rising Thunder_ is the next David Weber Honorverse novel.
Since it is a March 6th release, snippets likely will start no earlier than November.
OwenB, IIRC the Charis warships are “low sleek black hulled” as described in the books. [Smile]
@9 (Olin)
One of the weaknesses of this series is that Merlin’s use of intelligence is purely passive. Given Clyntahn’s paranoia, can you imagine if a Schulerite came across a letter from (apparently) another member of the Go4 to Cayleb? Clyntahn wouldn’t think about checking, and doesn’t have the faintest concept of forensic investigation. His first action would be to send the inquisition to arrest the “heretic”, and his second would be to instruct the head torturer.
A couple of well-forged documents, falling into the inquisition’s hands could cause massive upheaval in the mainland realms, and win the most precious of all military weapons – time. As Napoleon said “You can ask me for anything you like, except time”
With only about a month to go to the release of the book, I’m thinking the snippets left won’t get to a lot of the good stuff such as Master Howsmyn’s development of steam engines. At some point either as Charis is building or deploying their first few ‘composite’ iron-wood warships, that it will occur to someone (guesses anyone?) that they might be able to adapt steam power to increase the speed of such ships and be less dependent upon wind. They will certainly need it for ironclads, which I think are a couple of years away unless Master Howsmyn can increase iron production even more quickly.
Wyrm, I suspect that the Inquisition knows about the concept of “forensic investigations”.
However, while Merlin could fool any possible Safeholdian “forensic investigation”, I doubt that David Weber will have Merlin do so.
You’re really talking assassinations and IMO David Weber dislikes assassinations both morally and practically.
Assassinations (even when “successful”) rarely have the results that the planners hoped for.
Also forged documents could cause the problems you’re thinking about but could “back-lash” onto Merlin when the truth comes out.
Remember Merlin has always planning on “going public” about who/what he is.
People/Nations can have long memories so if they learn that he caused chaos in their lands putting forth lies, then Merlin could very well face a backlash.
In anycase, Merlin would do better to arrange for truthful documents (about the war) to show up in Zion and other places with the Inquisition having no idea how they got there and who is printing them up. [Very Big Grin]
I’m not sure I believe the discussion on all iron ships. They’re still 30-50 years from the general tech level that produced those in our world. And the fact is that we HAD explosive shells and riffled guns for years prior to iron armored ships (for that matter there was an entire generation or two of wooden warships with both steam power and sail and explosive shells and rifled chase armament prior to anyone adding really serious amounts of iron armor). There wasn’t a major naval war in that period (till the start of the ACW), but the ships simply engaged at slightly longer range and with slightly shorter battles.
You couldn’t engage shore defenses with explosive shells with such a ship, but then Admiral Nelson, from before you had to worry about explosive shells once said said something like, “No sailor but a fool would attack a fortress”
An iron armored ship needs steam power, and that really puts the nail in the casket as far as the proscriptions are concerned. Without steam the loss of handling and the reduction in seaworthiness is likely to outweigh the gains in protection.
It simply doesn’t help to have a well armored ship that’s on the bottom of the ocean because it sank in a storm three weeks prior to the battle. And all the characters in this conversation should be keenly aware of that problem. Without steam power I don’t think they should even be considering iron ships.
OK I posted this on Weber’s forum earlier, but I’m wondering what the rest of you think of it. I’m sure I made some mistakes — if nothing else, I’m sure I was unclear on something. So tell me what I screwed up, y’all.
[…]
What intrigues me more is that they are finding a way to make the rifled gun concept useful after all. I figured they’d wait for more stable ships, but if they can get even an extra 200 yards range out of the guns even at sea then they essentially can make a “sniper” ship that can kill the enemy at a distance before the enemy can get into range themselves. And even when the enemy does get into range, by armoring the ship they will be pretty survivable anyway (especially against current CoGA designs). This “armored cruiser” they seem to be designing with this cut-down, single-deck galleon, would become a very good intermediate warship between the much lighter scouting schooners and the much heavier Dreadnought-class, Empress-class, and follow-on classes of heavy warship.
