Why no rakurai ships?

It occurred to me that it would make have made sense for The Grand Fornicator to have made use of what I'm calling rakurai ships yet he didn't.

I was originally thinking of rakurai fishing vessels in West Haven waters. Surely the Inquisition had to be aware that the Charisian Navy was acquiring fresh provisions and fresh intelligence from local fishermen, even if it wasn't aware of which fishermen were more interested in Charisian marks than their immortal souls. Fixing up a fishing ship or two with a hull full of gunpowder and shrapnel instead of fish wouldn't have required a major effort and we know there were leftover rakurai candidates who weren't sent off to the Charisian Empire. At a minimum the ones who were sent off to kill Dayvin and Irys would be available since they never got the chance to finish that mission. Potentially, such a rakurai ship might have sunk a Charisian ship, and regardless of whether it achieved that goal or not, it would have resulted in the impairing of the heretics getting provisions and intelligence in West Haven waters. Even better from the Fornicator's perspective, he could hope that paranoid heretics might start sinking approaching fishing vessels.

Another potential type of rakurai ship would be a false flagged merchant vessel that goes into a Charisian Imperial port and blows up amidst other merchant ships. However, either the ship would have to be mostly crewed by those unaware they'd been voluntold to be martyrs or there would be at most a couple of such ships, since there couldn't have been that many potential rakurai with sailing skills and merchant ships would have required larger crews than fishing ships.

Granted, the demonically-clever heretical spies might have been able to keep either type of rakurai ship from being used to its full effect, but even so, the desired paranoia would still be induced among the heretics.

Problem is, that the only explosive available to Church is low explosive - black powder. And it didn't exactly explode with significant destruction range: the blast wave is subsonic.

So:

* Destroying the Carisian Navy ships by exploding fishermen's boats - hardly possible. Military vessel during war just wouldn't allow civilian one to come close enough for detonation to cause significant damage (the mere attempt to close would be viewed as suspicious). It may be possile as false flag operation - for example, if fishermen in question would pretend to be in distress and require assistance - but such things would work just once or two.

* Abouts muggling blackpowder-filled ship into port... While possible, I suspect that custom officials in wartime would require all merchants to be inspected before they come to pier (to prevent spies from sneaking to shore). And again, blackpowder isn't that powerful. The exploding ship would surely wreck the pier and cause a lot of fires by burning parts thrown everywhere, but the damage would not be comparable to the XX century Halifax explosion, it would be MUCH smaller.

Except we have instances mentioned in text of the Charisian Navy meeting up with local fishermen in West Haven waters, so the idea they wouldn't allow them close before being subjected to a rakurai fishing ship doesn't bear scrutiny.

Moreover, actual damage from any rakurai ship would be gravy. The paranoia and extra security checks that would slow things down, and in the case of smuggler rakurai, require additional Charisian military assets be kept at home would be the main benefit of doing a few rakurai ships.

Salisria wrote:Except we have instances mentioned in text of the Charisian Navy meeting up with local fishermen in West Haven waters, so the idea they wouldn't allow them close before being subjected to a rakurai fishing ship doesn't bear scrutiny.

Okay, I grant it, it would work a first time, maybe a few more (until it became known). After that? Hardly ever. Warships would just start to send boats to meet fishermen, if they needed to. And I think you agree, that spending a ship with zealous crew to destroy a rowboat with a single low-rank officer and a few sailors is not practical.

Salisria wrote:Moreover, actual damage from any rakurai ship would be gravy. The paranoia and extra security checks that would slow things down, and in the case of smuggler rakurai, require additional Charisian military assets be kept at home would be the main benefit of doing a few rakurai ships.

Again, it would merely require custom officials to inspect ship BEFORE it would dock. Which is perfectly possible, and, in fact, oftenly done.

Clyntahn seemed happy enough with what his land rakurai accomplished even though after the initial attacks they accomplished little in the way of actual damage, just forced Shan-Wei's heretical minions to be more methodical and paranoid with security. Nor did he send additional waves of land rakurai after the first, which shows that he (or his adjutant general) realized he couldn't hope to duplicate it, at least on land. I'd expect similar results from ship rakurai, and a similar level of pleasure and dread from the respective sides.