HFQ Official Snippet #8

PeterZ wrote:I believe that Corisande is being ignored as a source of sailors and ship building. They have just been truly incorporated into the Empire. I would be shocked if volunteers don't look for naval recruiting offices. Charis pays its sailors and Corisande's navy and merchant shipping had been devastated by the ICN. There has to be a significant number of trained seamen shorebound in Corisande.

Between untapped ship building capacity and shore bound sailors, significant numbers of schooners should be coming out of Corisande to protect Imperial Charisian Shipping. They wouldn't even have to be navy ships. They could be private ships paid to protect convoys. Paying private contractors to augment the ICN might be the most cost effective way to protect convoys.

Heck, its another vector to insert money into the Imperial economy.

Hi PeterZ,

That's a very good idea. I had thought about Corisande as a sourse of soldiers, but not sailors. But you're right. They do have both sailors and ship building capability.

You're also right about the private contractor idea. I do wonder about using them in a way that doesn't integrate them with the armed forces of the Empire. But it is still an idea to be explored.

I bet that after the assassination attempt on Irys and Hector, it wouldn't be too hard to recruit Corisandians for both army and navy service.

I do not believe there are any ships available for love or money to be had for any of the ideas currently being floated. None of the hulls are being left to rot. Many of the Charisian Navy ships were built from green timbers and are no longer seaworthy. Those ships are at the breakers where any good material is being salvaged. Which is why it was quite the godsend Charisia was able to capture so many enemy gallons to press into service or use as transports.

There are no ships to give to the Republic which could serve as privateers. The ships which were purpose built as privateers by Charisian’s citizens in the hayday of privateering have long since been sold to the ICN or contracted to them. A few enterprising souls may be building more to cash in on the bonanza time which will be created when the ICN forces it’s way into the Gulf of Dohlar and crushes the local naval forces. Those same enterprising souls will cash out after the first two or three cruises as things normalize in the Gulf.

I think some believe the demand for merchant shipping has declined since the Charisia is now at war with almost everyone except it’s ally Siddarmark. Trade may be down with large parts of Haven and Howard but the Charisian Empire now has a huge internal market and the Republic of Siddarmark which will buy almost everything produced. All that new production will have to be hauled by ship.

I seriously doubt there is a single ship building slip in Alliance territory idle. The public and private demands for ships are simply to great.

Tim wrote:I do not believe there are any ships available for love or money to be had for any of the ideas currently being floated. None of the hulls are being left to rot. Many of the Charisian Navy ships were built from green timbers and are no longer seaworthy. Those ships are at the breakers where any good material is being salvaged. Which is why it was quite the godsend Charisia was able to capture so many enemy gallons to press into service or use as transports.

There are no ships to give to the Republic which could serve as privateers. The ships which were purpose built as privateers by Charisian’s citizens in the hayday of privateering have long since been sold to the ICN or contracted to them. A few enterprising souls may be building more to cash in on the bonanza time which will be created when the ICN forces it’s way into the Gulf of Dohlar and crushes the local naval forces. Those same enterprising souls will cash out after the first two or three cruises as things normalize in the Gulf.

I think some believe the demand for merchant shipping has declined since the Charisia is now at war with almost everyone except it’s ally Siddarmark. Trade may be down with large parts of Haven and Howard but the Charisian Empire now has a huge internal market and the Republic of Siddarmark which will buy almost everything produced. All that new production will have to be hauled by ship.

I seriously doubt there is a single ship building slip in Alliance territory idle. The public and private demands for ships are simply to great.

What you are saying does make sense. Should that be the case, developing that capacity in Corisande might be the ticket.

Don

I think it's a good idea but IMO it's more a "mid-to-long" term idea.

While not an expert, I believe that it's easier to train soldiers/sailors than it would be to build new ships.

While Corisande had a ship building industry, Charis has made major changes in building of warships.

Corisande would likely need Charisian advisors in order to develop new warships, even lighter unarmored ones.

Because of Corisande's status as conquered territory, such assistance would be classified as a "bad idea" until very recently.

Now that Corisande has become a full member of the Empire, the process can begin but it will take time to get their ship builders up to speed.

I doubt that we'll see examples of Corisandian built warships in this book but we may hear of the beginnings of Corisande building new warships.

n7axw wrote:

Tim wrote:I do not believe there are any ships available for love or money to be had for any of the ideas currently being floated. None of the hulls are being left to rot. Many of the Charisian Navy ships were built from green timbers and are no longer seaworthy. Those ships are at the breakers where any good material is being salvaged. Which is why it was quite the godsend Charisia was able to capture so many enemy gallons to press into service or use as transports.

There are no ships to give to the Republic which could serve as privateers. The ships which were purpose built as privateers by Charisian’s citizens in the hayday of privateering have long since been sold to the ICN or contracted to them. A few enterprising souls may be building more to cash in on the bonanza time which will be created when the ICN forces it’s way into the Gulf of Dohlar and crushes the local naval forces. Those same enterprising souls will cash out after the first two or three cruises as things normalize in the Gulf.

I think some believe the demand for merchant shipping has declined since the Charisia is now at war with almost everyone except it’s ally Siddarmark. Trade may be down with large parts of Haven and Howard but the Charisian Empire now has a huge internal market and the Republic of Siddarmark which will buy almost everything produced. All that new production will have to be hauled by ship.

I seriously doubt there is a single ship building slip in Alliance territory idle. The public and private demands for ships are simply to great.

