Rolling Cannon Balls Across The Deck In The Honorverse ...

I got promoted!!! Hee hee hee! Bound to hang or make Admiral now. Thank you! I never got that order! HB of CJ (old coot) Captain of the List!

Note that we usually "see" what's going on in the ships with good officers.
We never got an inside look at the dynamics of say
Warlock under Pavel Young.

Crews don't do things like that under a good officer.
Yeah they'll bitch but the time to worry is when they STOP.

HB of CJ wrote:Is it just me or do I constantly detect recurring themes or trends in the Honorverse Navies of blind dumb obedience to non intelligent orders that would result in the deaths of all?

The Haven attack on the Manitore home system comes to mind. Is it possible that the many ten thousands of Havenites knew their odds were very grim? And if so, why did they not express this fact?

Hundreds of years ago in the wood sailing ship navel era, disgrunted ratings would roll iron cannon balls across the various gun decks as a method of expressing their extreme displeasure.

How come in all the many excellent Honorverse novels, we never once, that I am aware, see any ball rolling? Not one chirp or word of dissatification from any crew from any navy? And why?

HB of CJ (old coot) Junior Captain. I love this excellent Forum!

exiledtoIA wrote:Note that we usually "see" what's going on in the ships with good officers.
We never got an inside look at the dynamics of say
Warlock under Pavel Young.

Crews don't do things like that under a good officer.
Yeah they'll bitch but the time to worry is when they STOP.

I think they carried on and pretended really hard that Paul Tankersley (the XO in the Basilisk era at least) was the real captain and that they just had the worst flag officer ever mistakenly wearing a white beret and stinking up their ship.

When I was on active duty, I had PO2 I loathed, detested, hated, reviled, you get the point(He also snored like a chainsaw). I cleared out a space in my rack and put in a handful of marbles in the cleared space and went on leave for two weeks. When I got back he had moved to a different rack across the berthing space. Oh did I mention the ship was underway 10 of 15 days I was gone.

HB of CJ wrote:I got promoted!!! Hee hee hee! Bound to hang or make Admiral now. Thank you! I never got that order! HB of CJ (old coot) Captain of the List!

where is the wetting down party??? and when???

HB of CJ wrote:Is it just me or do I constantly detect recurring themes or trends in the Honorverse Navies of blind dumb obedience to non intelligent orders that would result in the deaths of all?

The Haven attack on the Manitore home system comes to mind. Is it possible that the many ten thousands of Havenites knew their odds were very grim? And if so, why did they not express this fact?

Hundreds of years ago in the wood sailing ship navel era, disgrunted ratings would roll iron cannon balls across the various gun decks as a method of expressing their extreme displeasure.

How come in all the many excellent Honorverse novels, we never once, that I am aware, see any ball rolling? Not one chirp or word of dissatification from any crew from any navy? And why?

HB of CJ (old coot) Junior Captain. I love this excellent Forum!

Interesting thought. It is a recurrent theme. Although, it should be mentioned that its opposite was also true - those willing to needlessly lead others to die when no such orders existed. Elvis Santino.

And Andreas Jaruwalski certainly rolled cannonballs across the bridge!

The crew of Fearless rolled cannonballs regarding TWTSNBN in the Fleet games. Also, wasn't there some apprehension regarding Fearless intercepting a Q-ship? And Ensign Wolcott, IIRC, questioned whether they were going to die - against Thunder of God, IIRC.

The thing is, soldiers also cannot blindly question the bird's-eye view of those in the War Room. They can see what the soldier cannot in the all encompassing overall scheme of things. Hopefully.

Given that these stories are mostly told from the RMN side of thing, there's another reason we don't see more "rolling cannonballs": Saganami Island + the Saganami tradition (which is not all about suicidal defense runs against all odds... it's about doing the right thing no matter the odds.] Then you throw in time on ship and command officers washing out the tin-pot officer type with sme frequency, eventually ATC, and likely even after ATC they spend more time in a close-to-command slot. Basing that on the number of Honor's executive officers immediately promote to command smaller ships, btw.

I think the reason we don't see more "rolling Cannonballs" on the Haven side is that between getting whupped on and killed in big actions that they had a reasonable chance to win, then the Committee of Public Safety's terror run and purges, (killing officers who lost), we only really get to see the best of the best emerge into the RHN. The effective surviving head count is what? Theisman, Caslet, Tourville, Foraker, Bellefuille, and likely Chin?

Thoughts?

