Considerations about naval designs

Dilandu wrote:

doug941 wrote:
The point is you have to beach or drydock every so often to clean the hull. Imagine what several hundred square feet of seaweed, barnacles etc will do to your speed. Without said cleaning, an enemy ship that you normally would run down will instead sail away into the sunset. And if a marine worm eats your hull, your vessel is out of business when it maybe the only one able to respond to the enemy.

Please. It's a cheap, wartime-build gunboats and sloops. They are build for short service.

Copper cladding stops this buildup, antifouling paint would be another option (but copper cladding lasts longer).
As for comparable hull designs, have a look on the web for "marine nationale .djvu". The hull detail drawings for most of the French navy's ships built from from 1870 to 1970 were uploaded a few years ago (mostly living on Russian servers)(including submarines and aircraft carriers). Earlier drawings for ships built in Brest and Toulon, including about half the US Navy circa 1838 are also available (I have copies but they are big files (46Mb for the Toulon pdf - too big for most peoples email & 2.6Gb in total found so far (average file size per ship is ~10Mb))).

doug941 wrote:If you want Powerful as an escort, I would recommend that you look up RN Orlando class. To compare- HMS Powerful 14,200 tons, 500 feet long, 22 knots, 7,000 nm range, 894 crew, 2x9.2" 12x6" 12x3" 12x1.85" 4 torpedo tubes, armor 2-6" deck 6" barbettes and shields. HMS Orlando 5,600 tons, 300 feet, 18 kn, 10,000 nm@10kts, 484 crew, 2x9.2" 10x6" 6x2.25" 10x1.85" 6 tubes (1 bow, 1 stern, 2 port & starboard) armor 10" belt 12"conning tower. By cutting the belt and tower to 5-6" armor shielding could be added to the guns while still being able to fulfill any duty that the Powerful could do. In addition you could build and crew two Orlandos for each Powerful.

I will definitely look Orlando over. She seems a tidy little ship, although the technology I'm working with is now 1900 and before. So I'm sure I could design a more capable vessel for the same tonnage.

Dilandu wrote:

Draken wrote:I was thinking about post-Treaty.

For what reason? What Charis really lack, is the light forces, not battleline. They need screw wooden sloops for convoy protection and patrol, and screw wooden gunboats for coastal operations. Their current advantage in armor and artillery would let them control the seas for at least a decade more.

Why? Unless you intend to go to steam merchant marine which will happen but not immediately, Charis has oodles and oodles of schooners that were snarfed up when priviteering went bust for convoy duty. What you are proposing would have too short of legs in terms of bunkerage to stay with the convoys on an extended voyage.

Don

n7axw wrote:
Why? Unless you intend to go to steam merchant marine which will happen but not immediately, Charis has oodles and oodles of schooners that were snarfed up when priviteering went bust for convoy duty. What you are proposing would have too short of legs in terms of bunkerage to stay with the convoys on an extended voyage.

Don

I weren't propose to get rid of sails. What i mean, is a screw/sail sloops, capable of chase raiders, protect the convoys from attacks, mantain blockade and deal with possible galleon-size enemy. Screw sloops with heavy shell guns and rifles - like USS "Kearsarge", for example - would need much less crew and money to mantain than sail galleons, and would be pretty able to take both them and schoonres role.

Dilandu wrote:

n7axw wrote:
Why? Unless you intend to go to steam merchant marine which will happen but not immediately, Charis has oodles and oodles of schooners that were snarfed up when priviteering went bust for convoy duty. What you are proposing would have too short of legs in terms of bunkerage to stay with the convoys on an extended voyage.

Don

I weren't propose to get rid of sails. What i mean, is a screw/sail sloops, capable of chase raiders, protect the convoys from attacks, mantain blockade and deal with possible galleon-size enemy. Screw sloops with heavy shell guns and rifles - like USS "Kearsarge", for example - would need much less crew and money to mantain than sail galleons, and would be pretty able to take both them and schoonres role.

So you are proposing to use the sails most of the time and use the screws where speed and maneuverability are needed?

Don

n7axw wrote:
So you are proposing to use the sails most of the time and use the screws where speed and maneuverability are needed?

Don

Generally yes. Against the sail enemy it would be perfect and cost-effective. The screw sloops/seagoing gunboats would be able to:

1) Operate as convoy escorts, due to their maneuvrability (they would be able to easly outmanoeuvre the suqadron of sail raiders, keeping them away from transports) and relatively low cost (in comparsion with galleons, with their large crew).