What you are saying does make sense. Should that be the case, developing that capacity in Corisande might be the ticket.

Don

Looking at the Safehold map in
http://infodump.thefifthimperium.com/en ... hold/338/0

It would seem that blockading the passage of Desnairian privateers through the Tarot Channel (200 miles wide ?), Tranjyr Passage (220 miles wide ?) and Cherl Strait (100 miles wide ?) should be feasible, particularly if steamships are available, thus forcing the Desnairian privateers to take a huge detour through the Iron Sea to reach Carter's Ocean and then Corisande or Zebediah.

They could eventually reach their destination but the more time one spends in transit the less time one spends in the area of operations.

runsforcelery wrote: SNIP The outnumbered escort had managed to prevent any of the half dozen troopships under its care from being seriously damaged and had actually sunk two of the raiders, but no less than six cargo ships had been cut out despite all they could accomplish. One of the escorting schooners had been destroyed, as well, and two others — and one of the three defending galleons — had been damaged.

given that the merchantmen sailors would know what likely awaited them on landing in Desnair [or before], I was a little surprised that none of them choose not to fire/blow up their own ships, taking a privateer [or at least some of its boats] with them. They would have had some gunpowder on board for the wolves.

We die - does it matter when?
Sink me the ship, Master Gunner - sink her, split her in twain!
Fall into the hands of God, not into the hands of Spain!'

From 'The Revenge'
https://www.wolfson.ox.ac.uk/~ben/revenge.htm

It looks to me that the development of the raiders asks for yet another class of warships to be added to the table. For convoy escort duty they need corvettes. Small (240 feet), fast (20 knots) ships with just enough armor to withstand smoothbore 25 pounders (4”) and a single turret carrying 2 4” guns.

The ammunition would be WD(wood devastating) HE-shells. A single salvo can sink a schooner.

Call them the Feyrad class. No messing with Charisian traders.

Hi Drak,

You might be right. But consider. Corisande, Emerald, Chisholm and Tarot all had docking slips capable of building galleys. Of the four, we have no text ev for Chisholm or Emerald building galleons.

That means all four have personnel with experience at ship building and the building slips are in place. So it's not as though you would be starting from scratch. You would need to send in teams from Charis, yes. But the purpose of those teams would be to introduce Sir Dustyn's design and supervise its implementation, not to teach the locals their trade. I would personally expect that once you got things under way, it would go more quickly than you might expect. I would start out by building light combatants such as schooners that can be built in greater numbers in a given time frame.

Where I would expect a bottleneck would be with the artillery needed to arm the hulls you build. Right now the army is soaking up everything that the major iron works can produce. But there is a new plant going in at Chisholm and Coisande had some capacity for producing cannon. Maybe a couple of lines could be developed for producing the smooth bore cannon the schooners would need. And for that matter arming the merchant galleons that are the privateers intended prey. I wonder how many guns could be put on a galleon before you start having hogging and other safety related problems.

Don

Nod. There may be ship building in Chisholm, Emerald and Tarot but it hasn't been mentioned yet.

We do know that the Imperial Navy has people serving in it from those parts of the Empire.

Now, while I may be off on how quickly ship building can restart on Corisande, I think it's safe to say that there was no navy ships being built on Corisande since its conquest.

Since Corisande has become officially part of the Empire, I'm sure that ship building (especially navy ships) will resume.

n7axw wrote:Hi Drak,

You might be right. But consider. Corisande, Emerald, Chisholm and Tarot all had docking slips capable of building galleys. Of the four, we have no text ev for Chisholm or Emerald building galleons.

That means all four have personnel with experience at ship building and the building slips are in place. So it's not as though you would be starting from scratch. You would need to send in teams from Charis, yes. But the purpose of those teams would be to introduce Sir Dustyn's design and supervise its implementation, not to teach the locals their trade. I would personally expect that once you got things under way, it would go more quickly than you might expect. I would start out by building light combatants such as schooners that can be built in greater numbers in a given time frame.

Where I would expect a bottleneck would be with the artillery needed to arm the hulls you build. Right now the army is soaking up everything that the major iron works can produce. But there is a new plant going in at Chisholm and Coisande had some capacity for producing cannon. Maybe a couple of lines could be developed for producing the smooth bore cannon the schooners would need. And for that matter arming the merchant galleons that are the privateers intended prey. I wonder how many guns could be put on a galleon before you start having hogging and other safety related problems.

Don

Tanstaafl wrote:It looks to me that the development of the raiders asks for yet another class of warships to be added to the table. For convoy escort duty they need corvettes. Small (240 feet), fast (20 knots) ships with just enough armor to withstand smoothbore 25 pounders (4”) and a single turret carrying 2 4” guns.

The ammunition would be WD(wood devastating) HE-shells. A single salvo can sink a schooner.

Call them the Feyrad class. No messing with Charisian traders.

Hi Tanstaafl,

I'm not sure that this is practical. The bottlenecks here would be the steel for the armor and the steam engines since Charis is already producing as many armored steam ships as they can plus Housmyn is busy converting his manufacturing capacity to steam. In the snippet at the head of this thread, we are told of the cities class coastal ironclads which sound like they are adequate for what they are doing. But it doesn't sound like they have adequate numbers for all the places they need to be. Sharpfield needs to have them for worhing in the Gulf of Dohlar against Thirsk's screw galleys. The real question is how to relieve the cities of anti privateer duty and get them over to Sharpfield. My thought was that perhaps adding schooners might be the quickest thing to do.

Again, just thoughts...

Don