Thirsk & Ahlvarez - SPOILER

dwileye13 wrote:
I also would like to point out the rescue of the ship in an incredible storm off the coast of Siddermark and towing that same ship all the way to Thesmar

There are always problems with river warships. To operate on rivers, they should have as little draft as possible. This is... not going well in open sea.

I can't recall any river ship that could be effective in open sea. Maybe you could help?

Dilandu wrote:

dwileye13 wrote:
I also would like to point out the rescue of the ship in an incredible storm off the coast of Siddermark and towing that same ship all the way to Thesmar

There are always problems with river warships. To operate on rivers, they should have as little draft as possible. This is... not going well in open sea.

I can't recall any river ship that could be effective in open sea. Maybe you could help?

I think you are overthinking this a bit and perhaps trying to compare what David has done with his story a bit too closely with reality in our own history. Yes it is true that early American ironclads didn't survive all that well at sea. Was that monitor class vessel they excavated off the Carolinas not too long ago THE Monitor?

But in the Safehold story you have Delthak and her sisters traveling the 8,000 miles between Charis and Siddar City. You also have Delthak rescuing that galleon in a storm... Sounds pretty sea worthy to me. Indeed, the most significant limitation seems to be her range depending on how much coal she can carry. Now is all of this handwavium? Perhaps somewhat, but in major part no.

As for fighting a galleon at sea, no way does the galleon compete. For one thing the galleon can't even catch her unless she chooses to be caught, no matter what the weather. In normal conditions where she can open her ports, she tears the galleon apart with cannon fire without suffering significant damage. If she can't get her ports open and decides to ram, guess which ship goes down? Apart from actually getting a shell through a gun port, there is no way for the galleon to hurt her. While that can indeed happen, the odds of that would have to be in Delthak's favor.

Don

n7axw wrote:I think you are overthinking this a bit and perhaps trying to compare what David has done with his story a bit too closely with reality in our own history. Yes it is true that early American ironclads didn't survive all that well at sea. Was that monitor class vessel they excavated off the Carolinas not too long ago THE Monitor?

But in the Safehold story you have Delthak and her sisters traveling the 8,000 miles betwwen Charis and Sidar City. You also have Delthak rescuing that galleon in a storm... Sounds pretty sea worthy to me. Indeed, the most significant limitation seems to be her range depending on how much she can carry. Now is all of this handwavium? Perhaps somewhat, but in major part no.

As for fighting a galleon at sea, no way does the galleon compete. For one thing the galleon can't even catch her unless she chooses to be caught, no matter what the weather. In normal conditions where she can open her ports, she tears the galleon apart with cannon fire without suffering significant damage. If she can't get her ports open and decides to ram, guess which ship goes down? Apart from actually getting a shell through a gun port, there is no way for the galleon to hurt her. While that can indeed happen, the odds of that would have to be in Delthak's favor.

Don

Something else I would point out is that Delthak and her sister ships were the 1st generation "River" class ships. A while back RFC shared the design of a "Delthak II" class ironclad. From what I remember, they were described as larger than the "River" class and as having significantly better sea keeping ability. So based on this, I would expect them to be fairly sea worthy.

n7axw wrote:
But in the Safehold story you have Delthak and her sisters traveling the 8,000 miles between Charis and Siddar City. You also have Delthak rescuing that galleon in a storm... Sounds pretty sea worthy to me. Indeed, the most significant limitation seems to be her range depending on how much coal she can carry. Now is all of this handwavium? Perhaps somewhat, but in major part no.

As i say: "Miantonomoh" crossed the Atlantic in 11 days, 3800 kilometers from the Newfoundlend to Portsmuth. Ocean, not the relatively narrow Safeholdian seas. She was an ocean-going monitor, and was fit (at least, theoretically) for those actions. And she probably was able to save some unfortunate sailship even in storm.

Still, it was absolutely impossible for her to battle in open sea in anything else than calm weather.

The river ironclads have one big problem: they should be small enough to serve on rivers. So... in calm sea, charisian river ironclads would be formidable foe for any galleon fleet.

In even relatively bad weather, the best that they could do is to strike colours immediatly. Their low placed gunports made any attempt to fire guns in bad weather the immediate suicide.

Henry Brown wrote:
Something else I would point out is that Delthak and her sister ships were the 1st generation "River" class ships. A while back RFC shared the design of a "Delthak II" class ironclad. From what I remember, they were described as larger than the "River" class and as having significantly better sea keeping ability. So based on this, I would expect them to be fairly sea worthy.

It is possible. But they wouldn't be able to operate on rivers (of course, exept really big rivers!), if they are big enought to fight in open seas. So, they wouldn't be "river" ironclads. Coastal - may be.

- Aha, there is a church galleon underway! - the captain of the charisian river ironclad HMS "Marhy Sue" grinned, - Prepare to battle!

The crew of the HMS "Marhy Sue" was less enthusiastic. The sea was rough, and the waves was high enough to constantly wash the ironclad's casemate. Still... it was a Church galleon in sea, and the enemy already started to fire from their upper deck guns. The lower deck gunports of the Church galleon was, for some reason, closed tightly.

