Large ship canal between west of Howell Bay to the Cauldron?

Castenea wrote:
I will just add that there were very few canals built after rail roads had proved them selves practical. This for the rather straight forward reasons of speed, relative weather independence, and ability to get closer to the customer. Most people seem to fail to realize that most canals were inoperable for 3 to 9 months out of every year due to some combination of too much water, too little water and frozen water.

Note that a ship carrying goods for both Delthak and Tellesburg would have to stop and unload at first one then the other, while a train of good for both locations if set up correctly can simply cut the cars at a yard for one then continue without having to wait for the goods to be unloaded.

Germany relied very heavily and with good reason on canals and rivers for transport, even with it's road and rail network hence why in WW2 one of the few good uses of British heavy bombers were "gardening" attacks on those

once you have good road/rail networks then digging canals often becomes a political issue etc :/
the "NIMBY" factor

Erls wrote:For the military aspect of things, I see Charis using Hanth Town - Margaret Bay - as the main naval base on Charis island. Between Darcos and Emerald - and the Throat - Howell Bay will be as protected as it needs to be. Margaret Bay, then, would position a naval force 2+ days closer to both Haven and Howard if need be.

For the economic aspect, just build a port with a railroad hub at suitable location on the west coast of Charis. Or even up in Margaret Bay if the weather off the Cauldron is to unpredictable. Either way, railroads could handle things.

On a side note - could railroad bridges (or tunnels!) be built across the throat? Just curious

The South Channel was twenty-four miles wide at high water, but it narrowed to only twelve at low water, when the mudbanks were exposed, and most of those twelve miles were too shallow for seagoing craft. The main shipping channel, marked by several sharp bends, was as little as two miles across at some points, and it passed within barely two thousand yards of the Lock Island batteries. The North Channel was the deeper of the two, although it was under eighteen miles wide at high water. At low tide, it was less than fifteen, but the main shipping channel was almost eight miles wide at its narrowest, and it was also far less twisty than the one to the south. That meant even deep-draft ships could use it without passing within range of the shore batteries on either side. Which made the North Channel the one which required warships for protection . . . and also explained why the galleons, sailing with the falling tide, were passing between Lock Island and North Key, the matching fortress on the far side of the channel.

Weber, David. Off Armageddon Reef (safehold) (pp. 553-554). Pan Macmillan. Kindle Edition.

so that would be a COLOSSAL work to bridge or tunnel that! :/
and a bridge would have to allow large ships passage making it even more of a challenge

Louis R wrote:I realise you're an enthusiast, and like most such when you get an idea you run with it until you drop. Unfortunately, I notice that you often start out by making assumptions and then take them as givens, when they often range from questionable through wild to untenable. Even when you acknowledge them, you carry on as if they are necessarily correct.

snip for brevity

fair points
yeah I got the bit between my teeth,

yet...

one bit in novels I can find about the Cauldron that seems applicable doesn't seem "too dangerous to cross"
lingering may well be a bad idea though
sounds more like the North Sea, which IS a very nasty place at times but not as bad as the terrible North Atlantic storm in February or so we get every few years (ye gods those are bad)

the Cauldron, that shallow, current-wracked stretch of seawater between Charis and Tarot Island.

Weber, David. Off Armageddon Reef (safehold) (p. 196). Pan Macmillan. Kindle Edition.

and from what I read of Baron Whiteford trying to get Malikai to take a safer course in OAR, the Parker Sea, Iron Sea and south of McPheros'ns Lament are the bad areas?
those are further South and the Iron Sea to Linden Gulf area, considering Safehold's colder climate than Earth, would probably be damn nasty?


yes a canal isn't a thoroughfare, but it doesn't have the wind and waves making it hard, either.
so yeah I was over optimistic considering delays through the canal, touche'!
but, for shipping in the West of the Bay it would still likely be faster than sailing out to the Throat and beyond
AND...you could refuel a lot easier.

Shan Wei didn't pull a canal in because...who knows actually?
not to draw attention to Tellesburg, hm?
remember they had a terraforming fleet, so small mountains be damned, pfft
there's a section about Fairkyn?, iirc, where the barge accidentally blew up, in an accident, where it says the Archangel's cut goes right through 400' of rock
yeah I know, mountains = youd need a vast cut because it has to be so hugely wide to support it thus utterly impractical for mere mortals...terraformers however aren't ordinary mortals

but, if there IS a low lying passage, hm?
we don't know the geography of RFCs world so yes, my idea might be utterly moot even on the non-mountainous area South of the Styvyen mountains as I noted in first post.
but it might be practical.


