Expert snuggler wrote:It will be a while before every ship is ironclad. Some kind of inner lining to reduce splintering would be a useful safety measure in a wooden ship.
True, but probably not practical at a time when explosive shells can blow holes in wooden ships. Any useful solution would make the liner as heavy as the armor needed to break up the shells on the outside of the ship.
My thought here is that an even more worrisome issue than splinters is having the ship sink after having two and three foot holes blown in the hull at the water line.
The best solution is to get rid of the unarmored wood hulls, but as you point out, that is going to take a while.
Perhaps they could expand on the Rotweiler class, but I wonder if they want to use the resourses for that with increased numbers of riverclads and the more capable cities class coming off the building slips. There are the Haarahlds, of course. They are going to be a fearsome opponent wherever they show up. But there are going to be too few of them to make a significant dent in the ICN's overall problem.
I find myself wondering if it wouldn't be a good thing to take about 20 of the more recently built galleons, cut them down and make Rotweilers out of them, but adding steam engines in addition to the armor. You could put in the same 30 gun configuration and use smaller steam engines than the Haarahlds. That gets you better blue water coverage and would be an impressive ship even though it doesn't match up to the Haarahds.
It's fortunate that at the moment nobody seems to have any appetite for challenging the ICN at sea. That does give them time for considering and resolving their problem with wooden hulls. On the other hand they are staying out of the Gulf of Dohlar right now because they are not wanting to expose their unarmored hulls to Thirsk's shell armed fleet and his screw galleys. That certainly highlights their vulnerability.
Don