And thus the weight classes of warship seem to be born. Soon enough we’ll have Destroyers, Cruisers, and Battleships… or maybe Cruisers, Battleships, and Dreadnoughts… just please no Frigates! (We don’t need the Safehold discussions to be infected by the Honorverse lunatics.)
Well I’m sorry, but frigates were the “main” cambatants in the wars in the age of sail, and safehold is far to be able to produce a non sailing and practical warship.
The frigates of the epoch were present in numbers and yet powerful enought to engage almost all vessels of the day except ships of the line, which were cumbersome, slow and very expensive to operate.
Frigates had the range to be everywere and the empire needs to be everywere, especially when one “mere” frigate is much better then anything the CoGA has.
I still expect that when they build spaceships they will go directly to destroyers, cruisers, battleships… humongous battleship, battlestation.
PD Just read all 20 Aubrey-Maturin books in the series in one go and obviously I got to love napoleonic era frigates.
@24 FriarBob.
I second that. DW said “no frigates” but the lunatics won’t give up. That topic is becoming so top heavy I think Duckk ought to sink it, like the Vasa.
@25 — Valinor, that frigate crack was meant as a joke to mock the lunatics on the Honorverse forums who keep insisting there HAS to be a way to design a useful frigate in a pod-based and multidrive-missile combat era. Weber and plenty of others have tried to knock sense into their heads for months (maybe even years) now, to no avail.
I’m sure that what were called frigates in real history were actually quite valuable and useful warships. I have strong expectation that something similar will be built soon enough by Charis. And I’m sure they’ll be quite valuable additions to their fleet. I just would prefer the Safehold equivalent to be called something else. We don’t need those lunatics infesting the Safehold forums. :)
@23 Doug, I don’t know what you are thinking about, but there have been steel hulled working commercial sailing ships into the 20th century. With steel masts, they tend to survive storms much better than wood hull ships with wooden masts. I agree that armoring a wooden ship will be tricky. If not careful, the ship can be top heavy real quick. There is no intrinsic reason that an armored sailing ship is impossible. Designing a steel ship would be much easier than actually building one.
Once built, the heavier hull offers a bit more stability in heavy weather. The biggest issue would be manouvering in slight wind conditions not one of general weatherlyness.
Would you care to elaborate you concerns, please?
@28 Modern steel ships are built with modern steel (or at least early 20th century steel). And with modern or early 20th century compartmentalization. Further, steel sailing ships of the early 20th century were definitely NOT armored. They’d have been far far less resistant to heavy cannon fire than most wooden hulled warships of the late 17th century.
Thin steel won’t stop a shell that heavy wood won’t. Early steel armored ships were HEAVY, they sank in even rather modest weather. Charis isn’t as advanced in ship construction as even those 17th century shipbuilders were. Rationally anything they build of steel should sail about as well as an anvil.
Additionally: Cube square concerns say that for a given level of protection the smaller a ship is the heavier the armor is in proportion to displacement, Charisan ships are SMALL by comparison to, say, HMS Warrior (which was pretty well a minimum seagoing design to face the sorts of guns they’re talking about). Galleons run less than 200′ in length, Warrior over 400′. Charisan harbors probably couldn’t handle her draught at all and they certainly have no construction dock for such a monster. Try to build something the size of a Galleon with worthwile armor for shell based warfare and it WILL sink like a rock. Warrior was over 9,000 tons dry displacement, what’s a Charisan Galleon? Is it even a tenth that?
And none of the people in this converstation know about any of this, but what they should know is that iron is heavy and not a material they have any experience building ships out and as yet they don’t even have the capability to produce iron in the quantities required to build even their far too small ships out of. Hence it isn’t something they should be seriously considering. It isn’t practical, they don’t know all the reasons it isn’t practical, but they know enough of them.
In our history people didn’t come up with iron hulled ships till something like 200 years after the most advanced ship Charis has ever built would have gone to the breakers in our world as hopelessly obsolete. That’s a lot of knowledge they’re missing.
