Frequently Asked Questions

Okay, a few points about education on Safehold. I don't know whether or not this is going to make it front and center in the books, although I've been looking for a plot strand to hook it to that would make sense to me. In the meantime, though, this is essentially what's going on.

First, let's define some terms in the way I'm going to be using them. Bear in mind that because of the difference between our present-day education systems and the way the Safeholdian educational system has been traditionally structured, "fifth grade" on Safehold isn't necessarily going to be the same thing as "fifth grade" in contemporary US practice. Bearing that in mind:

"Primary education" refers to what we would consider kindergarten to the end of the fifth grade. That is, the five years of education Cahnyr is thinking about in the passage several people have already referenced, which begins at age 6. "Secondary education" refers to classroom studies after the fifth year and through the tenth year. After tenth grade, we move to "college education," and we stay there through the end of the thirteenth year of education. From "fourteenth grade" (you should pardon the expression) on, we are normally talking about "university education." These terms are not necessarily absolutely hard and fast, but they define the range of years of schooling for the purposes of the following discussion.

(A) Who traditionally provides schooling on Safehold. Education on Safehold has never been compulsory, which goes a long way towards explaining the huge upsurge in illiteracy following the War Against the Fallen. At that point the original, terraformed enclaves were spreading out to reclaim the planet, lots and lots of hands were needed in the fields and the forests, and it was more important to get the work done than it was to educate the kids. That set the pattern that was followed for several centuries, so that even though Mother Church was officially offering free primary education to every single child of Mother Church, the majority of Safeholdians were not taking advantage of it. Education tended to be concentrated in the towns and cities because that was where there were enough young people whose parents were seeking education to make it practical for Mother Church to invest in the schools. Over the last few centuries, that pattern has begun to shift, and even the smallest village will have a "one room schoolhouse" with a clerical teacher there to provide the basics.

Within the above framework, the Church has historically been responsible for schooling throughout Safehold. The Archangels were smart enough to recognize that if Mother Church allowed education — and especially control of the curriculum — out of her hands, Safehold and the Church of God Awaiting would, you should pardon the expression, go to hell in a handbasket relatively quickly. In other words, secular education was right out. Instead, education was provided at the primary level by the Chihirite Order of the Quill but supervised by the Order of Schueler. Overseeing education, vetting the curriculum, selecting (or removing) teachers, etc., were all seen as responsibilities of the Inquisition as the keeper of allowable knowledge and people's souls. I believe we've already seen one intendant discussing the Inquisition's responsibility for education with his archbishop. In all of Safehold, prior to the emergence of the Church of Charis, there have been no "certified" secular teachers, and without Mother Church (i.e. the Inquisition's) approval, no one could teach in any primary or secondary scholastic setting.

Once the student transitions from secondary to "college education," it is possible for them to study under teachers who have not been certified by the Church or who are not themselves members of the clergy or one of the teaching orders. This is rare, but it does happen, and it normally occurs when you have the equivalent of an "expert in residence." That is, the instructor's knowledge base is sufficiently great that he represents a teaching asset which is too valuable for the Church to simply disallow. One example might be an especially skilled navigator who is teaching navigation despite the fact that he is not a churchman. Even those instructors, however, are going to be teaching under strict Church supervision to be certain that nothing pernicious creeps into their instruction.

The Church typically regards "university education" as falling into two categories: seminary and secular. By the time a student who is not himself intended for holy orders reaches the university level, the Inquisition has already had thirteen years to set its seal on his mental outlook and basic belief structure. At that point, students are free to pursue additional instruction from anyone who sets himself up as a teacher of a given subject. Traditionally, teachers are admitted to secular universities faculties on the basis of the number of students they can attract. It's actually more of a collection of tutors in specific areas who gradually acquire a number of paying students sufficient for them to begin offering lecture courses in addition to individual instruction. A student who is intended for holy orders attends seminary, instead, which is a much more structured, formally organized educational institution and program.

(B) How much does education cost? There is no charge for the first five years of primary education. It is provided by Mother Church to everyone at no expense, and the school day includes meals for the students. Mother Church pays for the books, for the slates, for the classrooms . . . everything, and the student emerges from those five years of education with basic literacy and basic math skills (remembering that the church was teaching Roman numerals pre-Merlin). A graduate of primary education has the ability to read the Holy Writ, The Commentaries, basic legal contracts, etc., for himself. The Church strongly encourages primary education for all Safeholdians, although that has not always been the case and even now it is not compulsory.

Secondary education, however, is not free. A student is required to pay for his own books, whatever additional school supplies are required, for his meals at school, and a "desk fee." The desk fee is set at what constitutes a nominal cost for a middle-class family, which means that it is cheaper than dirt from an aristocrat's perspective and incredibly dear from the perspective of a yeoman farmer. The Church does, however, sponsor a certain percentage of scholarship students, for whom the Church picks up the costs. Not all of these scholarship students are headed for holy orders by any means, however. Mother Church recognizes that the secular community is going to require an educated class, and these scholarships represent the Church's investment in providing them. In most cases where a family "cannot afford" to continue a child in secondary education, this actually represents a trade-off between the actual out-of-pocket cost and the lost earning opportunity represented if that child's labor is not available to the family. As far as the Church is concerned, once primary school has been completed, whether or not someone continues with his or her education is no longer the Church's decision, although particularly gifted children identified by their Church-provided primary teachers will often be offered the equivalent of Church scholarships to continue through secondary school, as well.

