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

SilverbladeTE wrote:
Passage around the continent of Charis and many islands, the stormy seas that will inevitably cause damage and losses, can be avoided, would make it one of the most viable canals, ever.
Huge savings in time for shipping.

I'd certainly imagine they'd start with a railroad if there isn't one there already as it is indeed such a superb, logical connection between the Carter Sea and Howell Bay
I can't recall where they put railroad as mentioned in TFT that the Dholaran King used alas.

I put a canal as very unlikely due to the fact that while the straight line distance is rather low, the topography is rather steep. Building a sea level canal through mountains requires a lot of earth moving.

The main advantage of a ship canal is that you do not need to break bulk, once you have to load and unload much if not all of the advantage of a canal over a rail road is lost. Due to the effects of currents and planetary rotation sea level will be different on the two sides of the isthmus. Locks for large ships require a lot of water, and while tropical mountains tend to get a lot of rain, collecting this water is a non-trivial engineering challenge.

Basically for less money than a canal, you can build a rail road that serves the same economic function. The rail road is likely to move goods and people faster than the canal.

Castenea wrote:

I put a canal as very unlikely due to the fact that while the straight line distance is rather low, the topography is rather steep. Building a sea level canal through mountains requires a lot of earth moving.

The main advantage of a ship canal is that you do not need to break bulk, once you have to load and unload much if not all of the advantage of a canal over a rail road is lost. Due to the effects of currents and planetary rotation sea level will be different on the two sides of the isthmus. Locks for large ships require a lot of water, and while tropical mountains tend to get a lot of rain, collecting this water is a non-trivial engineering challenge.

Basically for less money than a canal, you can build a rail road that serves the same economic function. The rail road is likely to move goods and people faster than the canal.

note I said there's two likely paths, only one goes through the mountains
again, only RFC knows the geography of his world and his wants for the story of course, but you certainly can get low lying valleys through mountain ranges that might be useable.

However there is a low lying, but longer route through the region just South of the Styvyvn mountains.
Again though we don't know it's viability, as tons of hills, hard granite, too much unstable chalk/Karst etc could make it unusable


Railroads cannot carry warships...the ability to quickly move move naval vessels and transports could be the difference between success and failure.
so it's a project the Crown/navy would very likely fund at least in part.
This is a truly critical long term strategic issue, exactly like the Panama and Suez Canals. The American and British/French governments pushed those canals very hard for the needs of their Empires.
Again, check the maps.
having a Fleet based in Howell bay, Charis could then quickly move it East or West, where as at the moment, going West requires a hugely longer route.

Bulk shipping is still vastly superior to railroad for major routes.
Whole of Howell bay is surrounded by towns and factories, ocean transport for many things is just far more cost effective.
Rail is an secondary and road a tertiary transport system for them.
There's pros and cons for both rail and water, having both, helps.
Unloading/loading rail to ship takes time, money and...increases damages/theft. Having cargo in the ship start to finish is cheaper.
Charis already is using shipping containers, so communities not on transport-capable waterways could economically ship by rail to any suitable port. Win-win!

Having a major new port on the Cauldron coastline to deal with the canal would also allow improved settlement etc of the entire Western coast of Charis.
This kind of thing is often not considered.
if you have a major port, which will inevitably become a bustling metropolis as it's a international hub, it encourages an entire region around it in many ways: economic, culture, governance etc, if it's run well/benignly.
Thus settlements, production, food, profit are likely to boom.
Lack of transport and "hope" shall we say? cripples regions.

What does Charis gain from such an immensely costly project?
a lot.
Seriously it would be one of the most useful and important construction projects, ever.
again, look at how Suez and Panama Canals affected things but this one would be even more critical.

With the new Silkiah canal, which will probably end up going through Dholar if I get things right from TFT?, round world shipping will absolutely boom!
More steam shipping and showing off more good points of engineering machinery, boosts the Narhman Plan (least bits we know of it), encouraging technological adoption, more wants for steam ships, steam shovels etc.
Once the canal is complete, surviving machinery, refurbished, can be sold (will require a mssive amount so you'd have plenty to sell), while Charis fields the latest generation of steam machinery for its own projects.
note holding onto OLD machinery is usually not a good idea, less efficient etc and Charis plans to demonstrate and sell equipment.

