Dilandu wrote:runsforcelery wrote:In other words, while it may appear to you that these are absolutely the wrong kind of ships for Charis to be building at this point, neither the Imperial Charisian Navy — nor your humble servant — agrees with you.
Thanks for the detailed explanation. There is still some doubts but it make the whole situation a lot more clear. Thank you!these are rifled breechloaders, with a much higher rate of fire, better shell design, and fuses (which, unlike Inflexible's) work quite reliably. Muzzle velocity is higher (which improves both accuracy and penetration), and the guns are designed to convert without modification to the use of nitrocellulose propellants and shall fillers.
I have my doubts that such guns in general can be made in the conditions of an industry that has only recently begun industrialization. Everything I read about the manufacture of large naval guns in the 19th century - it is an extremely complex process, requiring skilled labor. Not just training, but also experienced.Fifth, Charis has the industrial capacity to build these ships plus the smaller ironclads you are proposing, and those smaller ironclads are being built.
But they were able to build in just a few years, the industry is comparable with the industry for at least the 19th century Spain? The Japan took more than three decades to just start building modern armored cruisers and almost four decades to produce big naval gun in anything like sufficient quantity. AND, the Italym the Japan and the Soviet Union had the opportunity to buy industrial equipment, not to build it all by themselves.
Why do people persist in describing Safehold as "an industry that has only recently begun industrialization"?
Safeholdian technological capabilities — I'm speaking here of metallurgy, toolmaking, and the availability of skilled craftsmen — were probably on a par with, say, 1850 without steam power or electricity. Yes, their artillery pre-Merlin was extraordinarily crude in design, but there was nothing especially crude about its manufacture. The same is true, in many ways, about their galleons, which were still in the process of development as a type, but whose manufacturing standards were very high. The main thing that Safeholdian industry lacked pre-Merlin (aside from steam power and electricity) was a universal system of standardized measure. Go back and look at what I've said about the plumbing industry, for example, in relationship to the development of breech-loading rifles. These people understood precision in manufacturing; the problem was that they were still producing as individual craftsmen and did not yet have the concept of interchangeability of parts and the degree of mass production of parts and the inspection processes necessary to produce those parts to common, repeatable dimensions and specs.
Look, they already have highly sophisticated applications of wind and water power — go back and look at my comments on the Corisandian water supply arrangements in Manchyr, just for starters. They know how to make crucible steel of relatively high-quality but in relatively low quantities. They know how to make "blackheart iron," which is essentially a much less expensive substitute for wrought iron (which they also know how to make) but which requires a very skilled foundry master, since it's all still being done empirically. They know how to make very high quality bronze/brass. The problem is volume production of iron and steel, and that requires innovation. This is not the situation of Earth's industrial revolution in which it was necessary to train the workmen from the ground up. This is a situation in which a muscle/wind/water-powered society has been producing consumer goods which are as sophisticated as anything available to a mid-to late-19th century society in relatively high volumes by having lots and lots of skilled artisans because (outside Harchong and [possibly] Desnair, whose industry is the most backward of all), agricultural production is vastly higher on a per-farmer basis. That means that the demographics — the availability of skilled workers/artisans — is significantly different (higher) than anywhere on Earth during the early periods of industrialization.
Add to that the fact that thanks to Merlin and Owl, Howsmyn (whose Delthak operation is rather larger now than Krupp of Essen had managed on the eve of the First World War) doesn't make any critical mistakes in the development of new industrial techniques and capabilities. He may not always do things in the most optimum possible way, since part of the process here is to involve as many people as possible in the innovation process, but he and the inner circle do not allow "blind alley" projects and are able to provide the supporting infrastructure — the inspection techniques and gauges, the concept of the assembly line, metallurgical formulations, the proper temperatures and chilling processes to produce face-hardened armor, et cetera — which had to be developed from the ground up in real-world industrialization.