It seems like armor will require the steam engine for propulsion. Merlin is certainly taking a look at introducing it. Maybe the steam sloop like the USS Hartford from the US Civil War era would be possible. Not sure about its construction details but they would hang chains along the sides when going up against forts etc. It was fast and sea going for its time.
So what this book will show then, Doug, is that to build a steel/iron ship the designers should plan on designing a 400 foot long ship displacing in the neighborghood of 9000 tons. OK.
Now, would you say that adding iron plates to resist or breakup smoothboare shells would also require too much weight than can be supported by 1,200 ton Charisian galleons?
@20 Wyrm: IMnsHO you have a great idea, but
@22 Drak: Your objection is perfectly correct; assassination is in general not only evil, but STUPID. However, documents ‘accidentally’ allowed to come into possession of the Go4 could suggest other things than assassination, such as that Charis has nearly perfected a weapon system that Nimue-Merlin knows is a dead-end; i.e. one that seems at first blush reasonable, and that the Go4 can waste a lot of time and money working on, but can never be made to work.
Bret, yep that idea would be a different story.
It’s no worse than what the Gof4 did to Charis concerning the Fleet of God’s destination. [Smile]
They talked about making Steel Thisle sails. I think they said that they might even resist shot. Perhaps they could line the inside of the ships to pervent or retard splinters. Don’t think that’d work against explosives though.
The thing about all these dicussions of politics and weapons here, for me, is that it makes the books better, ’cause I have all this new background info. Thanks everyone.
what about slat armor? The Strykers are using them as anti-RPG defense. Iron slat armor should break up shells inbound… (though not roundshot)
You guys are so full of interesting information and historical sidelights to issues. It makes the books more interesting too. Thanks for posting.
@36 Peter: I second that. Reading the comments can be almost as fun as reading the snippets. Keep up the good work, Guys and Maggie!
I think that the safeholdian designer have a problem which we didn’t have. In earth we had steam wooden warships before the introduction of the shell and then as a consequence we moved to the concept of steam propelled ironclad.
As safehold stands now they can’t build effective protection against shells in their ships because they don’t have the steam technology.
Another factor is that on earth we had a lot of time (20 years) from the first steam warships to the concept of the ironclad.
On safehold they don’t have as much time but Merlin knows what worked before, which in itself can help but can also be detrimental in the short term because as we know we are no longer following the same chronology of advancements as in earth.
What I would like to see tough is wooden timbers laid over an iron frame construction , in itself a great improvement over wooden frame, and then some kind of steel armor for the gun decks over the wooden timbers. This armor might not necessarily need to be permanent, only attached when in combat and used as ballast elsewhere, nor needs to be very thick when we are speaking of very early form of shells, after all you only need to prevent it from making a hole in the wood when it detonates on contact or prevent it from puncturing the side of the ship which an inch of steel plate would be enough without specifically designed penetrating shells. The attachment of these plates might be a problem but if you put fittings directly on the iron frame it should resist. Even if you lose some plates you will have survived one fatal impact.
I’m more concerned with shells entering by the portholes than really puncturing the ship where armored.
Using iron masts and spars is a plus both in a battle and in a storm.
Around the Civil War era CHAIN armor was common. It was very effective at stopping shells. I’m fairly sure, though, that the ships so equipped were at least steam aided if not full steamers (see USS Kearsarge).
@22 Drak Bibliophile
I am not talking assassinations, I am talking disinformation, a topic that was discussed by characters in the last Honorverse book for some length, as we all remember. (And, what the Go4 did to Charis in the previous Safehold book)
It has been made clear to all the readers, and all the characters in the book, that the Suggesting to Clyntahn that one of his clique may be turning his coat would seem very effective disinformation, and all four of them are legitimate targets of war. Even if Clyntahn is rational enough not to take on another of the Go4, the additional distrust and friction that would be sown would provide massive benefits to Charis. However, given what we have been show of Clyntahn’s mindset, one would doubt that he would be that rational.
Wyrm, there is very little difference (morally or otherwise) between sending out an assassin and giving out “disinformation” that would lead to murder or execution.
