Silk Town-Thesmar Canal

n7axw wrote:What I am wondering about the Sathar Canal is if it's big enough to accommodate the EOC's riverclads.

I think Lyonheart is right in predicting that the EOC will seize control of that canal in the near term future.

Don

JeffEngel wrote:It connects Silk Town with the Somyr River, which empties out into Lake Somyr. The far side of Lake Somyr is near Thesmar. Lake Somyr is separated from Thesmar Bay and saltwater by Swamp Neck - which I guess is a low, soggy isthmus.

I'm wondering what the point of this canal is. Silk Town and Thesmar can communicate by sea. The trip is somewhat roundabout, especially if you want to avoid the trickier passages near shore in the Gulf of Mathyas, and you'd be going through two narrow channels (but plenty deep enough for ICN ships) at either end of Sandfish Bay.

My best guess is that it's mostly for local traffic, providing Silkiah's interior a useful water highway - particularly one that can empty out into Silkiahan Silk Town instead of Siddarmarkan Lake Somyr. But given the sparsity of population in Silkiah back when, and the political element of the second consideration, it'd mean the canal was built far ahead of need, or that it was recently built. I could swallow that one: Silkiah probably needed all it could get to attach the hinterland to Silk Town, and if it wasn't allowed to spend on a military, and had no small amount of trade income through Silk Town, building such a canal could be more affordable than for a lot of other realms. (Poor envious Sodar.)

It may also be for the use of much cheaper, more easily crewed vessels. Barges are cheap and simple. The waters just east of Silk Town will take a serious ocean-going vessel and good charts - they do not look friendly to small coasters - and the ships good for the Gulf of Mathyas may be less than ideal for Sandfish Bay and Thesmar Bay.

A last consideration could be military. Silkiah and Siddarmark have and have had no navies to speak of. Desnair hasn't had much, but more than nothing, and really ambitious raiders from Trellheim could operate in the Gulf of Mathyas. For that matter, if either state worried about Charis or other Out Islands (which really ought to include Tarot too), canals inland would be a useful alternative.

Still, none of those look compelling in the face of the capital costs of canal building - not unless one of those reasons is stronger or more relevant than I know of. Anyone got ideas?

(And yes, this is tremendously nit-picky. Blame it on snippet-withdrawal.)

Easternmystic wrote:First of all, The sea route is roughly four times as long as the canal route. the sea route also has to skirt some extensive shoals which makes inclement weather during transit more likely to result in lost shipments.

Second, The largest cost item in shipping is the number of times a shipment has to be transshipped, i.e. moved from one vessel to a different vessel. It is possible that some items can be shipped with less transshipment via the canal route.

Third, The canal route is actually a more effective route into southern Siddarmark and northern Dohlar than either sea route. It also avoids the custom duties that Dohlar was levying on ships sailing through what they considered their territorial waters.

Fourth, there may be valuable resources in the interior, such as lumber, ores and rare botanical or medicinal items.

Fifth, an important point in international law is usage of a territory. I see no reason why the same principal would not be considered important on Safehold. Basically if a territory is claimed but not used by a nation or effectively policed, a different nation may come in and claim it as an abandoned territory. Generally speaking that claim will be taken seriously by other nations. The canal is something that Silkiah can point to show that the territory is being used and that it gives them the ability to enforce their national law in the interior.

JeffEngel wrote:It connects Silk Town with the Somyr River, which empties out into Lake Somyr. The far side of Lake Somyr is near Thesmar. Lake Somyr is separated from Thesmar Bay and saltwater by Swamp Neck - which I guess is a low, soggy isthmus.

I'm wondering what the point of this canal is. Silk Town and Thesmar can communicate by sea. The trip is somewhat roundabout, especially if you want to avoid the trickier passages near shore in the Gulf of Mathyas, and you'd be going through two narrow channels (but plenty deep enough for ICN ships) at either end of Sandfish Bay.

My best guess is that it's mostly for local traffic, providing Silkiah's interior a useful water highway - particularly one that can empty out into Silkiahan Silk Town instead of Siddarmarkan Lake Somyr. But given the sparsity of population in Silkiah back when, and the political element of the second consideration, it'd mean the canal was built far ahead of need, or that it was recently built. I could swallow that one: Silkiah probably needed all it could get to attach the hinterland to Silk Town, and if it wasn't allowed to spend on a military, and had no small amount of trade income through Silk Town, building such a canal could be more affordable than for a lot of other realms. (Poor envious Sodar.)