College level education is very much like secondary education, except that costs are higher and there are fewer "colleges" available. This has several consequences, but two of them are that: (1) because there are relatively few colleges, proximity to one of those which do exist is a major factor in the availability of "college-level" education, and (2) because there are so few colleges, there is much greater competition for admission to them. That competition is both academic (i.e., who has the better grades) and nonacademic (i.e., who has the most patronage or other clout with the faculty). Many colleges — indeed, the majority of them — got their start out of sponsorship by either an aristocratic family, one of the guilds, or a particularly successful merchant or banker (or merchant or banking family.) Note, however, that as I observed above, the vast, vast majority of teachers at the college level are still going to be provided by the Church. Suppose that the Zhahnsyn family decides to endow Zhahnsyn College in Old Province in the Republic of Siddarmark. First, they have to clear it with the Church. Then they have to petition the Church to provide properly accredited instructors. After that, they have to in effect assign control of the curriculum, the faculty, and the student body to the Church. Since no one on Safehold (prior to the current . . . unpleasantness) saw any reason why the Church shouldn't have complete control of education, this was an accepted state of affairs. And, to be fair to the Church, if a family endowed a college, that family was normally given a conscientious hearing by the Church where the governance and management of that college was concerned. In addition, the family endowing the college received the gratitude of the Church, which was expressed in memorial masses, indulgences, perhaps a reduction in tithes, etc. In any case, however, college education's costs normally place it well beyond the reach of any but the upper half of the middle class and the aristocracy.

University level education's costs are similar to those of the colleges, but the universities by their nature tend to be specialist schools. That is, someone who wants to study literature would choose a university which is inclined in that direction. Someone who wants to study history, would choose a university inclined in that direction. (Please note that this actually constitutes rather a flipping of real life practice, where universities are collections of colleges, with each college or school within the university dedicated to a particular branch of knowledge. I'm using the term "university" here to indicate a level of education beyond those of the normal college, and one whose faculty differs significantly from those of the completely Church-dominated/supplied "colleges," and I haven't yet come up with a better term for it.) Because the universities tend to be directed into individual, highly specialized fields, they are virtually never seen as a place someone goes to acquire "practical" knowledge for a business career or something of that sort. They do have a tendency to produce the majority of those secular-but-certified teachers at the college level, but they are much more a place to acquire finish, polish, the greatest imaginable erudition in your field, etc. As such, their student bodies are overwhelmingly dominated by the aristocracy. In fact, outside Charis, their student bodies are essentially totally aristocratic. The cost of university level education tends to account for a lot of that. College education will show a significant economic return on the investment of someone who acquires it; it is extraordinarily difficult to quantify the "return" for a traditional Safeholdian "university education."

(C) How does the "Royal College" differ from other colleges? As I suspect most of you have already begun to figure out from the above, one of the huge reasons for the Church's suspicions of the Royal College of Charis lies in the fact that the Ahrmahk dynasty sponsored the college but did not bring in Church-certified teachers. They got around that requirement by not offering courses, although everyone — including the Inquisition — recognized that the "no course offerings" posture of the College was in fact a fiction. The scholars at the Royal College did not have "students;" they had "assistants." They did not teach courses; they simply amassed and catalogued knowledge. The non-students at the College never left the College; they stayed and became researchers and/or librarians themselves. And the entire edifice was propped up and supported by the Crown's privy purse, with no support from Mother Church. Officially there was very little for the Inquisition or the Church to take issue with in the Royal College, since it was effectively a relatively small, closed society which acquired new members/scholars by invitation only, and (as noted above) had no students. The College was — officially — only a resource of the Crown, providing things like the Sailing Directions which have been mentioned in a couple of the books, drawing charts of normal weather patterns, collecting information about the proper design of sailing ship hulls, etc., and making that knowledge available as a reference tool to Charisian society as a whole. A lot of pre-Merlin Charisian innovation stemmed directly from the Royal College without its ever once accepting a single official "student."

Since the schism, however, and especially since Cayleb placed it openly under the protective wing of the Crown, the Royal College has begun to change. It is now a teaching institution, as well as a research institution, and it is in the process of becoming the model for a new, secular education system from the ground up. That's why Chestyr Aplyn was "admitted to the Royal College" at age 13. He is actually in a "secondary school" within the Royal College. (And, by the way, Hektor's ability to "pay for" his younger siblings' education has nothing to do with the Royal College, which charges no tuition. It has to do with the fact that he was able to finance Chestyr's education to the point at which he won admission to the College.) At an appropriate time, he will transition to the "college level," still within that educational system. And, eventually, assuming that his scholarly attainments justify it, he will become a fellow of the Royal College rather than a student at the Royal College.

