Convoy escorts - SPOILER for SNIPPET 8 of HFQ

Guardiandashi wrote:

I can see ways you COULD cram the big chase gun onto one of these commerce raider hulls, the issue is that it is seriously not feasible.

the way you would have to do it would involve swapping out sections of wood hull for metal IE iron or steel, to get the required strength, (which would be heavy) the biggest problem is that the relevant mainland nations do not have the steel production it would require.

I just reread the series a couple weeks ago, and the mainland nations were trying to figure out a counter for the mortars using steel barrels because they were using cast iron for rifles barrels because they couldn't come up with the steel to make a useful amount of guns.

the fact of the matter really in a lot of ways is the mainland is still dealing with at a guess ~14th century iron and steel production technologies, while Charis (and soon Sidermark is working with ~18-19th century iron and steel production technologies. Obviously with some kinks thrown in.

My point is that the church and the loyalists are still working with iron foundries that are making batches of iron best measured in lbs (it may be 10's and hundreds of lbs per batch but still. )

Charis is now making batches of iron (especially in the Howsmith foundries) that its practical to measure in tons per batch, and they are using a few tricks from modern steel production.

at least that was my impression.

the other thing that just came out was the suggestion of introducing air tooling vs electrical or steam, as an upgrade from old fashioned belt and shaft drive tooling.

and just thinking about that gave me a "mind blown" moment because I can actually vaguely imagine just how much its going to boost the Charisan Empire's production once all those tools come fully online.

To give an example that others can visualize think of trying to shape a part with a chisel, and file vs using an air powered grinder...
the chisel and file person might take over an hour to do 1 part, the grinder person is going to do the same part in say under 10 minutes. and they can apply those advantages pretty soon at multiple levels of their manufacturing process if not all of it.

Actually, you still couldn't cram any useful number of them into a hull the size of the ones we're describing. It's not just a factor of how heavily built the hull is, although that's certainly a factor. It's also a matter of how much displacement you have to support the weight of the gun itself and how that affects stability, freeboard, and seaworthiness. There's simply an upper limit on how much weight of armament you can load aboard the ship.

Your estimates for steel production on the mainland are low. I've said this again and again, but Safeholdians aren't really working with the fourteenth century technology that people seem to believe they are working with. They been producing crucible steel in relatively small lots but iron in quantities much more comparable to the levels of the early eighteenth century even before Howsmyn came along and began pushing iron production upward. For example, go back and take a look in one of the earlier books (to be honest, I don't remember exactly which one at the moment) and you'll see a reference to "black heart" iron. This is something that we didn't see much of in the Real World™ until the late seventeenth century, although it had been around for hundreds of years prior to that in small quantities. It's also called "malleable iron," and it is actually superior to wrought iron in some respects. The first quantity production of it in the United States wasn't until sometime in the first couple of decades of the nineteenth century (I'd have to go check to nail it down any closer than that), and it never actually supplanted cast iron ("white" iron) or wrought iron because the annealing process required a very experienced ironmaster and very close judgment of temperatures. Safehold has "black heart" iron, in addition to cast iron, production on a quantity basis (albeit relatively load quantities). I mention this not to indicate that they are producing sixteen million tons of iron a year but simply as an indication of the sophistication of their "do it by rote" technological capabilities even before Howsmyn, Merlin, and Owl are added to the mix. The difference between the starting platforms readers seem to be assuming — fourteenth century, for example — and the starting platforms Safehold actually has is the true basis for the . . . optimistic assumptions about industrialization rates I've made throughout the series.

