The next steps in gunnery w/ gunboats and Canals

Theemile wrote:Remember, the original Safeholdian canals are considerably smaller then the newer ones. Knowing the size of the "Volunteer" at the Providence locks in Ohio, I'd imagine that the existing ironclads couldn't use the Ohio system - which makes me wonder about their useability in the older canals.

RunsInShadows wrote:

Keith_w wrote:
Why would you need to turn around? Since the canal boats are powered externally, i.e., by draft dragons, both ends can be pointy and all you need do is unhitch them from one end and move them to the other. I had thought that the safeholdian canals were similar to the narrow British canal system, which according to Wikipedia: "For reasons of economy and the constraints of 18th century engineering technology, the early canals were built to a narrow width. The standard for the dimensions of narrow canal locks was set by Brindley with his first canal locks, those on the Trent and Mersey Canal in 1776. These locks were 72 feet 7 inches (22.1 m) long by 7 feet 6 inches (2.3 m) wide.[13] The narrow width was perhaps set by the fact that he was only able to build Harecastle Tunnel to accommodate 7 feet (2.1 m) wide boats" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_British_canal_system#18th_century Although that size would not really allow for the riverine gunboats that are now operating on them. Certainly the original Erie Canal at 40' wide provides a better model. "The original canal was 363 miles (584 km) long, from Albany on the Hudson to Buffalo on Lake Erie. The channel was cut 40 feet (12 m) wide and 4 feet (1.2 m) deep, with removed soil piled on the downhill side to form a walkway known as a towpath." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erie_Canal

The gunboats would probably be internally powered, like KH. With KH's guns arranged as they are and twin screws/steam engines, she has a beam in excess of the 15 ft nessisary to operate in a canal 40' wide, and I'll just about guarantee she has a draft lower than the 3.5ft.

RunsInShadows wrote:IIRC, many of the first canals were dug by orbital weaponry(?). Given this, and the prescriptions for taking care of the locks, why wouldn't they make the canals big enough to handle the traffic that will eventually grow to be on it? IMO, the 70'wide by 7' deep canal is the ideal size to allow for reasonable barge sizes, and traffic. This size would also be just about ideal for maintenance of the locks by the technology of the day with the help of the prescriptions.

RunsInShadows wrote:
Was KH compared to an old earth warship in the books that we might be able to get dimensions?

Weird Harold wrote:

Theemile wrote:Remember, the original Safeholdian canals are considerably smaller then the newer ones. Knowing the size of the "Volunteer" at the Providence locks in Ohio, I'd imagine that the existing ironclads couldn't use the Ohio system - which makes me wonder about their useability in the older canals.

I think you have that reversed.

The original canals were dug as part of the terraforming and used TF technology to dig them straight without concern for intervening hills. The later canals were dug under the "wind, water, or muscle" limitations of the Proscriptions.

Dilandu wrote:

Generally speaking, the KH's is a type of late-XIX-to-early-XX centuries armored cruiser; presumably british type.

AirTech wrote:

Dilandu wrote:

Generally speaking, the KH's is a type of late-XIX-to-early-XX centuries armored cruiser; presumably british type.

Wouldn't bet on it. The French drawings are on the net for ships of this size (The British ones aren't). The Amiral Aube (1902) is about the right size (but I haven't dug very deep). (Don't you just love the Russians total disregard for copyright).

AirTech wrote: (Don't you just love the Russians total disregard for copyright).

Weird Harold wrote:

Theemile wrote:Remember, the original Safeholdian canals are considerably smaller then the newer ones. Knowing the size of the "Volunteer" at the Providence locks in Ohio, I'd imagine that the existing ironclads couldn't use the Ohio system - which makes me wonder about their useability in the older canals.

I think you have that reversed.

The original canals were dug as part of the terraforming and used TF technology to dig them straight without concern for intervening hills. The later canals were dug under the "wind, water, or muscle" limitations of the Proscriptions.

isaac_newton wrote:I'm pretty sure that there is textev that the new canals, especialy in the Northlands were bigger than the orginals - I think it was one reason that the GCRaid was possible.

Like A Mighty Army
.IV.
Sarkyn, Tairohn Hills, and Archbishop’s Palace, City of St. Vyrdyn, Princedom of Sarkyn
wrote:The Holy Langhorne was one of the world’s most ancient canals, and the oldest canals had the fewest locks. The same chapters of the Writ which detailed the construction practices to be followed by mere mortals made the reason for that scarcity of locks abundantly clear. Where men were forced to detour around mountains, build steep stair steps of locks to carry the canal barges forward, the Archangels hadn’t cared what might have lain in the way. Anyone who doubted that was the case only had to look at the canal cuts right here in the Tairohns. Why, the sides of the Ambyltyn Hill Cut, no more than four miles east of Sarkyn, towered over four hundred feet above canal level at the cut’s deepest point! And smooth, like polished marble!

...

...Lock dimensions meant barges on the older canals had to be smaller than those on some of the newer canals. The Holy Langhorne had been built to accept barges a hundred and thirty feet long, with beams of up to thirty-five feet, but when mortal hands had taken over the task of canal building from divine will, they’d been forced to accept more modest dimensions, at least until the invention of gunpowder. Those canals’ barges were limited to no more than a hundred and ten feet in length, with beams which could not exceed twenty feet, ...