Zhaspahr Clyntahn is not what one might call jumping with joy over the transformation taking place at the Royal College. Fortunately for his blood pressure, perhaps, he is not fully informed at this time of everything that's going on, but Irys Daykyn's attraction to the Royal College — and her fear, if you will, of what the Royal College is and, even more, of how Clyntahn is going to regard anyone who embraces it — stemmed in no small part from the change in teaching attitude represented by scholars who are . . . less securely fettered, let us say, by Mother Church. It is important to remember, however, that the new curriculum and the new non-clerical teachers at the Royal College are still subject to the approval of the archbishop of Charis and his intendant. That is the reason that we don't see the place being stormed by the Safeholdian equivalent of Luddites. The Temple Loyalists have already tried to burn it to the ground once; the Reformists who might be concerned about its "secularization" are confident in the judgment of Maikel Staynair and Paityr Wylsynn. Eventually, of course, this is likely to change . . . at which point the armed guards protecting its campus should discourage any fresh fire bugs.

(D) What do the child labor laws of Charis govern? Primary schooling in Charis begins at age 6 and ends at age 11; secondary school begins at age 11 and ends at age 17. That is, you attend primary school starting on your sixth birthday and ending on your eleventh birthday; you attend secondary school beginning on your eleventh birthday and ending on your seventeenth birthday. (Obviously if the school year ends between birthdays . . . . I point that out because if I don't some OCD individual is going to question me on it.)

The new child labor laws are designed to keep "school-aged children" out of the labor force. Under the new Charisian laws, it is illegal to employ anyone under the age of 17 in a manufactory or for paid labor anywhere. When the child labor laws were phased in, they began by removing anyone age 11 or younger from the workforce. In the second year, they removed anyone age 13 or younger. In the third year, they removed anyone age 16 or younger. This was designed primarily to allow employers to transition from child-based labor to adult-based labor. If someone was 14 in year one of the transition, then he was 16 in the second year, and 17 in the third year and could remain in the labor force throughout; if he was younger than 14, then he would be removed from the workforce before reaching his seventeenth birthday. For some families, this created significant economic hardships, and the Crown compensated for this by creating "Crown apprenticeships," although "compensation" was only a portion of the reason Cayleb and Sharleyan created them.

In essence, the Crown set up "technical schools" in which those individuals removed from the labor force by the child labor laws were trained in the new techniques being introduced into the modernizing manufactories and shipyards. Because the child labor law was phased in gradually, the Crown apprenticeship programs began with relatively small class sizes and the young people who had already been trained became available to assist in the training of those joining the program behind them. Edwyrd Howsmyn has been very, very active in the Crown apprenticeship program, and his manufactories have already profited significantly from it. Some of the more conservative manufactory owners, who hate the entire notion of child labor laws, who think it is unnatural to worry about children getting caught in the gears, are already beginning to pay the price for having turned their backs on the Crown apprenticeship program. And Howsmyn, Cayleb, Sharleyan, Maikel Staynair, and Merlin, who all regard the current "apprenticeship program" as the basic platform to provide trained workers — including retrained adults — which the modernizing Charisian industrial base is going to require, I'm moving steadily to open places in it to anyone who has completed at least primary school. It is, if you will, a way for the State to provide the training the Guild system theoretically provided without the infrastructure which serves to protect the guild masters from competition. In addition to the Crown, the Church of Charis is really behind this program and pushing hard.

The existence of the Crown apprenticeship program is one reason that the guilds in Chisholm are not going to be happy to see Charisian industrial innovation coming their way. That potential unhappiness is, in fact, a very significant stumbling block which is going to have to be overcome if Chisholm is going to begin to catch up with Charis in education and industrial capacity. Emerald is very happily going along with the Charisian model, but that's because the guilds in Emerald were never anywhere near as strong as they are in Chisholm and because Emerald has immediately in front of it as a near neighbor the example of the wealth and success Old Charis has attained because of its willingness to innovate. The commoners in Chisholm who are already Sharleyan's enthusiastic supporters are, by and large, going to recognize the advantages that this will offer their children, and in the long run it will probably actually strengthen the Crown in Chisholm, but it would be unwise to assume that Chisholm isn't going to experience a certain degree of . . . liveliness when these changes fully come home to roost.

(E) What about those very young midshipmen? Traditionally, the Royal Charisian Navy accepted midshipmen at around age 10. A family with "pull" could usually get a boy accepted a little younger than that — most often by "adjusting" his birthday on his midshipman's warrant.

Midshipmen, traditionally, have eschewed "book learning" in favor of the pragmatic business of learning their trade at sea. In essence, it was an old-fashioned apprentice program, with the midshipmen "apprenticed" to the Navy. Even before Merlin came along, Haarahld had been changing that pattern, however, providing for training in literacy, mathematics, etc., in addition to ship-handling, how to command a boarding party, and inconsequential things like that. [G] As is probably evident from Daivyn Daykyn's experiences in MT&T, the shipboard education program for midshipmen has become much more demanding than it used to be, and the new Naval Academy is going to push that even harder.

