HFQ Official Snippet #9

n7axw wrote:I'm back beating on my convoy escorts drum again. I'm experiencing a bit of tension between Rock Point's internal ruminations in this snippet and RFC's posting in the Convoy Escorts thread where he claims there are lots of light craft, presumably schooners, available.

The only reconciliation I can see right now is there are still lots of schooners still in the hands of the privateer consortiums left over after everybody elses merchant traffic was wiped out. There must have been dozens of the things, maybe more. That would explain why Rock Point is currently short of hulls if the ICN havn't yet snarfed those up.

Anybody else with ideas?

Don

The more limiting factor is manpower. I believe those hulls are available, but the number of sailors are not. Not everyone that would serve on a privateer will want to join the ICN. Those consortiums might have been willing to sell the hulls, but were the sailors willing to join the ICN? Even if they were, until recently there was not enough money to pay for more sailors.
Now that those constraints have been lessened, perhaps more of those ships will be purchased for the ICN or contracted as convoy escorted.

PeterZ wrote:

n7axw wrote:I'm back beating on my convoy escorts drum again. I'm experiencing a bit of tension between Rock Point's internal ruminations in this snippet and RFC's posting in the Convoy Escorts thread where he claims there are lots of light craft, presumably schooners, available.

The only reconciliation I can see right now is there are still lots of schooners still in the hands of the privateer consortiums left over after everybody elses merchant traffic was wiped out. There must have been dozens of the things, maybe more. That would explain why Rock Point is currently short of hulls if the ICN havn't yet snarfed those up.

Anybody else with ideas?

Don

The more limiting factor is manpower. I believe those hulls are available, but the number of sailors are not. Not everyone that would serve on a privateer will want to join the ICN. Those consortiums might have been willing to sell the hulls, but were the sailors willing to join the ICN? Even if they were, until recently there was not enough money to pay for more sailors.
Now that those constraints have been lessened, perhaps more of those ships will be purchased for the ICN or contracted as convoy escorted.

Hi PeterZ,

A good thought and a possibility I hadn't considered.

Reflecting on that, I would note that the EOC has relied on recruitment rather than impressment which would imply that the shortage of manpower is not too critical.

Also, given the embargo, I wonder if there might not be a pool of unemployed seamen, since internal markets probably don't completely replace trade lost on the mainland.

Don

n7axw wrote:
Hi PeterZ,

A good thought and a possibility I hadn't considered.

Reflecting on that, I would note that the EOC has relied on recruitment rather than impressment which would imply that the shortage of manpower is not too critical.

Also, given the embargo, I wonder if there might not be a pool of unemployed seamen, since internal markets probably don't completely replace trade lost on the mainland.

Don

I am not so sure. The hulls required to support the war effort has been huge. That demand and the demand for trading with the member nations and Siddermark suggests that the Charisian merchant marine is as busy if not more so than pre jihad. That might not be true indefinitely, but certainly true right now.

Impressment will limit merchant capacity and exacerbate the issues Rock Point is considering in his internal monologue.

n7axw wrote:

PeterZ wrote:Recall Patrick Henry's assassination attempt on Sharley. RFC described Corisande's not unusual skill at pipe manufacturing. That skill at drawing copper and or brass suggests they can make cases for M96 rounds. The question becomes one of cost and capacity.

Personally, I hope the mainland does try to replicate the bolt action design. Without true standardization rounds from different manufacturers will jam regularly if not worse. Between that and the greater expense per round for the jihadis and we put more strain on the mainland economies.

Hi PeterZ,

A fascinating comment. Let's assume they can. What that does not establish, however, is that they can manufacture brass in quantities sufficient for the M96s to be useful.

Don

IIRC you got 80 rounds 45 ACP per pound of brass. 1000 9mm casings usually are about 8.5 to 9 pounds. Sorry, not a reloader

One hopes, Don, that they recognize this after committing to making bolt action rifles that fire brass cartridges.

n7axw wrote:

PeterZ wrote:Recall Patrick Henry's assassination attempt on Sharley. RFC described Corisande's not unusual skill at pipe manufacturing. That skill at drawing copper and or brass suggests they can make cases for M96 rounds. The question becomes one of cost and capacity.

