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(SPOILERS) From David re: a certain ship's fate

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Re: (SPOILERS) From David re: a certain ship's fate
Post by Keith_w   » Sat Oct 24, 2015 5:11 pm

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JeffEngel wrote:
Expert snuggler wrote:Since nobody's suggested this it must be a stupid question.

Why not excavate around the ship to free it?

It's a huge ship and there are only so many shovels in the world, but it does have explosives on board.

Explosives are hazardous, but so are approaching enemies, and the ship was armored.

Shoveling sand under moving water is an exercise in frustration. Sand nearby will just shift into the hole, quickly. Shoveling up - and away - the entire sand bar for some 2/3rd's the length of the ship will take much too long.

Specialized dredging equipment may do wonders, but squadrons don't routinely sail with that.

They've got explosive shells and bags for prepping gunpowder. I doubt they had much specialized underwater demolition gear for the exercise. (Although it would have been mighty handy for blowing locks on the canals to stop the screw-galleys, too, if they'd been in time.) Underwater explosions near a ship, even an armored one, will be mighty dangerous - heck, if they weren't, the spar torpedo would be a non-threat.

And much of the problem was from having to spend time figuring out the whole problem; trying towing on the tide; then trying more unloading - fairly desperate unloading, at that point; and finally running out of time from the hard-to-predict arrival of the enemy. If they'd known with certainty just what the problem was, how bad it was, that towing would not work, and that they had only that many hours til the enemy showed up, then skipping to explosives or dumping guns immediately may have done the trick. It's just that the time to figure out the problem and work out less desperate Plans A, B, etc. left them out of time to try some extreme Plan X.


Also, let us not forget that being stuck in the mud really sucks, literally, as anyone who has waded through mud and lost a shoe or a boot to the suction can tell you.
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Re: (SPOILERS) From David re: a certain ship's fate
Post by Henry Brown   » Sat Oct 24, 2015 8:15 pm

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I didn't have an issue from Thunder running aground from a storytelling point of view. They were in foreign waters, it was night, and stuff like that really happens. Fair enough.

What I wonder about is: why did the ICN only send 2 Rottweiler-class ironclads in the first place? I understand that the original steam powered ironclads are operating in coastal waters and rivers in Siddarmark. And the newer, improved City-class ironclads have been detailed to hit the Desniarian coast in order to suppress the privateers. But on the other hand, the Dohlaran navy is the only serious high seas opposition left. Since all the steam powered ironclads are busy elsewhere, why not send *ALL* the Rottweilers to the Gulf of Dohlar?
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Re: (SPOILERS) From David re: a certain ship's fate
Post by JeffEngel   » Sat Oct 24, 2015 9:51 pm

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Henry Brown wrote:I didn't have an issue from Thunder running aground from a storytelling point of view. They were in foreign waters, it was night, and stuff like that really happens. Fair enough.

What I wonder about is: why did the ICN only send 2 Rottweiler-class ironclads in the first place? I understand that the original steam powered ironclads are operating in coastal waters and rivers in Siddarmark. And the newer, improved City-class ironclads have been detailed to hit the Desniarian coast in order to suppress the privateers. But on the other hand, the Dohlaran navy is the only serious high seas opposition left. Since all the steam powered ironclads are busy elsewhere, why not send *ALL* the Rottweilers to the Gulf of Dohlar?

A forum search for "Rottweiler"-including posts from RFC has a LAMA excerpt mentioning six of Thunderer's class. It's possible some others of those have been lost or decommissioned since, but unlikely that that accounts for four if any.

Forces moving up Hsing-Wu's Passage would need a lot of range too - certainly coming into its western end, and it'd still be mightily convenient from the east.

On the subject of getting around though - Getting the screw-galleys around by canal is clearly possible, for at least some canal routes. Haven and Howard are full of them, although some of them may not be in service or usable by the RDN just now. Dohlar to South Harchong's coast isn't necessarily the only route they could take - they could make for a horrible surprise for the squadrons reducing Desnair's privateer building and supporting ports.

It's not an explanation that would account for the missing Rottweilers already, but in the future, the need to have something like that in support may be relevant to future deployments in Desnair, more distant parts of South Harchong (including whatever those regions in southwest Howard are), and until the canal routes between Dohlar and the Border States get in Allied hands, up into them, the Temple Lands, and North Harchong.
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Re: (SPOILERS) From David re: a certain ship's fate
Post by phillies   » Sat Oct 24, 2015 10:25 pm

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runsforcelery wrote:
SNIP

Externally, I wanted both to present that knowledge on the Dohlarans' part to the reader and to avoid the "mysterious single pinnacle rock shoal placed there geographical ages ago by the author specifically to catch this ship" syndrome.