As for the Go4 being “legitimate targets of war”, assassination of the “political” leadership isn’t normally considered a legitimate action in wartime (or any time).
What the Go4 did to Charis in the last book was a legitimate use of “disinformation”.
Causing Clyntahn to excute/murder one of his fellow Go4 members is not.
Seventy four (74) lines of snippett –42 comments — I LOVE IT!!
@41–I am NOT trying to be political here or start a political argument, but I disagree at least in modern times. The British certainly tried/supported assassinations in many places and times including WW2 (Heydrich). Certainly “decapitation strikes” are almost routine these days in small wars including those against sovereign states (Iraq, Libya, etc.). The US certainly tried on many occasions to assassinate Castro–I still wonder if the exploding cigar trick is fact or fiction!
I’m sure Nimue is aware of this tradition.
Steel Production. Is there any reason why the accumulators could not run the compressors for a Bessemer Converter? I am not an engineer but it sounds like the accumulators are capable of forcing enough air through the converter to make it effective. What has been described in the steel making process is to increase the amount of oxygen being force into the steel by using the heat from vented exhaust to drive more heat into the molten mix.
If they take the next step and confine that process into a converter, the process would speed up to about half an hour per batch of 3 tons or so. Faster conversion means less use of coke to convert each ton of steel. All told British costs at the time went from GBP 50-60 per long ton to about GBP 7 per long ton using the converter.
Even if Charis made some improvements already, we are talking about reducing time and cost to at least about 1/3 to 1/2 of their current costs. Potentially the savings could be as high as 1/6 to 1/8 of current costs. All this finacial gobbletygook means that Charis can actually produce the required STEEL to actuall make entire ships out of steel in addition to the guns they will need.
Transporting all that production to where it will be needed will be much more difficult without steam power. So there may be a very large need for any of those POWs with teamster skills and a desire for premium pay.
jgarland, just how well did the Castro attempts work? [Wink]
As for “decapitation strikes”, those can be a “grey area” but are IMO more legitimate as part of an invasion.
In anycase, just because assassinations *have* been used in the past doesn’t make them the “right thing to do” and of course we’ve seen in history that the assassinations can “back-fire” on the planners.
On the other hand, Merlin is hoping that Clyntahn leaves the Temple so that he can kill Clyntahn but that’s more defendable than tricking Clyntahn into killing his allies.
1. The frigate was a specific ship type between about 1725 and 1880, and then since 1920 or so. In the first case, a frigate was a warship with a single complete armed deck surmounting a single unarmed deck (which were called the main and gun deck, though no guns were mounted on that deck in a frigate.) with a quarterdeck on which guns were mounted. By the late 18th century guns were mounted on the forecastle. At this time, the quarterdeck and forecastle were seperated a an open space over the main deck. The two decks were connected by gangways. From 1797, the US created a spar deck which was a single deck covering the main decks but which retained notional quarterdeck and forecastle, which were armed. A frigate usually carried long guns on the main deck and smaller long guns on the quarterdeck and forecastle until after 1780 or so, when these guns were replaced by carronades. On occasion, captains tried using the space between the quarterdeck and forecastle for guns but found they overloaded the ship. Then in 1814-15, the British built the first “double deck” frigates, but found them overloaded. It wasn’t until the introducion of Symonds transverse framing and iron strapping that the “double decked” frigate became pratical. The frigate had already replaced the earlier “double decked” ships like the 44’s because they were more seaworthy and faster, as they got bigger they replaced the 50’s and with the “double deck” frigate they replaced the 60’s and 64’s, the smallest ships of the line. They were distinct from the ships of the line, because the ships of the line had both two decks of guns and they retained quarterdecks and forecastle and even on occasion, poop decks. They were also distinct because they were “cruisers”. Ships not intended to stand in the line were called “cruisers”, because they cruised on independent missions. “Cruisers” at that time included ship-sloops, brigs, schooners and cutters. Some smaller countries, like Sweden, built large, heavily armed frigates that were intended to stand in the line if necessary. With the advent of shell guns, the single deck steam ship became more practical and efficient and the frigate and the ship of line fell out of favor. With the rise of the steel, armored warship, the cruiser, armored, scout and unprotected, replaced the frigate.