As for the advantages of the machine tools available to Charis, and that instance your suggested example of the multiplier effect is actually substantially lower than the reality. The waterpowered machinery Howsmyn had already come up with, complete with all of the drive shafts and transmission belts, had already improved the productivity of his workforce by somewhere around 300-350%, by my estimate. Note that in this case I'm talking about things like machining operations on a per-man-hour basis, not things like iron and steel production, mining production, et cetera, where the increase is actually considerably higher even than that. What the new machinery is going to do is to permit him to incorporate that level of per-man-hour productivity increase into every stage of the production process, rather than restricting it to a few centralized stations in each manufactory. And what that means is that it will probably improve his current (as in immediately prior to the introduction of the pneumatic machine tools) production rate by almost as much as that rate had already improved his pre-waterpowered production rates. In other words, by my estimate, a single manufactory worker in one of Howsmyn's facilities is going to be as productive as around 12 workers in a pre-Howsmyn manufactory. When you add that to the sheer scale of his enterprises, you begin to understand how Charis can hope to stay ahead of the curve. It should be noted, however, that this same metric indicates that 12 workers in a Mainland manufactory could equal the production of one worker in a Howsmyn manufactory, and the Mainland still has a vast advantage in total manpower. Of course, that advantage is eroding with the loss of Siddarmark, but because of Clyntahn's pre-jihad pathological suspicion of Siddarmark, Siddarmark was never really involved in the Church's tooling up process except as a provider of raw materials. That means, of course, that the loss of the Republic hasn't had a significant impact on the Church's available labor force.

All of this stuff is noodling around in the back of my brain when I look at the economic, industrial, and military power of the opponents fighting one another on Safehold. The degree to which it makes it into the books in the infamous "info dumps" is another matter, of course. In fact, it's interesting to me that despite my tendency to "info dump," so many readers continue to assume a fundamentally lower starting tech level for Safehold than I have attempted to make clear from the beginning the planet actually possesses.

Hmmmmmmmmmmmm . . . maybe a 150,000-word info dump for the next book . . . .

Yeah! That'd work!

lyonheart wrote:Hello RunsForCelery!

"Wow! Cool! Neat!"

Thanks very much for such an exposition on so many aspects of commerce warfare, it's fascinating.

The fate of the USS Essex immediately came to mind early in your comparison and I notice the USS Firefly, Captain Porter's next command, seems far closer to your Desnari commerce raiding schooner as it was a 300 ton brig of just 14 guns only 109 feet long etc.

However, I was under the impression that American privateers were still quite a nuisance in 1814, even in the Irish Sea; to wit tripling or quadrupling British marine insurance rates, if insurance could be found, due to greater losses than during just the Napoleonic wars [~1811, before the American 1812 war] while the rest of Europe was benefiting from the peace and resumption of trade, generating some internal political pressure to end the American war quickly, that among other things privateers had captured something like ~1350 ships, nearly all merchants and something like 24,000+ prisoners, roughly 4 times what the US Army captured, and while that may have been only ~2.5% of the British merchant fleet, it was far better than anyone else had ever done in tweaking the British Lion's tail.

Granted that reducing many of the privateer shipyards was one reason for the RN's ongoing Chesapeake Bay campaigns [echoed on Safehold], and the RN captured about half of the privateers or ships with 'letters of marque' [which were very easy for a merchant captain to get] most prizes were taken by 10% or less, echoing U-Boat experience.

Thus despite the end of Napoleon and the RN's ability to concentrate on the US, our privateers were still harassing British shipping even as Washington was being burned; Lloyd's reported 2 US Navy warships and several privateers had captured 108 British prizes that month alone, including even in the Thames estuary, with the year's total at or near the 400 of 1813, more than the 300 of 1812, though that was in just over 6 month's.

While news of the Treaty of Ghent reached most of the US by February 1815, the last privateers didn't return until June, with another 250 prizes for that near half-year!

So while the RN may have considered it successfully protected most of its convoys, losses to privateers were at best only about 1% in any single year; it obviously could have been much worse, pushing Britain to get the rest of Europe to condemn and end the practice in 1856.

L

Ah, I trust you did note the part where I said (emphasis added):

runsforcelery wrote:The American privateers of the War of 1812 were as effective as they were primarily because, at the beginning of the war, the Brits were still tied down in European waters by the need to protect their commerce closer to home and worry about the French Navy. By 1814, when Napoleon had begun his involuntary vacation at Elba and the French Navy was no longer a problem, the privateers had been driven almost entirely from the seas by a combination of convoy tactics, aggressive "hunter killer" operations (as we'd probably call them today), a close blockade of the Chesapeake (where most of the privateers were built), and landing operations to burn privateers on the stocks and to eliminate the shipyards capable of building more of them. Great Britain never managed to completely eliminate them, but she certainly managed to transform them from a major threat into a minor (if occasionally painful) irritant.