JeffEngel wrote:

exiledtoIA wrote:Note that we usually "see" what's going on in the ships with good officers.
We never got an inside look at the dynamics of say
Warlock under Pavel Young.

Crews don't do things like that under a good officer.
Yeah they'll bitch but the time to worry is when they STOP.

I think they carried on and pretended really hard that Paul Tankersley (the XO in the Basilisk era at least) was the real captain and that they just had the worst flag officer ever mistakenly wearing a white beret and stinking up their ship.

Yeah that would work for a while. But given that even under arrest Young was eyeing the Marine guarding him,
you have to wonder how long before he got fragged.

One thing to note on the 'obeying suicidal orders' front - how often are the order-ees *aware* that the orders are suicidal?

For example, under combat conditions I would expect that nobody outside of the bridge/auxcon/CIC are actually fully aware of the tactical situation - for example, in 'Honor Among Enemies' chapter 27, after Vaubon unknowingly rides to Wayfarer's rescue, Honor and Cardones are discussing the pirate prisoners, and it's noted that 'there were [no survivors] from the two lighter ships, and no bridge officers from the light cruiser. The survivors knew they'd been shooting at a light cruiser, but it was unlikely they knew it had been a Peep'. Even if the ship is suicidally charging foes it can't possibly hope to defeat, I don't think anyone outside of those three locations would actually realize it until it's over.

Similarly, in most of the obviously suicidal battles we've seen, even if we consider what the higher-up participants know in advance rather than under combat conditions during, it's also not usually obvious that the battle will be suicidal. First Manticore, Spindle, second Manticore, etc - in each case, the attackers went into it believing (rightly or wrongly) that they had a very realistic chance at victory.

The only one I can think of off the top of my head that wasn't like that would be Seaford Nine where Santino gets his entire task force killed. In that case I do have to admit that it seems a bit strained for nobody else to try and support Jaruwalski in arguing against Santino's stupidity, but there doesn't seem to be any particular mechanism within the RMN's regulations for a staff to override an obviously insane admiral. I guess the (optimistic) assumption was that nobody that incompetent could make it to a position like that? Absent such a mechanism they'd basically have to commit mutiny (in the face of the enemy to boot!) to stop him, which would legally leave them liable to capital punishment. In that light I guess I can understand some of their reluctance, but it does still seem a little odd for a service as noted for sanity as the RMN.

MuonNeutrino wrote:One thing to note on the 'obeying suicidal orders' front - how often are the order-ees *aware* that the orders are suicidal?
...
The only one I can think of off the top of my head that wasn't like that would be Seaford Nine where Santino gets his entire task force killed. In that case I do have to admit that it seems a bit strained for nobody else to try and support Jaruwalski in arguing against Santino's stupidity, but there doesn't seem to be any particular mechanism within the RMN's regulations for a staff to override an obviously insane admiral. I guess the (optimistic) assumption was that nobody that incompetent could make it to a position like that? Absent such a mechanism they'd basically have to commit mutiny (in the face of the enemy to boot!) to stop him, which would legally leave them liable to capital punishment. In that light I guess I can understand some of their reluctance, but it does still seem a little odd for a service as noted for sanity as the RMN.

Santino wasn't insane - he was really, very lazy; he got his position through politics, with only basic competence and without any real share of moral character; and his failure there was one of excessive aggressiveness in the face of the enemy. In a way, that's the vice side of the coin of the virtue of the RMN, and it would be very hard both for officers in that tradition and for a board of inquiry considering it to go against Santino or come down on him. "Martyrdom" made it harder afterward, and contributed to Jaruwalski being in the doghouse til Honor "rehabilitated" her. And on top of that tradition, there was, as you note, both the issues of mutiny for everyone and ignorance of the situation for all but a few officers and ratings. And on top of all of that, for a mutineer - a very senior one, assuming only the people in the know would lead one - there's the issue that a mutiny, apparently to save themselves from death, would do horrible damage to naval discipline at a moment that the Peeps were rallying and punching out the momentum that was maybe the only thing keeping them from rolling up the Alliance.

Under the circumstances, they may have just figured they'd be better off dying. Or at least, there would have been that weight on their internal scales too.

Andrea Jaruwalski effectively wadded up and threw away her professional standing and her career and accepted the likelihood of being branded a coward and almost a traitor, in desperate defense of the ships, officers, and crews of her force against a moral coward willing to lose them all rather than look bad. My hat is off to her.