It may also be for the use of much cheaper, more easily crewed vessels. Barges are cheap and simple. The waters just east of Silk Town will take a serious ocean-going vessel and good charts - they do not look friendly to small coasters - and the ships good for the Gulf of Mathyas may be less than ideal for Sandfish Bay and Thesmar Bay.

A last consideration could be military. Silkiah and Siddarmark have and have had no navies to speak of. Desnair hasn't had much, but more than nothing, and really ambitious raiders from Trellheim could operate in the Gulf of Mathyas. For that matter, if either state worried about Charis or other Out Islands (which really ought to include Tarot too), canals inland would be a useful alternative.

Still, none of those look compelling in the face of the capital costs of canal building - not unless one of those reasons is stronger or more relevant than I know of. Anyone got ideas?

(And yes, this is tremendously nit-picky. Blame it on snippet-withdrawal.)

McGuiness wrote:One obvious observation that hasn't been made about the canal yet it that it was most likely built by Shan-Wei.

Look at the facts: It's located in East Haven, where most of the canals were laid out and built by the Archangels, and the Salthar canal, which intersects it, most certainly was.

Also, RFC needed it to exist for the logistics of LaMA, which is the reason for its existence. QED, end of debate, there's your answer. I suspect that RFC would admit that yeah, it's there because he needed it to be, since the ICN has total control of the seas - although he'll have pages and pages of historical data showing how it was created and its primary uses.

The Salthar and the Silk Town - Thesmar canal are linked, which we know because the ICN blocked that link in LaMA, forcing the AoS to have to unload all the barges, carry all the supplies sixty miles by wagon, then reload them onto barges to reach Thesmar. The mere act of blocking the connection between the two was a major reason Hankey ran out of food - barges piled up to be unloaded west of Silk Town, then had to wait for available wagon transport, and finally their contents were unloaded, hauled by wagon on a road of possibly questionable quality, since it isn't shown on the map, but the link where the two canals intersect isn't shown either, and we know that exists.

Hopefully the new maps will show a bit more detail here, and it's quite possible that both canals simply empty into Silkiah bay, so the barges that pass between them are simply dragged between the two using some sort of sail-powered or even oared tugboat. (Which would explain why it was so easy for the ICN to block traffic between the two canals.) Silkiah is going to wet itself with excitement when Charis offers to provide steam-powered tug boas as part of the treaty I expect it to sign with Silkiah giving it full access (and possible control) of the Salthar canal.

As for the traffic on the Silk Town - Thesmar Canal, I suppose there was quite a bit of food shipped from the South March Lands, and a bit more sophisticated cargoes going north - farm equipment, etc. I doubt it was a heavily used canal - certainly not in the league of the Salthar or the Great Langhorne, but RFC needed it to exist for Desnair to invade Siddarmark, so it certainly came in handy for that - unless your quartermasters happen to be Desnairan!

PeterZ wrote:Simple. The canal was needed to facilitate a Desnarii invasion route into Siddermark. Desnar has been trying to make an invasion stuck for centuries. I wouldn't be surprised if the Treaty of Silktown wasn't written to prevent Siddernark from gaining control over a newly completed canal after another failed Desnarii invasion attempt.

McGuiness wrote:I'm sure RFC will have an explanation for this, but in OAR the Dohlaran navy didn't use the Salthar canal to shorten its journey by 20,000 miles because IIRC, according to RFC, the Knights of the Temple Lands couldn't pretend that they weren't acting in their capacity as vicars of Mother Church if they forced Silkiah to allow a military force through the Salthar canal, since Silkiah is an independent country.

However, the only possible reasons that the Go4 couldn't have forced Desnair to allow the Dohlaran navy to use the Hankey - Mahrosa canals to save 19,000 miles or so of sailing time is that Dohlar and Desnair hate each other's guts, and since Shan-Wei built those canals, a modern galley might not have fit into its locks. (Note how cleverly I gave RFC two explanations as to why Dohlar had to go the long way around?)

However, since Shan-Wei clearly built the Salthar canal, and RFC has admitted that the Dohlaran galleys could have fit through its locks, they would also have been able to pass through the Desnairan canals. So it came down to politics, which was the same reason RFC cited for Dohlar not using the Salthar canal.