So just where, exactly, did I say in any of this that the American privateers weren't still taking plenty of prizes in 1814? It's true that the tempo of American privateering in 1814 was higher than in 1813, but the privateers who were doing all of that privateering were primarily the ones which had been built and gotten to sea in 1813 or earlier. That is, the Brits had largely succeeded in choking off the flow of new privateers, and they were steadily whittling down the numbers of existing privateers, which means that the rate of increase was actually dropping even as the absolute number of prizes went up. Moreover, the number of prizes taken per privateer was declining radically. The privateers who took the vast majority of the prizes after mid-1813 were purpose-built ships like Rattlesnake and Prince de Neufchateau — big (relatively) and powerfully armed schooners, for the most part, built on the "Baltimore clipper" model more often than not — and very few more of them were getting to sea. Had the war continued into 1815 or later, even fewer of them would have gotten to sea. One of the primary reasons for the attack on New Orleans was to neutralize the city as a base for privateers, since it was much more difficult to seal off all the various passes out of the mouth of the Mississippi River than it was to blockade the Chesapeake. (That threat to his financial prosperity was one of the big reasons Jean Lafite turned to to help defend the city, after all.) It failed, but I strongly suspect that had the war continued it would have been attempted a second time, possibly successfully, or else the Brits would have seized island bases or enclaves along the Gulf coast — rather as the Federal Navy did with Biloxi during the Civil War — to use as bases to interdict privateers operating out of the river. None of that really affects the sense of what I said about the effectiveness of the American privateers or their ability to pose a "major threat" beyond 1814, however.

I'm unclear as to whether or not your conclusion that "it obviously could have been much worse" is an indication that you feel the Brits weren't actually getting on top of the situation (as I believe they were) or if you are saying that the level of threat to Britain "could have been much worse" if the Royal Navy hadn't been getting on top of it. In either case, my conclusion that all of the privateers moving against British commerce in 1814 were merely "a minor (if occasionally painful) irritant" stands, as does the validity of my analogy between the fact that the British were never significantly handicapped in their military or commercial operations against the United States in the course of the war by American commerce-raiders. The protests of the merchants of the City of London are an example of the way in which an asymmetrical campaign attacks not the fundamental ability of a more powerful opponent to conduct successful military operations but rather the willingness of that more powerful opponent to do so. Neither the American privateers nor the Church privateers represent (or represented) the sort of existential threat to their opponents which the U-boats presented to England in both world wars.

Which is rather the point I was attempting to make.

runsforcelery wrote:
Hmmmmmmmmmmmm . . . maybe a 150,000-word info dump for the next book . . . .

Yeah! That'd work!

You shouldn't make suggestions like that here. We would agree. It probably wouldn't help the book reviews though. The last one I read complained the concerto wasn't too good, when she was reading a symphony with full orchestration.

Had the war continued into 1815 or later, even fewer of them would have gotten to sea.

Hm, but would Royal Navy be able to mantain the close blockade? After all, in 1815 the US navy would have his first ship-of-the-line in comission, and probably the construction of "Demologos" would be finished (and she was a pretty good reason not to mantain the blockade close to shore, after all!).

Dilandu wrote:

Had the war continued into 1815 or later, even fewer of them would have gotten to sea.

Hm, but would Royal Navy be able to mantain the close blockade? After all, in 1815 the US navy would have his first ship-of-the-line in comission, and probably the construction of "Demologos" would be finished (and she was a pretty good reason not to mantain the blockade close to shore, after all!).

The RN knew about the USN plans, and the chances of the US liners accomplishing much in 1815-16 wasn't all that great. They were very powerful ships, but they also suffered from low freeboard (their lower gunports were all but useless in a seaway), and the biggest of them were being built on the Great Lakes, where they would have been . . . less than useful. The Brits had scads of experience with blockading French and Spanish seaports (each of which contained several times as many liners as the entire US building program), and with Canada and Bermuda they had bases plenty close enough to keep an eye on the ports where the US liners might be found. Besides, the US ships were being built in ports scattered along the Eastern seaboard; each of them could have been sat upon by a single squadron of British liners without too much trouble. As for the Brits' ability to keep an eye on American ports, look what happened when Decatur tried to take President to sea late in the war.

As for Demologos, I realize you're a technophile , but the odds of her being completed and being sufficiently decisive to lift the blockade of New York (as opposed to materially aiding in New York's defense) was . . . slim, let us say.