I seem to recall an American Cruiser serving with ABDAFloat in 1941-1942 that unfortunately found such a pinnacle. On the same line, the Great Eastern (Leviathan) found one of these in an entrance to New York harbor. So it's not exactly unknown.
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Re: (SPOILERS) From David re: a certain ship's fate
Post by evilauthor   » Sat Oct 24, 2015 11:22 pm

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Keith_w wrote:Also, let us not forget that being stuck in the mud really sucks, literally, as anyone who has waded through mud and lost a shoe or a boot to the suction can tell you.


Yeah. The mud suction thing was certainly mentioned multiple times in the text.
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Re: (SPOILERS) From David re: a certain ship's fate
Post by n7axw   » Sun Oct 25, 2015 10:02 pm

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I'm wondering if Dreadnought had any of those wire wound cannon that Seamount and Housmyn developed at Merlin's suggestion.

If so, that could turn out to be a useful bit of tech that would be within Dohlar's ability to copy...

Don
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Re: (SPOILERS) From David re: a certain ship's fate
Post by runsforcelery   » Sun Oct 25, 2015 11:43 pm

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JeffEngel wrote:
Henry Brown wrote:I didn't have an issue from Thunder running aground from a storytelling point of view. They were in foreign waters, it was night, and stuff like that really happens. Fair enough.

What I wonder about is: why did the ICN only send 2 Rottweiler-class ironclads in the first place? I understand that the original steam powered ironclads are operating in coastal waters and rivers in Siddarmark. And the newer, improved City-class ironclads have been detailed to hit the Desniarian coast in order to suppress the privateers. But on the other hand, the Dohlaran navy is the only serious high seas opposition left. Since all the steam powered ironclads are busy elsewhere, why not send *ALL* the Rottweilers to the Gulf of Dohlar?

A forum search for "Rottweiler"-including posts from RFC has a LAMA excerpt mentioning six of Thunderer's class. It's possible some others of those have been lost or decommissioned since, but unlikely that that accounts for four if any.

Forces moving up Hsing-Wu's Passage would need a lot of range too - certainly coming into its western end, and it'd still be mightily convenient from the east.

On the subject of getting around though - Getting the screw-galleys around by canal is clearly possible, for at least some canal routes. Haven and Howard are full of them, although some of them may not be in service or usable by the RDN just now. Dohlar to South Harchong's coast isn't necessarily the only route they could take - they could make for a horrible surprise for the squadrons reducing Desnair's privateer building and supporting ports.

It's not an explanation that would account for the missing Rottweilers already, but in the future, the need to have something like that in support may be relevant to future deployments in Desnair, more distant parts of South Harchong (including whatever those regions in southwest Howard are), and until the canal routes between Dohlar and the Border States get in Allied hands, up into them, the Temple Lands, and North Harchong.


Yes, there were multiple Rottweilers, six of which were earmarked for conversion. Another handful weren't. (Indeed, if you go back and look at the passage in which they rescue the survivors en route to the Temple, one of the un-converted ships is present in Sarmouth's squadron.) Of the 6 earmarked for conversion, 2 were sent with Sharpfield to take Claw Island. They were supposed to hold the island long enough for the City-class ships to be completed and join them there (if you'l recall, there were actually several colliers with cioal attached to his fleet in order to build up stockpiles for the anticipated arrival of the steam-powered ironclads). The pair of ironclad galleons were sent because they were immediately available (they'd been stationed in Chisholm as part of the class's initial deployment plan) and were supposed to be primarily fortress breakers for taking the island despite its batteries. The conventional galleons and schooners (all shell-armed and, for the most part, more powerful than anything they might encounter, at least on a class-for-class basis) were supposed to establish a presence in the western Gulf only until the Cities got there.

Of the remaining 4 ironclad conversions, one was permanently stationed at Tellesberg as the core of a mobile reserve covering Charis, Tarot, and Emerald against the (very remote) possibility of a threat from the rag tag remnants of the Imperial Desnarian Navy and in case she was needed to deal with any coastal bombardment missions that might come up. Two were stationed at Siddar City to be available for operations deep into Hsing-Wu's Passage (I believe the expedition in which a coaling station was set up inside the Passage is mentioned in the book, and those galleons were the core of the covering/bombardment force for that operation while the Cities were still busy farther south.) And the fourth was also in Tellesberg undergoing routnine maintenance when the battle in the narrows took place. Her repairs were about finished at the time, and it was her and the one assigned effectively to "Home Fleet" which Rock Point references when he says he can send two of them immediately to reinforce Sharpfild. He can send them at once because he doesn't have to get orders to them, as he would the ones in the Passage. I believe he also talks about how soon the Cities (or at least some of them) can be released from Desnarian waters and/or completed and worked up and dispatched in their wakes.