Weird Harold wrote:

isaac_newton wrote:I'm pretty sure that there is textev that the new canals, especialy in the Northlands were bigger than the orginals - I think it was one reason that the GCRaid was possible.

Nope, they're bigger than older, pre-gunpowder, canals, but NOT bigger than the oldest canals dug by the terra-forming crews.

Like A Mighty Army
.IV.
Sarkyn, Tairohn Hills, and Archbishop’s Palace, City of St. Vyrdyn, Princedom of Sarkyn
wrote:The Holy Langhorne was one of the world’s most ancient canals, and the oldest canals had the fewest locks. The same chapters of the Writ which detailed the construction practices to be followed by mere mortals made the reason for that scarcity of locks abundantly clear. Where men were forced to detour around mountains, build steep stair steps of locks to carry the canal barges forward, the Archangels hadn’t cared what might have lain in the way. Anyone who doubted that was the case only had to look at the canal cuts right here in the Tairohns. Why, the sides of the Ambyltyn Hill Cut, no more than four miles east of Sarkyn, towered over four hundred feet above canal level at the cut’s deepest point! And smooth, like polished marble!

...

...Lock dimensions meant barges on the older canals had to be smaller than those on some of the newer canals. The Holy Langhorne had been built to accept barges a hundred and thirty feet long, with beams of up to thirty-five feet, but when mortal hands had taken over the task of canal building from divine will, they’d been forced to accept more modest dimensions, at least until the invention of gunpowder. Those canals’ barges were limited to no more than a hundred and ten feet in length, with beams which could not exceed twenty feet, ...

Those canals’ barges

Weird Harold wrote:

isaac_newton wrote:I'm pretty sure that there is textev that the new canals, especialy in the Northlands were bigger than the orginals - I think it was one reason that the GCRaid was possible.

Nope, they're bigger than older, pre-gunpowder, canals, but NOT bigger than the oldest canals dug by the terra-forming crews.

Like A Mighty Army
.IV.
Sarkyn, Tairohn Hills, and Archbishop’s Palace, City of St. Vyrdyn, Princedom of Sarkyn
wrote:The Holy Langhorne was one of the world’s most ancient canals, and the oldest canals had the fewest locks. The same chapters of the Writ which detailed the construction practices to be followed by mere mortals made the reason for that scarcity of locks abundantly clear. Where men were forced to detour around mountains, build steep stair steps of locks to carry the canal barges forward, the Archangels hadn’t cared what might have lain in the way. Anyone who doubted that was the case only had to look at the canal cuts right here in the Tairohns. Why, the sides of the Ambyltyn Hill Cut, no more than four miles east of Sarkyn, towered over four hundred feet above canal level at the cut’s deepest point! And smooth, like polished marble!

...

...Lock dimensions meant barges on the older canals had to be smaller than those on some of the newer canals. The Holy Langhorne had been built to accept barges a hundred and thirty feet long, with beams of up to thirty-five feet, but when mortal hands had taken over the task of canal building from divine will, they’d been forced to accept more modest dimensions, at least until the invention of gunpowder. Those canals’ barges were limited to no more than a hundred and ten feet in length, with beams which could not exceed twenty feet, ...

“They’re a bit bigger than the standard mainland river barges, you know,” he said as his pen scratched and abacus beads clicked busily. “We don’t have anywhere near the dependency on barge traffic they do, and we haven’t got anywhere near the same number of canals. A lot of their canals are over five or six hundred years old, though, and making any major changes in them would be an incredible pain, so they worry a lot more about barge interchangeability than we do. The newer canals mostly have bigger locks to let them use bigger barges for purely local traffic, but one of the really old trunk lines—like the Langhorne—can’t accept outsized barges. Since barge owners never know when they’re going to have to use one of the lines with smaller locks, they tend to build small unless it’s for purely local use, like the wheat trade out of Tarikah via the Hildermoss and the New Northland Canal. That limits their really long-haul barges to about a hundred and twenty-five feet. We didn’t have to worry about fitting through something like the Langhorne, though, so we just stole the plans for the New Northland’s locks when we built the Delthak canal.”
...
“Anyway, because of the lock size we chose, our barges are a hundred and forty feet long and forty-five feet in the beam with a draft of about six and a half feet and around fifteen or sixteen feet depth of hold, which lets them carry a hell of a lot more than your typical mainland boat. Within limits, of course. They’re basically just big, square boxes with round ends, when you come down to it. We did slightly redesign the sterns for the powered barges, but not enough to change their volume so anyone would notice, so each of them can carry about ninety-five thousand cubic feet of cargo. That comes to around twenty-three hundred tons of coal per barge, which we figured was pretty much the ceiling for animal-drawn loads, even with tow roads as wide as the ones we used. Takes a four-dragon team to move the unpowered ones, and it also just about doubles their draft to twelve feet, which is as deep as you want to go in even one of our canals. The steam-powered boats are a little less than that because of the weight the engine and boilers and the fuel take up, but still.…”