I'm not certain where most midshipmen/officers of Hektor's age are going to fit into the new model. That is, I don't know if experienced officers of his age are going to be required to attend the Academy for "polishing" or not. I tend to think not, however, but in either case the primary effort is going to be focused on admitting kids to the academy at the point at which they would otherwise be going into "secondary school" (that is, around age 11). They would get a year or so at sea, with a tutor embarked to see to their basic education during that period, during which they would have a chance to find out if they really wanted a naval career and the Navy would have a chance to see if they looked like good officer material. At the end of their year at sea, they would be transferred ashore to the academy, where they would spend the next 4 to 5 years in intensive schooling. Engineering school will certainly be a part of the academy curriculum, and their time ashore will be followed by a minimum of one additional year at sea before they can stand their lieutenants' exams. So these kids will be eligible for commissions as lieutenants at around 18. They will also be eligible to be sent for higher schooling at someplace like the Royal College before beginning their sea careers or moving into a staff officer track working for someone like Baron Seamount.

Within a fairly short time, you will see the Imperial Charisian Army Academy coming along, as well, organized in much the same way but with an eye towards land service.

(F) What's the endgame? The idea is that within, say, ten years, Charis is going to have an education system in place which is going to be turning out the people who can take the current Royal College's knowledge base and run with it, expanding it through study and original research. At the same time, the "Crown apprenticeship" programs will morph into Crown-sponsored and industry-sponsored technical training schools to provide the skilled workforce needed for the rapid innovation and expansion that Merlin, Cayleb, Sharleyan, and the rest of the Circle clearly realize is going to be necessary before the Empire can take the risk of telling the truth about Langhorne and Bédard. At the same time, the Naval Academy and Army Academy will have been turning out a steady supply of officers well-versed in the new technologies and inclined by their classroom experiences to be open to and accept the truth when it comes along.

All of this is cooking away in the background, but I've been hesitant to bring it into the foreground because I'm already spending so much time with infrastructure building. As I say, if I'm going to really make this information available to the readers, I have to find a plot strand that I'm satisfied will move ahead in the storyline in general but also give me an opportunity/reason to lay all of this — or much of it, at any rate — out for the general reader. Folks on the forums here who have an especially deep interest in the background of the books will probably be happy as bugs in rugs reading about it here, but I'm not too sure that the average Safehold reader is going to want to see all of this explained between battle scenes. (G)

It would be nice if no military, including that of the Charisian Empire, ever found itself buying something that turned out to be more than it needed. Unfortunately, it doesn't work out that way. For example, the Alaska-class cruisers, which were truly magnificent ships, but which spent around 5 months — total — in commission before they were pulled from service and, eventually, scrapped. Which is to say, that these ships may, indeed, the “excess to requirements” at the time they are ordered and built. (You may recall that I've allowed even the Royal Manticoran Navy to make a few . . . questionable purchases over the years.

Having said that, however, they may or may not be “overkill” for Charis’ needs, depending on exactly what it is they have in mind to do with them. And, since I’m not going to tell you about the plot for the next book at this point, I’m not going to discuss whether or not they end up being the aforesaid overkill.

There is, however, another underlying motive for building these ships, and that is to inescapably drive home the war-fighting superiority of Charisian technology. Driving home that superiority is seen by the inner circle not simply as a morale weapon designed to induce earlier surrenders, but also as a means to compel the defeated realms fighting for the Church to recognize that they literally cannot survive on the battlefield — whether afloat or ashore — without duplicating that technology. The world at large will be told that these ships were necessary — just as the new model artillery, cartridge-firing small arms, new steel mills, pneumatically-powered machine tools, etc., were necessary — in order to defend Charis against the Group of Four’s unprovoked attack. And, to be sure, Charis did require hugely enhanced combat abilities to survive. However, what the rest of the world at large won’t be told is that the inner circle desires to create an environment which brutalizes every other ruler or realm on Safehold in such a way as to compel them into jumping on the “the-innovation-genie-is-out-of-the-bottle” train right behind Charis.

In some ways, it’s a risky game, because if the coalition the Church put together for the jihad stays together as a long-term power bloc opposed to the Charisian Empire, and if that power bloc manages to equalize its industrial capabilities with those of Charis (and there is something of a ceiling imposed on Charis by the inability to use electricity), then Charis is in serious trouble in the event of any eventual Round 2. On the other hand, the inner circle has decided that courting that risk has to be a fundamental component of its overall strategy for ultimately dealing with the Church and the bombardment platforms against the backdrop of the millennial “return of the archangels” it now expects.

In reply to the question some other people have been asking about what happened to the other 2 10” guns of the original King Haarahld VII revision, I did, indeed, drop them from my SpringSharp-checked second design when I realized how many more 8” and 4” I could fit into the same displacement. Those lighter guns are the ships’ primary anti-ship armament anyway, so I decided I could live with single-mount 10” weapons, instead. I may still do exactly that, but since people asked, here’s what the KH VIIIs would look like if I went back to the twin-mount layout, instead. Notice that the ship gets a little larger in the process, and there were a couple of other tweaks I had to make to maintain structural strength. The worst aspect of adding the guns is that deep draft goes up to 46’, which is going to make problems in terms of channel depth and harbor depths. Part of that can be solved by increasing length and beam, but that drives tonnage even higher and starts creating some problems for the construction technique I’ve envisioned for building the ships. Cost rises by less than 2% overall by simply adding in the additional pair of 10”guns, so I’m going with the figure stated here.