Nope, if the war had continued past 1815, the British experience in exerting sea control would have put extremely heavy pressure on the US, and it would have taken years for the USN to build up a battle fleet capable of meeting the RN at sea or breaking a systematic blockade of the East Coast. Exactly what all the ramifications of a long war might have been is impossible to say, of course, and it's a fascinating what-if question, but ultimately it was unlikely the war would have ended any way except the way it did, absent Napoleon's successful return to power.

The key point was that Britain accepted that it wasn't going to defeat the US in North America, and that acceptance stemmed in no small part from the Duke of Wellington's declining to accept the North American command and pointing out that the US really offered no single, clear target which would force the Americans to give in. After all, England had already taken and burned the US capital and the stupid Yankees had declined to surrender.

They were very powerful ships, but they also suffered from low freeboard (their lower gunports were all but useless in a seaway),

Of course, but as anti-blockade coastal force (and deterrense) they may be usefull

As for Demologos, I realize you're a technophile , but the odds of her being completed and being sufficiently decisive to lift the blockade of New York (as opposed to materially aiding in New York's defense) was . . . slim, let us say.

Well, if she would managed to attack in very calm weather, it may be a Really Bad Day for the blockading squadron But i see you point.

runsforcelery wrote:

Actually, you still couldn't cram any useful number of them into a hull the size of the ones we're describing. It's not just a factor of how heavily built the hull is, although that's certainly a factor. It's also a matter of how much displacement you have to support the weight of the gun itself and how that affects stability, freeboard, and seaworthiness. There's simply an upper limit on how much weight of armament you can load aboard the ship.



Hmmmmmmmmmmmm . . . maybe a 150,000-word info dump for the next book . . . .

Yeah! That'd work!

The recoil would be the hard thing to compensate for. Returning fire with a recoil-less rifle, rocket battery or even a gun with a decent recoil absorber like the French WW1 Soixante-Quinze mounted on anything larger than a yacht would put the fear of god into most privateers particularly with explosive shells and rapid fire capability. (And the American Army had a hard time duplicating the 75 even with multiple copies and the plans - the clearances on the recuperator are hard to achieve unless you are regularly making high pressure hydraulics). A 40mm Bofors gun with a clip would also get most attackers to back off and be useful as a close defense gun for the Deferak's. This is the principle for the armed merchantmen of WW1 and WW2, and given the lack of submarines these would be able to reach out and touch attackers from beyond the range of a muzzle loading cannon.

The 150,000 info dump would work for me....

I've always felt that "you can't win" regarding info dumps.

You have people complaining about them but you also have people wanting more of them.

Of course, then (as here) you got fans making assumptions based on what they imagine about the technology of your universes and a few who think they know more in spite of your info dumps.

runsforcelery wrote:Hmmmmmmmmmmmm . . . maybe a 150,000-word info dump for the next book . . . .

Yeah! That'd work!

True on the no-win scenario.

On the other hand, the "tech assumption offset" seems to be quite prevalent for the Safehold books, so maybe a 2-10 page foreword or afterword on the "pre-Howsmyn/-Merlin" tech base might be useful.

Those who detest infodumps can skip it, and those who "need to be set straight" can be directed to reading it.

To find space for 10 pages would of course mean that the next book's dramatis personae had to be reduced by ... what? Half or so? A third?

DrakBibliophile wrote:

I've always felt that "you can't win" regarding info dumps.

You have people complaining about them but you also have people wanting more of them.

Of course, then (as here) you got fans making assumptions based on what they imagine about the technology of your universes and a few who think they know more in spite of your info dumps.

runsforcelery wrote:Hmmmmmmmmmmmm . . . maybe a 150,000-word info dump for the next book . . . .

Yeah! That'd work!

Well, what I'm reading from all of this (and it's quite possible I'm wrong) is that we're going to be treated to more land-and-burn operations. And that sort of thing will mean that Ahlvarez' remaining army will be less likely to be sent back to the main theater, if they feel threatened more close to home.

Is that unreasonable? Land some troops, take some territory temporarily, watch the opponent's army start to move to push you out, then get back on the boats and sail off to their original destination? The cost to the enemy in snarled logistics may be far greater than our cost in delayed reinforcements.