2) Operate as patrol ships, able to easly catch and destroy any sail raider (due to their independence of wind)

3) Mantain the blockade, by catching the sail blockade runners and defeating - due to their superior maneuvrability and heavy shell guns/rifled guns any galley or galleon squadron that may try to attack the blockading forces. They would cost much less then galleon fleet, and - due to their steam propulsion - would be much less vunerable then sail galleons.

4) Operating against enemy coastline and support the ground forces. Due to their smaller size, and ability to move freely, they would be much more effective against coastal fortifications then unarmoured galleons.

Currently, the Charisian navy isn't optimized at all. They mantain a lot of sail galleons, that in shell-and-rifled guns era became useless, but still consume a lot of manpower. They have a lot of sail schooners, that are unable to work as coastal force, and not a good blockaders, because they aren't good against heavy ships.

It would be much more effective, if Charis simply replaced his galleon and schooners navy with screw gunboat/sloop forces.

Wooden ships are nice, but are much harder to mass produce, with steel hull you just need to create one form of each element for casting and it's much cheaper. Metal is much harder than wood and will survive more hits and there no issue with slowing down.

Draken wrote:Wooden ships are nice, but are much harder to mass produce, with steel hull you just need to create one form of each element for casting and it's much cheaper. Metal is much harder than wood and will survive more hits and there no issue with slowing down.

OTOH, wood is a lot more available than metal, especially at the beginning of your industrialization phase, when foundries are limited in number and size.

fallsfromtrees wrote:OTOH, wood is a lot more available than metal, especially at the beginning of your industrialization phase, when foundries are limited in number and size.

Charis has already had to build wooden ships out of green wood because the supply of properly dried and seasoned wood was used up fairly quickly. It could be as much as five years for sufficient stocks of seasoned wood are available again -- assuming it is allowed to season and not built into steam/sail sloops.

The rest of Safehold isn't in much better shape for properly cured wood for building ships.

Dilandu wrote:

n7axw wrote:
So you are proposing to use the sails most of the time and use the screws where speed and maneuverability are needed?

Don

Generally yes. Against the sail enemy it would be perfect and cost-effective. The screw sloops/seagoing gunboats would be able to:

1) Operate as convoy escorts, due to their maneuvrability (they would be able to easly outmanoeuvre the suqadron of sail raiders, keeping them away from transports) and relatively low cost (in comparsion with galleons, with their large crew).

2) Operate as patrol ships, able to easly catch and destroy any sail raider (due to their independence of wind)

3) Mantain the blockade, by catching the sail blockade runners and defeating - due to their superior maneuvrability and heavy shell guns/rifled guns any galley or galleon squadron that may try to attack the blockading forces. They would cost much less then galleon fleet, and - due to their steam propulsion - would be much less vunerable then sail galleons.

4) Operating against enemy coastline and support the ground forces. Due to their smaller size, and ability to move freely, they would be much more effective against coastal fortifications then unarmoured galleons.

Currently, the Charisian navy isn't optimized at all. They mantain a lot of sail galleons, that in shell-and-rifled guns era became useless, but still consume a lot of manpower. They have a lot of sail schooners, that are unable to work as coastal force, and not a good blockaders, because they aren't good against heavy ships.

It would be much more effective, if Charis simply replaced his galleon and schooners navy with screw gunboat/sloop forces.

Actually, the schooners are a bit more effective than you are recognizing, at least against current opposition. You are right against shell and rifle equipped raiders, but the privateers the ICN is facing are the Desnarians who still haven't figured how to build old style cannon that doesn't explode unless they are building them from copper. Not much market For shells there.

As for facing down galleons, by my count Charis has destroyed or captured about 200 church galleons which would leave the COGA with about 150 hulls, many of which aren't crewed due to the emphasis on the land war, the exception being the Dohlarian fleet which is penned in the Gulf of Dohlar. So while use of galleons by the commerce raiders is possible, it is extremely unlikely.

In a previous thread, RFC pointed out that the only direction that the commerse raiders can come from is windward. So if the schooners can cover that, they should be fine. Also in the same post he mentioned arming the merchis to an extent that closing with them could be expensive for the privateers.

So while I would agree that your idea is workable, it does seem that the EOC has the resources for coping with the commerce raiders at this time. In that event I find myself thinking the the resources would be better focused on building the light/medium cruisers which as I recall we both agree are needed to replace the galleon fleet.

Don