In researching this, I realized for the first time that Desnair was not included in the attack on Charis in OAR. It should have had a sizable navy based on the fact that it was well-off due to its gold mines, plus it has thousands of miles of shoreline to patrol to control smugglers, etc. So why didn't Desnair have a fleet that the Knights of the Temple Lands could order to join the others? (Yes, I realize that at the end of OAR Charis has the only fleet still afloat, with the exception of Chisholm.) So Desnair must not have had a fleet at all, which is hard to believe since it's one of the most powerful mainland realms.

So why no Desnairan fleet in OAR?

Clearly Desnair knew how to build a navy, based on the fleet it built for the NoG at Iythria, which was initially composed of galleys due to Magwair's stupidity. Desnair is the only country that was giving the ICN trouble in protecting its merchant convoys in LaMA, due to the schooners it was building in the Gulf of Jahras until Merlin's "spies" reported the location of the ports where the schooners were being built, which enabled the the ICN to locate and destroy those ports along with the schooners they were constructing and the supplies required to do so.

Admiral Shain, who commanded the ICN fleet in the Gulf of Jahras outlined a plan to blockade the Bay of Mahrosa. He also proposed to capture the city of Handryl that doesn't exist on the map, but is probably in the northwest of the Gulf of Jahras.

If his plan was successful and he captured Handryl, it would have cut off the land route to Siddarmark completely, and the ICN also cut it in six places in North Watch. He'd also have cut the semaphore to Howard, so I don't believe that his fleet actually captured Handryl, although they did block the Bay of Mahrosa and destroyed the locks to the Mahrosa canal, which forced all the Desnairan supplies being shipped to the AoS to be carried by wagon from west of Mahrosa to the Salthar Canal in Silkiah on a "high road" that was mostly wishes rather than reality. (I begin to understand why Harless' forces were starving!)

JeffEngel wrote:

McGuiness wrote:In researching this, I realized for the first time that Desnair was not included in the attack on Charis in OAR. It should have had a sizable navy based on the fact that it was well-off due to its gold mines, plus it has thousands of miles of shoreline to patrol to control smugglers, etc. So why didn't Desnair have a fleet that the Knights of the Temple Lands could order to join the others? (Yes, I realize that at the end of OAR Charis has the only fleet still afloat, with the exception of Chisholm.) So Desnair must not have had a fleet at all, which is hard to believe since it's one of the most powerful mainland realms.

So why no Desnairan fleet in OAR?

The no fleet at all possibility is genuine, but it's hard to swallow with that much coastline, reasonable militancy, and Desnair's later naval activity.

Other ways to account for no Desnairian naval participation in OAR could include:
1 - No good navy. Maybe the Desnairian navy tended to be galleys in poor condition, possibly laid up without active crews. That sort of navy would be worthless to try to use, especially if they wanted speed or operational security. (And they did want operational security, however much the plan made that dubious.)
2 - No ocean-going navy. That's hard for galleys, and it was arguably a mistake to try to bring Dohlar's that far. Desnair would also have had to make moves that may have been further out to sea than its ships and crews would be prepared to do, despite being (for all we know) a decently sized, available, and capable navy for traditional coastal work.
3 - No single navy. Part of what makes the no navy at all theory hard to take is that even Ferayd had galleys to guard it, but those may have been less Delferahk's than those of Ferayd or the duchy or other component of Delferahk in which Ferayd lay. Similarly, duchies, earldoms, and free cities in Desnair may have kept their own galleys in addition to or instead of a central Desnairian one in the OAR time period. That would have been a mess for the Temple to have mobilized for the attack on Charis.
4 - No large navy. Maybe the Desnairian navy was just not large enough to be worth the added complication and exposure of a plan that was suffering much too much of that already.

Similar questions and theories come up for Harchong's navy in the OAR time period, though I think we've got a bit more evidence there that Harchong's problem was all or mostly a variation on no good navy.

Isilith wrote:The two of you keep bringing up Desnairs shipbuilding capability as proof that Desnair SHOULD have had a navy. Totally ignoring the textev that states that shipbuilding capability was built up by the church AFTER the Armageddon Reef disaster, so that they could build a new NoG to fight Charis.

HungryKing wrote:Desnair did have an active Navy, or at least a fleet, before OAR, in fact, according to the wiki it was fourty vessels at its highest strength, but was only twelve at the time of the battle of Darcos Sound, all foreign built.

I think at some point some Desnari Emperor, or his advisors, had hit upon the concept of bypassing the Siddarmarkian defenses and landing in their rear. At the level of preMerlin Safehold calvarly hold where ever there is no infantry. Of course the logistics of sea transporting calvarly is rather daunting, so the project was abandoned.