I don't think it's possible to overstate the importance of the Delthak Works to the survival of Charis or the speed at which advanced techniques are being introduced all across the Empire of Charis. If it were possible for Zhaspahr Clyntahn to call in a rakurai strike on Delthak and the satellite facilities Howsmyn is well on the way to constructing in both Charis and Chisholm, the war would be over — probably in less than a year — with an overwhelming victory for the Group of Four. Whether or not they would be able to stay on the back of the tiger after militarily defeating Charis is another question entirely, but it really is the Delthak Works, as much as Baron Green Valley's adaptation of Terran military history and techniques to Safehold, which has allowed Charis to survive.
Japan doesn't really suit your purposes for your example all that well. Commodore Perry visited Japan for the first time in 1853. At that time, Japan was a feudal society with no advanced industry (by 19th century standards) and in which it was illegal to build a vessel larger than 50 tons. Japan then fought a civil war which ended only in 1869, which was fought largely with weapons purchased from foreign powers, not produced by domestic manufacture. The first authorized construction program of the Japanese Imperial Navy was not authorized until 1875. As part of that program, they ordered three armored vessels from Great Britain and built some relatively simple, wooden-hulled vessels under French supervision at Yokohama. Despite the fact that Japan had no steel industry in 1860, that the only real resource for industrialization Japan possessed was coal, and that Japan completely lacked the large numbers of skilled artisans/craftsmen Safehold possessed before Merlin's arrival, Japan still managed to lay down its first iron-hulled ship (with British assistance) in 1882, only seven years after deciding that a genuine navy was necessary. By 1890, Japan was beginning to build vertical triple expansion engines in Japan, although naval ordnance was still beyond Japanese capabilities. By 1905 and the Russo-Japanese War, the Japanese were able to produce armored cruisers with 7" armored belts domestically. By 1905, Japan had laid down domestically the first two Satsuma-class battleships (which could be considered proto-dreadnoughts) in Japanese yards to a Japanese design using Japanese ordnance (manufactured under license from Vickers). By 1911, her naval program was able to produce everything required to build a complete, modern, steel-hulled navy — from battleships to torpedo boats — including ordnance, domestically. )This, by the way, is rather better than I am postulating Charis can build in 897 YoG.)
The best figure I have for Japan's population in 1853 is about 37,500,000, in what amounted to a subsistence-level economy. This is about twice the population of the Kingdom of Charis (about 240%, actually), but in a country with no domestic industry, no real exports or contact with the outer world, a state of agriculture which required a huge percentage of the total labor force just to feed itself, and a societal/cultural mindset directly opposed to modernization and industrialization. Under the circumstances, given the difference in starting points and the survival impetus to improve from that starting point and the availability — courtesy of Merlin and Owl — of all of the necessary knowledge, it doesn't strike me as unreasonable that Charis could compress roughly 28 years (1876-1904) into a quarter of that length (890-897).
Again, I think people persist in misunderstanding the Safeholdian starting point. There are what I fondly imagined were numerous hints scattered all through the books that underscore the fact that Safehold in 890 YOG is not Old Earth in 1650, yet the degree of existing infrastructure — not just in Charis, but in the Temple Lands and Dohlar — is consistently underestimated. I will readily admit that I am making some optimistic assumptions about the process in Charis, but I don't think they are unreasonably optimistic. You may disagree, but my understanding of the starting point for the society and the planet I created as the backdrop for this entire story tells me that Charis' accomplishments — and the tsunami of shockwaves they are sending out across the rest of an essentially static planetary society — are completely in line with the capabilities of that society. Nobody on Safehold, including Merlin, truly realized the extent to which the entire planet was a compressed spring, waiting to launch a furious spate of innovations and technological advances which had been dammed up by the Church for the better part of 800 years, given that Safehold started with a far more sophisticated toolbox than Old Earth enjoyed anytime prior to the end of the 19th century. That's what readers need to understand if they want to put the Safeholdian rate of progress into context with the historical rate of progress here on Earth in real life.
and what we know is the only yard stick we can measure by, in other words we are the CoG being dragged into the future by you the CoC 
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