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King Harahld VII,
Imperial Charisian Navy armored cruiser
Laid down: 896 (Kings Harbor Dockyard)
Barbette ship

Displacement:
10,120 t light; 11,005 t standard; 12,819 t normal; 14,270 t full load

Dimensions:
Length (overall): 465.17’
Length (waterline): 435’
Beam: 77’
Draft (normal): 23’6”
Draft (deep): 46’

Armament:
4 x 10" 40 cal BL guns, M 896 (2x2) in centerline open barbette mounts.
(508-pound AP shell, 150 rounds per gun)
14 x 8" 40 cal BL guns, M 896 (14 x 1) in broadside casemate mounts.
(260-pound AP shell, 200 rounds per gun)
12 x 4" 45 cal BL guns, M 896 (12 x 1) in broadside open mounts with shields
(32.5-pound AP shell, 250 rounds per gun)

Armor:
Belts:
Main: 6” (max), 2” (min), length = 280’; height = 15’; inclined 10°
Ends: 2.5” (uniform), length equals 151’; height equals 15’

Deck:
Uniform thickness = 1.5” in single armored deck.

Conning tower:
Uniform thickness = 6”

Gun armor:
10”/40: gunshield (face) = 6”; gunshield (side) = 6”; barbette = 6”
8”/40: casemate = 6”; shell hoist = 6”
4”/45: gunshield (face & side) = 2”; shell hoist = 6”


Machinery:
Coal-fired boilers, triple-expansion steam engines,
Direct drive, 2 shafts, 1,418 sdp (36,159 ihp) = 28.3 knots (24.6 Old Earth knots)
Range 12,000nm at 10.00 kts
Bunkerage at max displacement = 3,266 tons
Bunkerage at normal displacement = 1,814 tons


Complement:
602 - 783

Cost:
CM 1,850,000

Distribution of weights at normal displacement:
Armament: 917 tons, 7.2 %
Armor: 3,030 tons, 23.6 %
Belts: 1,338 tons, 10.4%; Guns: 928 tons, 7.2%; Deck: 693 tons, 5.4%; CT: 71 tons, 0.6%
Machinery: 2,411 tons, 18.8 %
Hull, fittings & equipment: 3,763 tons, 29.4 %
Fuel, ammunition & stores: 2,699 tons, 21.1 %

Overall survivability and seakeeping ability:
Survivability (Non-critical penetrating hits needed to sink ship = 35.5 x 10"
Stability (Unstable if below 1.00): 1.27
Metacentric height 5.2 ft
Roll period: 14.2 seconds
Steadiness as gun platform (Average = 50 %): 99 %
Seaboat quality (Average = 1.00): 1.23



Hull form characteristics:
Hull has raised forecastle, low quarterdeck, extended bulbous bow, & transom stern
Block coefficient (normal/deep): 0.570 / 0.324
Length to Beam Ratio: 5.65 : 1
'Natural speed' for length: 28.54 knots (24.8 Old Earth knots)
Power going to wave formation at top speed: 61 %
Trim (Max stability = 0, Max steadiness = 100): 80
Bow angle (Positive = bow angles forward): 40.00 degrees
Stern overhang: 5.00 ft / 1.52 m
Freeboard: maximum = 30’; minimum = 15’; average = 20’6”


Ship space, strength and comments:
Space:
Hull below water (magazines/engines, low = better): 85.8 %
Above water (accommodation/working, high = better): 157.0 %
Waterplane Area: 24,808 Square feet
Displacement factor (Displacement / loading): 121 %
Structure weight / hull surface area: 123 lbs/sq ft or 599 Kg/sq metre
Hull strength (Relative):
Cross-sectional: 0.91
Longitudinal: 2.67
Overall: 1.01
Adequate machinery, storage, compartmentation space
Excellent accommodation and workspace room
Ship has slow, easy roll, a good, steady gun platform
Good seaboat, rides out heavy weather easily

NOTE: with the twin 10” gun mounts restored, this design compares to HMS Triumph (1903) which mounted 4 x 10”; 14 x 7.5”; and 14 x 14-pounders (3”); with 3-7” belt armor, 1-3” deck armor, 11” conning tower armor, 8-10” turret armor, 2-10” barbettes, and 7” casemates; 12,175 tons (load displacement); 436’x 71’x 25’4”; 21.9 knots (19 Old Earth knots); 6,250 miles@11.5 knots (10 Old Earth knots). I hadn’t looked at Triumph when I started playing with the design, because I’d forgotten that she’d ever existed (although she served in the Royal British Navy, she was actually designed and built by Vickers for the Chilean Navy and only ended up in the RN because the Brits bought her from Chile to prevent her from being sold to Russia during the Russo-Japanese War of 1904). Once I'd turned KH VIII back into a pre-dreadnought battleship from an armored cruiser, however, I decided to see if I could find a historical pre-dreadnought she compared to, and I think I found one. Bear in mind that Triumph carried her main armament in turrets rather than gunshields.