After WWI, the frigate was a term used for an escort vessel, which is not fully defined, and is almost the same as the corvette, destroyer escort and sloop in function, design and mission. “Ashville” class frigates in the USN were the same size, about the same speed and same armament as the early destroyer escorts.
2. As far as armored warships of the steam age, most steam powered warships continued to use sails as a primary or secondary means of motion. Steam engines were not powerful enought to drive warships to the speeds (10-13 knots) needed to chase sailing ships in their optimum conditions. Even when such ships were built, like the US raiding cruisers of 1865, the top speeds could only be maintained for a short time. Sail was necessary to get top speed (especially sustained top speed) and for range. Ships could carry only so much coal and then they had to re-supply from shore facilities. One of the reasons for the expansion of the British Empire was to provide coaling stations for the Royal Navy. So even steam-powered ships until the 1880s or so used sails for crusing to extend their range.
3. Evidently Charis is going from naval technology and architecture of 1588 to that of 1830-40 in one giant stride. Galleons rarely exceeded 125′ on the main deck. The first 74 gun ships of the line were under 165′ in length, the first frigates were less than 120′ on the main deck and this was in the early 18th century. HMS Britannia of 100 guns, designed in the 1750s, did not exceed 180′. The first British three-decker to exceed 200′ was HMS Caledonia of 110 guns, completed in 1805. British 38 gun frigates did not regularly exceed 150′ on the gun deck until the 1790s. The first “ironclad”, the French “Gloire” was 255′ on the main deck. She was built of wood with an armored citadel. She could set over 9900 sq.ft. of sail on her three masts. And the size of warships does have a cost. The big American frigates were limited to the ports they use, basically having no Southern ports between Norfolk and New Orleans, the rest (Charleston, Wilmington, Savannah, etc, being to shallow or having sand bars that prevented their use). The same applied to the small number of American ships of the line. And when ships were designed with minimum draft to use those harbors or operate in coastal waters, they proved to be less than optimum for sea-going, much less ocean-going conditions (USS Monitor foundered in a storm off Cape Fear).
@46 – Wow that’s quite a dissertation there Mike. But well written and interesting anyway.
So basically the Frigate actually used to be a major combatant and an actual design of ship, but it looks almost more like the NAME fell out of favor before the design. Is that a fair description?
If so, that’s what I’m hoping for with the Charisian ships. I’m sure the old design would be a good ship. I’m just sick of idiots blathering on about the name.
Side question… since it seems cruisers are ships not intended to stand in the line, how did the name destroyer come about? I’m curious on this because most sci-fi universes seem to put the destroyer as smaller than the cruiser, but Babylon5 did it the other way around. I’m wondering if you or anybody else know why that might be.
Babylon 5 got it wrong? [Wink]
Seriously, according to Wiki the term “destroyer” came from “torpedo boat destroyers”.
The torpedo boat destroyers were intended to protect the battle fleet from “torpedo boats” that could launch torpedoes against the battle fleet.
They were smaller than the cruisers/battleships so they could be quicker than them in order that they could catch/destroy the fast “torpedo boats”.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Destroyer
Sort of off topic snipit question…
In the leaked snipit from DW we see Patrick Henry (however its spelled) about to do
something bad….
Yet in the last book Patrick was a significant person in the loyalist underground and had his own
personal snark following him. So how is it that a person with a dedicated snark could sneak into
a gathering to do something bad? I sense a significat logical plot hole.
The SNARC/Merlin/OWL can’t read minds. If Patrick didn’t tell anyone any of the key words he wouldn’t have been marked for closer tracking. Think of any lone acting ‘terrorist’. They can have all the tools but until they act they are basically left alone. Only when acting in coordinated conjunction with others do ‘failure points’ in secrecy occur. With all of that, the SNARCs are most likely monitoring over a thousand characters. Remember how the Queen almost died in BSRA. And Duke Kalvyn in OAR.