Personally, I hope the mainland does try to replicate the bolt action design. Without true standardization rounds from different manufacturers will jam regularly if not worse. Between that and the greater expense per round for the jihadis and we put more strain on the mainland economies.

Hi PeterZ,

A fascinating comment. Let's assume they can. What that does not establish, however, is that they can manufacture brass in quantities sufficient for the M96s to be useful.

Don

Ouch! The commerce-raiding outcome gets worse and worse. Surely crews of ships with such directly military cargoes should have had orders to scuttle or fire their vessels rather than let them be taken? It wasn't as if the crews had any realistic chance of surviving capture, after all. One hopes such orders are given now and perhaps enforced by an embedded squad of marines.

PeterZ wrote:

n7axw wrote:
Hi PeterZ,

A good thought and a possibility I hadn't considered.

Reflecting on that, I would note that the EOC has relied on recruitment rather than impressment which would imply that the shortage of manpower is not too critical.

Also, given the embargo, I wonder if there might not be a pool of unemployed seamen, since internal markets probably don't completely replace trade lost on the mainland.

Don

I am not so sure. The hulls required to support the war effort has been huge. That demand and the demand for trading with the member nations and Siddermark suggests that the Charisian merchant marine is as busy if not more so than pre jihad. That might not be true indefinitely, but certainly true right now.

Impressment will limit merchant capacity and exacerbate the issues Rock Point is considering in his internal monologue.

I'm not so sure... I can agree that their galleon carrying capacity might be pretty tight.

But schooners? I know that some schooners have been purchased for dealing with scouting and such... But they are not really cargo bearing vessels and up to this business with the Desnarian commerce raiders, what would they have been doing?

As for manpower, I was presuming that those unemployed seamen, if there are any, might be willing to volunteer. After all, it does sound better than unemployment.

Just thinking a bit further, the manpower crisis for armed forces in the mainland seems to be over. It would be a far more efficient use of recruits for Charis at this point to shunt their recruits over into the navy. 10,000 men added to the army would be a mere drop in the bucket in terms of what happens on the mainland. 10,000 men would make a huge difference for those light combatants that the navy needs.

Don

Randomiser wrote:Ouch! The commerce-raiding outcome gets worse and worse. Surely crews of ships with such directly military cargoes should have had orders to scuttle or fire their vessels rather than let them be taken? It wasn't as if the crews had any realistic chance of surviving capture, after all. One hopes such orders are given now and perhaps enforced by an embedded squad of marines.

Better to make sure that all the military supplies travel in adequately protected convoys. That way the subject of scuttling or firing of vessels doesn't come up.

Don

n7axw wrote:

Randomiser wrote:Ouch! The commerce-raiding outcome gets worse and worse. Surely crews of ships with such directly military cargoes should have had orders to scuttle or fire their vessels rather than let them be taken? It wasn't as if the crews had any realistic chance of surviving capture, after all. One hopes such orders are given now and perhaps enforced by an embedded squad of marines.

I'll admit I was surprised, given the expectation of being put to the Punishment, that standard proceedure for attacks doesn't involve a man in the powder magazine with a detonator.

Better to make sure that all the military supplies travel in adequately protected convoys. That way the subject of scuttling or firing of vessels doesn't come up.

The impression I get was that, given what the ICN knew when the convoy sailed, it was adequately protected.

It also sounds like the High Admiral will be sending the second flight ironclads, possibly complete with the first cordite-propellant QF guns, off to deal with thee problem, presumably by devastating the whole stretch of coast; if people can't live there because every single settlement has been burned down and everything that floats has been sunk, they can't support schooner production so no commerce raiding.

Graydon wrote:

It also sounds like the High Admiral will be sending the second flight ironclads, possibly complete with the first cordite-propellant QF guns, off to deal with thee problem, presumably by devastating the whole stretch of coast; if people can't live there because every single settlement has been burned down and everything that floats has been sunk, they can't support schooner production so no commerce raiding.

My response:

The coastline is too long. The best ICN can hope to do is to do is suppress the raider building with raids and hope that they can burn shipyards faster than the Desnairians can build them. They don't have to put the shipyards near settled communities. You find yourself and isolated cove, import the help...and build.

Don