Triumph is within 2% of KH VIII’s normal load displacement, carries the same main battery, the same number of secondary guns (7.5”-vs-8”), and 2 more tertiary guns (3”-vs-4”), but she’s 30% slower and has only 52% of the KH VIII’s endurance. Her design draft is about 2’ deeper than KH VIII’s, but I’m not sure what she’d look like at deep load draft, when she would displace about 800 tons more than the Charisian ship.

One point that needs to be borne in mind looking at these two designs, however, is that Triumph had to be designed on the theory that she would face guns equal to her own, whereas KH VIII is not. That allowed me to do a few things Triumph's designers couldn't. In addition, the real-world design had to worry about torpedos and mines, and KH VIII doesn't.

Taking everything into consideration, I’m actually pleased with how close to the historical ship my design works out. And I’d have to say that the outcome demonstrates that the SpringSharp software does do a pretty good job of modeling real life ship design.

In no particular order:

(1) Haarahld could not possibly move against any force launched against Charis by the Church until that force had first moved against Charis. You do remember the Church? The all-powerful, Mother of Men, servant of God, authorized by the Archangels, keeper of souls, and general all round font of wisdom and justice? That Church? Haarahld understood (even better than Merlin, who didn’t know anything about the brethren of Saint Zherneau at that point, realized he did) that no secular realm could even think about moving against any Church-supported, Church-mandated alliance except in self-evident self-defense. That meant he had to wait until (A) he had a plausible means of knowing that the attack was coming which could be publicly demonstrated and (B) until the forces and people committed to that attack were unequivocably identified. Therefore, he literally could not attack Emerald until he “discovered” Emerald’s intention to attack Charis, and he needed the Corisandian fleet elements in Emeraldian waters before he could do that. You may remember the lengths that he (or Cayleb, at least) went to to suggest that King Gorjah’s court had been the source of the information that sent the galleons off to meet Malikai and White Ford so far from home. However, it’s worth noting that even though Charis ostensibly had that advanced warning, Cayleb didn’t actually attack until well after the Corisandian galleys had rendezvoused with the Emeraldian galleys and provided Haarahld with the proof that he was fighting a defensive war rather than impiously raising his merely mortal hand against Mother Church in blasphemous, unprovoked defiance of God's will. (And I should point out that the Corisandian and Chisholmian contingents actually arrived at Eraystor as a joint force, little though they liked one another. They didn’t straggle in over a period of five-days or arrive separately which means that your "engage them individually at sea" strategy would have put him up against a larger force than you appear to be assuming.)

(2) His ability to find and engage the Corisandian and Chisholmian elements at sea would have been far from certain. Of course, he could have retained Merlin aboard his flagship as his own tame wizard, rather than sending him off with Cayleb, but he had what were in his opinion (and mine) enormously better reasons to send Cayleb and the galleons (and Merlin) off to Armageddon Reef. See below.

(3) His galley fleet was considerably weaker than its “paper” strength thanks to the diversions of men, matériel, and artillery to the galleons. His numerical advantage over the Corisandian/Chisholmian fleet (which was traveling in company) was not as large as you appear to be thinking, and he could pretty much have counted on its getting smaller with the losses he would almost inevitably take against the Eraystor fortifications (and the Emeraldian Navy) if he’d gone into Eraystor Bay after Nahrmahn’s ships. See below.

(4) There were really good and sound reasons for him not to attack Eraystor’s port fortifications with only his understrength galley fleet. They were called guns. Lots of guns. The fact that I didn’t take you on a tour of the batteries certainly shouldn’t suggest they weren’t there, unless you can think of another reason why he wasn’t sending in fire ships against the combined fleets? I promise you it wasn’t out of the goodness of his heart or because he’d forgotten to bring along the marshmallows. I could have done a chapter with his discussing why he couldn’t attack the fortifications in an “As you know, Bob” sort of format, but I personally took it as a given that the Eraystor naval facilities, at least, were reasonably well fortified and provided with artillery. No, it wasn't the "modern" artillery aboard the Charisian galleons, but then his galleys didn't have "modern" artillery, either. They would have been forced to engage old-style artillery using old-style tactics, aside from the single squadron armed with carronades, and that would have been a seriously losing proposition. And there were very good reasons why he didn't use the galleons against those fortifications. See below.

(5) Sending the galleon fleet off to intercept the Dohlaran and Tarotisian fleet elements off Armageddon Reef allowed him to use them under conditions which would maximize their advantages, minimize their disadvantages vis-à-vis galleys, and put the enemy galley fleet at a critical disadvantage. In shallower, more confined waters, where the galleys could make better use of their greater speed and mobility, the galleons’ combat advantages would have been considerably less. Now, it can certainly be argued — after the fact — that the galleons proved capable of decisive action at Darcos Sound, which is arguably “confined waters,” but it was one heck of a lot less confined than Eraystor Bay would have been. Moreover, for all of Haarahld’s faith in Merlin, and all the fact that he belonged to the inner circle, neither he nor any other Safeholdian had ever seen galleons in combat before. He was, therefore, not about to risk finding out that their artillery was not in fact superior to the Emeraldian artillery protecting the fleet anchorages or automatically assume that they would have been as successful against galleys in the sorts of waters galleys had been designed to fight in until that fact had been demonstrated in practice.