In other words, under the original game plan, all of the ironclad galleons were accounted for doing various important things (including repairs) and a full third of the ICN's blue water armored ships had been dispatched to take Claw Island and then simply hold the ring until the Cities and the King Harahlds became available as well. Those deployment plans were disupted when it became necessary to send the Cities to Desnair, instead. Had that diversion not become necessary, then the pair of Rottweilers would have been relieved by far more capable ships long before the Kaudzhu Narrows happened.

I think it's unreasonable to have expected the ICN to have sent a greater proportion of its blue water ironclads on what was basically a preliminary "setting up" operation when — as they demonstrated rather conclusively — the pair of them would have been equal to dealing with virtually the entire Royal Dohlaran Navy if they had been operating together. Don't forget that the only reason Captain Ahbaht was running the operation with only a single ironclad was that Dreadnought had suffered damage a loft in a gale which had not yet been made completely good (as far as he knew) when his window of opportunity was defined by the information he possessed. Had both Rottweilers been sent on the operation, the situation would've been very different after Thunder went on to the mud bank, and so would the outcome.


"Oh, bother!" said Pooh, as Piglet came back from the dead.
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Re: (SPOILERS) From David re: a certain ship's fate
Post by jgnfld   » Mon Oct 26, 2015 6:53 am

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Expert snuggler wrote:Since nobody's suggested this it must be a stupid question.

Why not excavate around the ship to free it?

It's a huge ship and there are only so many shovels in the world, but it does have explosives on board.

Explosives are hazardous, but so are approaching enemies, and the ship was armored.


Good Lord!!! What is it with the notion that explosions can solve anything??? It's almost a cultural meme these days. :lol: :lol: :lol:

Fact 1: Explosives used under hulls is the surest method known of destroying a ship. Even armored ships as you break the ship's back by creating a cavity under it.

Fact 2: While I'll defer to RFC, I doubt these ironclads are armored underneath in any case. If not, we're talking mere inches of planking.

Fact 3: Water/waterlogged mud is a quite efficient medium for transporting shock waves over short distances.

Fact 4: OTOH moving waterlogged mud any distance with explosions would be incredibly inefficient. Never heard of it even being tried, personally, except to blow small bog holes to create duck nesting habitat and even that was fraught with problems.
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Re: (SPOILERS) From David re: a certain ship's fate
Post by Randomiser   » Mon Oct 26, 2015 9:19 am

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n7axw wrote:I'm wondering if Dreadnought had any of those wire wound cannon that Seamount and Housmyn developed at Merlin's suggestion.

If so, that could turn out to be a useful bit of tech that would be within Dohlar's ability to copy...

Don


Actually, Merlin seems to be more concerned about the technology transfer impact of the loss of the cannon and their carriages than of the armour
'Dynnys Zhwaigair was about to have six-inch rifled guns on Mahndrayan carriages to examine. God only knew where that was likely to lead!' HFQ p492 Kindle edition

Which doesn't seem to have been commented on. I have lost track. Can anyone remind me what a Mandrayn Carriage is and whether the Temple Boys are likely to be able to reproduce it?
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Re: (SPOILERS) From David re: a certain ship's fate
Post by n7axw   » Mon Oct 26, 2015 10:14 am

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Randomiser wrote:
n7axw wrote:I'm wondering if Dreadnought had any of those wire wound cannon that Seamount and Housmyn developed at Merlin's suggestion.

If so, that could turn out to be a useful bit of tech that would be within Dohlar's ability to copy...

Don


Actually, Merlin seems to be more concerned about the technology transfer impact of the loss of the cannon and their carriages than of the armour
'Dynnys Zhwaigair was about to have six-inch rifled guns on Mahndrayan carriages to examine. God only knew where that was likely to lead!' HFQ p492 Kindle edition

Which doesn't seem to have been commented on. I have lost track. Can anyone remind me what a Mandrayn Carriage is and whether the Temple Boys are likely to be able to reproduce it?


Somebody more tech oriented than I would have to answer this, but I do recall a quite a bit of discussion in previous books about the difficulties experienced in developing gun carriages.

My hunch would be that Dohlar could reproduce them.

Don
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