Fixed defences on your OWN territory on *that* scale,
when an enemy would need to cross an ocean or two,
when the defences and national policies aren't screwed up by morons,
when your military isn't wrecked...etc etc
no that's not going to be a push over, ugh.
that would be as said, a bloodbath to fight
especially as no one on Safehold has tanks, the mechanised logistics to feed such a campaign etc
Charisian defences would be a nightmare.
Green Valley will surely have read up on Carl Gustaf Mannerheim amongst others
and Charis will likely soon have automatic weapons

even the Germans avoided the heavy fortifications in WW2 of the French and Belgians for damn good reason (apart from largely, PR stunts)

Singapore (or rather, the further North in combination with other efforts over the entire region) could have and should have been the anvil to break the Japanese on, but hey, Churchill and numerous wallies stuffed that right up
Japanese logistics and planning on the other hand were utterly insane, sigh
planning for enemies to be logical though...isn't always wise as that proved.

Likewise it was the loss of supplies that helped wreck the Afrika Corps

at the moment, Charis' enemies are still:
#1 backwards in tech,

#2 VERY backward in mentality etc (As Stalin allegedly said, Hitler was his best general, lol, thus Mahry's and Zhyou-Zhwo and likely Siddirmark junta will make bad errors because they are driven by hate etc),

#3 none of them actually fought the Charisian army very much in ways they had time etc to learn, unlike the Mighty Host
though Siddirmark did get trained by Charis, the rampant bigotry there will also likely blind them to realities if it comes to war
many Siddarmark army officers will be driven out or maybe even sent to concentration camps/death who are seen as being "too Charisian", that is inevitable with the hysteria and bigotry racing through Siddarmark now, and thus resulting ignorance will lead to bad decisions, ugh.
Which means that when they all clash...the learning curve of Chari's enemies is gonna be like going up a ski jump the wrong way :/


Damn, we need a Safehold version of RISK! :p



Galleys were not galleons, even a squall in the Mediterranean, never mind a storm, could sink a galley
and since many hugged the coast, many got sunk by rocks and reefs
and sinkings occurred over many thousands of years so of course there's a lot of wrecks in an area without the ferocious tides and storms of the great oceans to destroy or bury them

the North Atlantic though is a completely different kettle of fish to the Mediterranean, yikes!
any "sea" can be a monster but the great oceans, wow...scary!

Louis R wrote:snip
While I agree that Julia is incorrect in thinking that a canal would be an open door to invaders, you seem wildly optimistic about the effectiveness of fixed defenses. I would suggest that a more careful consideration of WWII would show that there were _no_ occasions when they held against concerted, fully supported attackers.

I suggest that one of the reasons there are no such examples is that the attackers tended to avoid attacking places that were that heavily defended.

Adolf Hilter did not invade Switzerland out of deep abiding respect for the neutrality of the Swiss. Invading Switzerland would have been a long, difficult and very, very expensive operation, since by all accounts you would not only have to kill every mother's son in the country, you would probably have to kill half the mothers as well.

The Panama Canal was never attacked, although cutting the US ability to move ships between the Atlantic and Pacific was a significant advantage that removing would have benefited the Axis powers. The same is true of Gibraltar, which the Axis never attacked, although keeping Britain out of the Med would certainly have been helpful to the Germans.

Fallsfromtrees

Well, Corregidor and Singapore fell
But as I noted, those were a mix of criminal negligence arrogance and stupidity across many years and persons, reducing effectiveness of the whole campaign not merely defences
And the Japanese were monsters, insane, sick scumbags (not only did the commit atrocities on appalling extreme and also amount, but they threw their people away like peeing into a buzzsaw!)
Sigh

Ratbag British "Establishment" ordered cover up of the true extent of the atrocities committed by the Japanese at Hong Kong and Singapore by the way.

If McArthur and a few British higher ups had died of dysentery or other suitably grizzly ends, a whole lot of people may not have suffered, or at least, done more damage.

The Japanese junior officers and NCOs were actually fsr more of a problem than the higher ups, ironically
Those zealot sickos assassinated saner leaders, pushing their nation ever more to extremes
They also committed horrific crimes against their own men, several thousand Japanese recruits died from rape, torture, murder and sheer madness in training at the hands of their superiors

Then, filled and terrified into that fake Bushido B.S., they were fed into Allied guns.
Attacking such positions was rank insanity, especially with the shambolick logistics they had, but, the officers didn't care.

So,.that's ugly exceptions that prove the rule, sort of!

Later in wars, as "Darwinism.in Action" kills off moronic leaders, tech and doctrine advances with experience, and men become veterans, fixed defences become less effective,.usually, but they're still a bloodbath.
The Germans in both wars started with some experienced and extremely good units/leaders giving them an edge, likewise Japanese experience in brutal warfare in China gave them advantages etc

Singapore and the Philippines were far.from major support and "homelands" though.
See Verdun WW1 as a difference even if both sides effectively gutted each other there

Attacking the Swiss, yeah, ugh, their defences and preparations were incredible!
Hitler and Co were nutters, but not to that extent