(6) Haarahld was, indeed, intelligent enough to recognize the advantages in defeating his enemy in detail. That is, in fact, exactly what he did. He chose to hit the combined Dohlaran-Tarotisian force at its most vulnerable and when it would be psychologically least prepared for combat. By doing so, he preserved the secret of the galleons’ broadside armaments until they had already been used to decisively blunt and defeat that arm of the Church’s offensive. Had he used them earlier and had even a single galley gotten away to Tarot and gained access to the semaphore system, the Dohlarans would certainly have been diverted to Tarot, which would have made that portion of the Church’s attack force much, much harder to get at.

(7) If the galleons proved as effective in combat as everyone on the Charisian side hoped they would, then he would be able to engage the combined galley fleet of the entire “northern force” in a single body and almost certainly crush it once Cayleb returned from Armageddon Reef. He intended from the beginning to amass a crushing superiority before he finally engaged them, although he didn’t realize until Merlin’s visit to his flagship that it would be possible to coordinate a genuine pincer attack against Black Water’s command. His original plan was to combine the galley and galleon fleets together into a single, irresistible hammer, and use that hammer to absolutely demolish the naval power of his foes in order to achieve what he did achieve in the end: a crushing Charisian sense of moral superiority and élan.

(8) Like Admiral Jellicoe, Haarahld could lose the war in an afternoon if he got unlucky against his opponents. As long as his fleet was in being and at sea, his enemies couldn’t land a significant invasion force in Charis. They had to destroy his fleet to accomplish their strategic goal; he merely had to keep his fleet intact to accomplish his strategic goal and avoid the invasion of Charis before Cayleb returned with the galleon fleet to reinforce them. In addition, of course, by keeping his fleet in being and keeping Black Water chasing him, he was able to play anvil to Cayleb’s hammer when the galleon fleet did return.

I’m sure I could adduce additional reasons to dispute your assumption that Haarahld failed to be “as sneaky as his enemies knew him to be.” The problem is that if you don’t already grasp the reasons why he had to (a) stand on the defensive until he was clearly the attacked party, (b) avoid losses to the Eraystor defenses, (c) employ his galleons for the first time under conditions which would give them the maximum tactical advantages and maximize the shock effect of being hit so far from home by a totally new and completely unexpected naval force; and (d) attain the maximum devastation of any opposing navy’s morale when it contemplated fighting the Royal Charisian Navy, then I doubt I’m going to be able to explain it to you.

I see that people have been discussing currency and currency values, so I thought I’d give you the enclosed table. This reflects cumulative changes in currency exchange rates over a five-year period; it does not show you the peaks and valleys involved in those changes. Nor does it show you the purchasing power of the various currencies in terms of US dollars, which I have established for my own use as of 1800, 1850, 1900, 1950, and 2000.

I should point out that the currency units used here are all marks. Prior to the jihad, Temple marks were (you should pardon the expression) the “gold standard” of Safehold. National units minted their own coins simply to put enough currency into circulation, and the exchange rate reflected both the amount of bullion in any given coin (there are different bullion contents for several of them, most notably for Sodar and Harchong, if only because there were no truly standardized planetwide units of measure and weight) as well as the users’ faith in the amount of bullion (the prohibitions of the Writ vis-a-vis debasement of the coinage notwithstanding). It should also be noted, however, that there have always been silver and copper (actually bronze) marks in circulation. Generally speaking, there are 20 silver marks (or “silvers”) in a gold mark and 5 copper marks in each silver mark (or 100 “coppers” in a gold mark). Paper notes have been in circulation for decades (or longer) on Safehold, as well, but the provisions of the Writ which forbid debasing the currency have always been interpreted to mean that while paper notes may be issued by a bank, a nation, an archbishopric, or Mother Church herself, the issuing institution cannot issue notes for more bullion than it has actually on hand. In other words, there is no elasticity in the “paper money” supply. At the same time, paper notes are considered less durable than coins (they can, after all, be burned) and easier to counterfeit (which, despite the Writ’s prohibition on debasing the currency is still done by some criminals), and merchants and bankers (who have had a much closer view than the general public of the realities behind Church and secular corruption) have less confidence that “unbacked” banknotes won’t be issued anyway. All of these are reasons that the majority of transactions have still been carried out in coin. The primary function of these banknotes has been for transactions between banking institutions and treasuries rather than in the marketplace.

In addition to actual banknotes, as defined above, however, institutions may also issue notes which are not backed by actual bullion on hand. These promissory notes are almost always issued on an interest-bearing basis. That is, those who accept the promissory notes in the sale of goods or services do so (in theory, at least) of their own free choice and at their own risk and return for a promised value when the note comes to term in excess of its face value at the time they accepted it. These are much more likely to be used in the marketplace than the banknotes defined above, but are also subject to a certain discount rate by sellers, whether this is openly acknowledged or not.