- Turn to starboard! - ordered the captain of the HMS "Marhy Sue", - Clear for action! Open the gunports...

The sudden squall was simply a unfortunate accident. The HMS "Marhy Sue" was caught lurched in the circulation, and her low-placed gunports scooped water... not too much, but enought for the small-draft, low-board ship to roll.

And did not straighten

///

...- What are the accursed heretics doing? - the captain of Navy of God galleon "Langhorne's Wisdom" lowered his spyglass, - For what reason they opened gunports on that... that ship? In that weather? On the ship that low?
- Surely, the Shain-Wei must affect their mind, - the puzzled chaplain muttered, - But even for heretics... it was stupid
- Pull the boats! - ordered captain, - Search for the surviors! Even the heretics don't deserve to die such stupidly...

(waive all rights, just humor)

Dilandu wrote:

Zakharra wrote:
True, but in heavy weather, it's unlikely that even galleons will be fighting. Only the Charsian navy fights in bad/heavy weather. But they are known to be insane sailors to begin with.

The problem is, the galleon could at least somehow fight in rough seas. And the river-type ironclads... Well, the first USS "Monitor" was actually more seaworthy than CSS "Virginia" and all she attempted to is to reach Charleston. She failed.

Yes and No on USS Monitor. The USS Monitor nearly sank on her way to Hampton Roads in a storm. Also the Monitor was not a very seaworthy ship IIRC she had about a foot or so of freeboard vs the Virginia's 2.5-3ft.

I'm not sure where people are getting the idea that the Rivers are good in open seas. Their introduction in MT&T said that while they had some benefits over galleons, they would have trouble in rough weather:

...They were scarcely thirty minutes out of The Throat into the Charis Sea, and the wind was barely a moderate breeze, raising waves no higher than four feet. They happened to be steaming directly into that wind, however, and water was already breaking white over Delthak's short foredeck. When they met anything resembling a real wind, that water was going break white and green across the curved face of the casemate, and he hoped to hell those three forward gunports were as solidly built — and securely fastened — as Olyvyr and the Delthak Works foreman had assured him they were.

The truth was, he'd expected her to be an absolute pig in any sort of seaway, but it didn't look like she was going to be anywhere near as bad as he'd feared. For one thing, she had a very low freeboard compared to any true oceangoing vessel. She didn't look that way, given her angular profile, but the reality was that she sat much lower in the water than any galleon her size. That was going to make her wet, as her current behavior already demonstrated, but combined with her lack of masts, it also meant she exposed less area to the wind, which meant, in turn, that she was far more weatherly than he'd feared from her shallow draft. There simply wasn't much for the wind to push against, compared to a galleon's higher sides and lofty rig, when it tried to force her to leeward. For another thing, she answered the wheel with remarkable speed — far more rapidly than any galleon he'd ever served aboard. Indeed, she answered more quickly than most galleys had, when the Charisian Navy had still possessed galleys. She was still going to heave her guts out if the weather blew up, but for all her squattiness, she was actually remarkably maneuverable.

And she was fast. Langhorne, she was fast! In smooth water, at least. The resistance of those blunt bows was going to slow her down in any sort of heavy weather, but they were making well over twelve knots, and the engines weren't even straining.

To be honest, there is already plenty of ships that are equiped to hunt down the remnants of Thrisk's fleet after the KHs are through trashing them.

Their called Rottweilers. They would be more then capable of tracking down any survivors and sending them to the bottom. The KHs are going to be needed for punching out the main fleet and the defenses around Gorath Bay, mopping up the stragglers (and wooden galleons at that, an obsolete ship, even if no one knows it yet) can go to the sailing ironclads. My guess is the river going ones are going to be kinda needed in Siddimark. Something about a million and a half of screaming Harchong peasants coming over the border. The ironclads will be very very useful there.

Dilandu wrote:- Aha, there is a church galleon underway! - the captain of the charisian river ironclad HMS "Marhy Sue" grinned, - Prepare to battle!

The crew of the HMS "Marhy Sue" was less enthusiastic. The sea was rough, and the waves was high enough to constantly wash the ironclad's casemate. Still... it was a Church galleon in sea, and the enemy already started to fire from their upper deck guns. The lower deck gunports of the Church galleon was, for some reason, closed tightly.

- Turn to starboard! - ordered the captain of the HMS "Marhy Sue", - Clear for action! Open the gunports...

The sudden squall was simply a unfortunate accident. The HMS "Marhy Sue" was caught lurched in the circulation, and her low-placed gunports scooped water... not too much, but enought for the small-draft, low-board ship to roll.

And did not straighten

///

...- What are the accursed heretics doing? - the captain of Navy of God galleon "Langhorne's Wisdom" lowered his spyglass, - For what reason they opened gunports on that... that ship? In that weather? On the ship that low?
- Surely, the Shain-Wei must affect their mind, - the puzzled chaplain muttered, - But even for heretics... it was stupid
- Pull the boats! - ordered captain, - Search for the surviors! Even the heretics don't deserve to die such stupidly...

(waive all rights, just humor)

You got the name of that ironclad wrong... On Safehold it's gotta be Marhy Susy...

Don