Additionally as I noted, avoiding the very stormy sea areas around Charis would save ship owners a lot in repairs over time.
The Cape of Good Hope route, especially in Winter, causes a huge and extremely costly amount of damage to ships and cargo every year so the Suez route is for many, vastly superior and worth the costs.
Go check on it, even huge modern ships get their sides caved in by the colossal waves there :/

Tolls would soon (relatively) repay costs on a project like this as a final issue.

SilverbladeTE wrote:
note I said there's two likely paths, only one goes through the mountains
again, only RFC knows the geography of his world and his wants for the story of course, but you certainly can get low lying valleys through mountain ranges that might be useable.

However there is a low lying, but longer route through the region just South of the Styvyvn mountains.
Again though we don't know it's viability, as tons of hills, hard granite, too much unstable chalk/Karst etc could make it unusable


Railroads cannot carry warships...the ability to quickly move move naval vessels and transports could be the difference between success and failure.
so it's a project the Crown/navy would very likely fund at least in part.
This is a truly critical long term strategic issue, exactly like the Panama and Suez Canals. The American and British/French governments pushed those canals very hard for the needs of their Empires.
Again, check the maps.
having a Fleet based in Howell bay, Charis could then quickly move it East or West, where as at the moment, going West requires a hugely longer route.

Bulk shipping is still vastly superior to railroad for major routes.
Whole of Howell bay is surrounded by towns and factories, ocean transport for many things is just far more cost effective.
Rail is an secondary and road a tertiary transport system for them.
There's pros and cons for both rail and water, having both, helps.
Unloading/loading rail to ship takes time, money and...increases damages/theft. Having cargo in the ship start to finish is cheaper.
Charis already is using shipping containers, so communities not on transport-capable waterways could economically ship by rail to any suitable port. Win-win!

Having a major new port on the Cauldron coastline to deal with the canal would also allow improved settlement etc of the entire Western coast of Charis.
This kind of thing is often not considered.
if you have a major port, which will inevitably become a bustling metropolis as it's a international hub, it encourages an entire region around it in many ways: economic, culture, governance etc, if it's run well/benignly.
Thus settlements, production, food, profit are likely to boom.
Lack of transport and "hope" shall we say? cripples regions.

What does Charis gain from such an immensely costly project?
a lot.
Seriously it would be one of the most useful and important construction projects, ever.
again, look at how Suez and Panama Canals affected things but this one would be even more critical.

With the new Silkiah canal, which will probably end up going through Dholar if I get things right from TFT?, round world shipping will absolutely boom!
More steam shipping and showing off more good points of engineering machinery, boosts the Narhman Plan (least bits we know of it), encouraging technological adoption, more wants for steam ships, steam shovels etc.
Once the canal is complete, surviving machinery, refurbished, can be sold (will require a mssive amount so you'd have plenty to sell), while Charis fields the latest generation of steam machinery for its own projects.
note holding onto OLD machinery is usually not a good idea, less efficient etc and Charis plans to demonstrate and sell equipment.

Additionally as I noted, avoiding the very stormy sea areas around Charis would save ship owners a lot in repairs over time.
The Cape of Good Hope route, especially in Winter, causes a huge and extremely costly amount of damage to ships and cargo every year so the Suez route is for many, vastly superior and worth the costs.
Go check on it, even huge modern ships get their sides caved in by the colossal waves there :/

Tolls would soon (relatively) repay costs on a project like this as a final issue.

Umm,no, it won't; 1) Terrain through Dohlar doesn't favor building a canal. 2) The Silkiahn canal already exists, it was going to be EXPANDED to the size that large ships and warships can be used. And, IIRC, made so you can easily move traffic east and west at the same time.3) The books talked about Dohlar taking over the Siddarmarkian FUNDING/OWNERSHIP ( as it was supposed to be a 3 way partnership of: Silkiah, Siddarmark, and the Empire of Charis ) part of the canal, since Siddarmark can't, and didn't really want to under their new leadership.