This is partly reflected in the exchange rates below, because the total amount of currency in circulation includes coins (in gold, silver, and copper), paper notes issued against bullion reserves, and interest bearing promissory notes. The relative values assigned to the currencies in the table below reflect the willingness of sellers to accept all three of the above. One reason for the Charisian mark’s climb in value as opposed to the Church of God Awaiting’s mark is that the Church’s creditors are beginning to cherish serious reservations about notes issued against bullion and promissory notes, whereas Charis is being regarded (whatever the Church might think about it) as a better investment. In short, this shift in value reflects the fact that the Safeholdian marketplace has come to the conclusion that the jihad is most likely to end in the defeat of Mother Church, at least in so far as the Temple’s ability to crush the Empire of Charis is concerned. No one has pointed this out to Clyntahn, needless to say, but were it not for the coercive power of the Church and the Inquisition, the value of the Church’s and Temple Lands’ marks (especially its banknotes and promissory notes) would have fallen considerably further against the Charisian mark.

Eventually, the Charisian, Chisholmian, Emeraldian, Tarotisian, and Corisandian marks will be folded into a single Imperial Mark, but Cayleb and Sharleyan have no desire to pursue any fiscal policies that might shake the faith of the merchants and bankers in the Empire’s constituent realms in the middle of a war.


Safeholdian Currency Equivalents
Nation......Charis 891....Charis 896

Charis........1.00............1.12
Chisholm......0.80............0.96
Emerald.......0.75............0.80
Tarot.........0.90............0.75
Corisande.....0.78............0.68
Siddarmark....0.95............0.96
Siddarmark*...................0.35
Silkiah.......0.92............0.92
Silkiah*......................0.64
Harchong......0.43............0.41
Desnair.......0.80............0.75
Dohlar........0.60............0.45
Delferahk.....0.68............0.42
Sodar.........0.56............0.53
Temple Lands..0.94............0.87
CoG Awaiting..1.14............1.01

*This line reflects currency value post Sword of Schueler in 896.

The Commodore never saw the original OBS [orbital bombardment system] coming for a very good reason, which I didn't really intend to share with you at this point, but . . . .

By the time the OBS was deployed, all but one of the colony's ships had been disposed of (as per the original operations plan) by dropping them into the local sun once they were no longer needed. The ship which remained had been Langhorne's flagship all along and he'd been very careful about vetting and reassigning shipboard personnel while Kau-Yung and Shan-Wei were off prepping the planet. By the time he came to join them, he'd had several years to weed out any potential weak spots in the crew.

Now, these were big honking ships, and his flagship had been chosen (and hung onto until last) in part because it was one of the main fabrication vessels --- that is, it represented a very impressive industrial base. Officially, it was retained till last in case something unexpected came up on Safehold which would require industrial support to rectify. There were no "system defenses" as such any longer, since they were now committed to staying on Safehold no matter what might happen and the small number of relatively light warships Kau-Yung had retained had been destroyed (for the same reasons as the rest of the colony fleet), since they would have been totally inadequate to defend the planet anyway. The military forces which remained under Kau-Yung's command essentially consisted by that time of a handful of passive sensor platforms (which were looking out of the system and not inward) and the ex-Navy personnel who were now part of the command crew and served more as police than any sort of serious military force. Don't forget that the entire command crew (less those in the Alexandria Enclave) were in on Langhorne's basic plan, which came to . . . lots of people. Exactly how many "lots of people" is something I don't intend to tell you just now. There were enough of them to require policing, and Kau-Yung's people would also have been in charge of disaster relief or any other emergency that came along.

Langhorne and his inner circle were well aware of how loyal to Kau-Yung his own people were, and despite the deep estrangement between him and Shan-Wei (which most of the "archangels" accepted as genuine) Langhorne was less than confident that Kau-Yung would be in favor of turning her and all the rest of the Alexandrians into ground zero for a kinetic strike. For that matter, Langhorne was far from certain that all the rest of the command crew would think it was a good idea to commit the mass murder of colleagues they'd known and worked with for decades, even if they had reached a point of bone-deep philosophical disagreement.

As a result of that uncertainty on his part, the original OBS was a relatively simple (and cheap) system built for a single purpose --- to take out the entire Alexandria Enclave in a single strike --- and it was intended to do so so quickly that neither Kau-Yung and his loyalists among the ex-Navy personnel nor any other "archangels" who might have disagreed with the plan would be able to prevent it from happening. In other words, the idea was to burn out the source of "dangerous contamination" in a single stroke and present them with a fait accompli, after which they would have little choice but to accept Langhorne's plans --- and actions --- as a "done deal." To that end, the OBS was also built under high conditions of secrecy in one of the modules aboard the flagship commanded and staffed by people personally loyal to Langhorne. Its existence was concealed not just from Kau-Yung, but from everyone outside Langhorne's immediate close circle of utterly trusted subordinates, and it wasn't deployed from inside the module in which it had been built until literally no more than a very few hours from when it was used. As a result, there was no real "window" in which Kau-Yung might have seen what was coming and taken steps to prevent it.