Isilith wrote:


Umm,no, it won't; 1) Terrain through Dohlar doesn't favor building a canal. 2) The Silkiahn canal already exists, it was going to be EXPANDED to the size that large ships and warships can be used. And, IIRC, made so you can easily move traffic east and west at the same time.3) The books talked about Dohlar taking over the Siddarmarkian FUNDING/OWNERSHIP ( as it was supposed to be a 3 way partnership of: Silkiah, Siddarmark, and the Empire of Charis ) part of the canal, since Siddarmark can't, and didn't really want to under their new leadership.

oops, your right on the new Silkhia canal, my bad!

In my minor defence, when I looked at the original Safehold map, in the "downloads", it has SALTHAR BAY misnamed as SILKHIA BAY so I was kinda confused
Did RFC change the name later?

some of the maps just didn't magnify worth a damn on my Kindle Fire which I use nearly all the time for reading (maps are very blurry),
but on the PC Kindle (which I've only used a little) some zoom in a bit better
so I just checked "Hell's Foundation's Quiver" map to check where the heck the damn canal actually is, lol

is the Dutchy of Salthar that bad for hills or mountains?
I can't recall in "at the Sign of Triumph" exactly but it didn't sound like it was that bad, apart from the mud?
or have I missed a reference somewhere?

and if Dholar gets involved, what do you bet, if they can do it, they'd want the canal to go through some of their lands?
Whether that would ever be possible or allowed is another matter entirely.
I think everyone would prefer Silkiah as the entire route as it's more a "neutral" country and too small a state to be an "enemy" to any particular group.

Note the canal I proposed saves about 2500 miles from the Throat to the Cauldron by a Northern route and 4000 miles or so from Southern route!

from the Cauldron to Silkiah it's about 5000 miles
so, a canal from Howell bay to the Cauldron is a pretty dern major improvement

most cargo ships from that kind of tech period (steam triple expansion) go about 10 (11.5 mph) to 12 knots usually.

and warships around 12 to 16 knots for their best cruising consumption speed depending on size/design etc.
20 knots (23 mph) is pushing it hard for long term high speed run for such a warship

Charisan warships are noted as max speed in TFT of 23 knots
(all in our Terran knots of course, not Safehold's saner system, sigh, the sooner frikkin Imperial measures and "knots" are gone from use the damn better! )

so, at a high speed emergency run, a Charisan warship might make, 609 miles a day, not counting issues pro or con with wind, water or fuel
a cargo ship 304 miles a day
26 1/2 hour day on Safehold

thus, the proposed canal would save more than 4 DAYS of travel for a Charisian warship from the Throat to Silkiah in an emergency,
and a cargo ship 8 days of normal cruising!

Four days in an emergency, like a war, is a lot.
Eight days of sailing time reduces is a lot of profit for a merchant.
Note that if you halve a transport's travel time, you sort of double your carrying capacity and thus might greatly increase profits.

a ship in Tellesberg, closer to the canal at the far end of Howell Bay from the Throat, going to the Cauldron through the Canal, would of course be even quicker than from the Throat,
as it's around 2000 miles from Tellesberg to the Throat.


Likewise it makes East to West passages much much shorter for ships from Emerald, Chisholm etc if they chose to come through Howell bay
and of course, all those lovely extra passage fees for Lock Island :p

Honestly, the merchants of Charis, never mind the Navy, would be going nuts for this


note
ancient (Roman) era ships in the Mediterranean went about 5 knots, an area with very calm conditions compared to the North Atlantic or Safehold! (but quite like Howell Bay we'd guess)

recently the super container ships on our seas with very advanced engine and hull design, went back from 25 knots cruising, to 20 and some as low as 12 knots to save fuel, which has become a more serious issue nowadays on costs.

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.

Take the maps of Safehold, for example: they do _not_ show anything remotely resembling contours. Mountain ranges are simply sketched in with little to indicate even relative elevations, and high ground is often simply shaded in with a very coarse interval indication. Given what is mentioned in text, that shading could well be showing land over 1000 or even 2000 meters - and probably isn't consistent from one part of the map to another anyway. So just because there aren't any mountains on the short line between the Cauldron and Howell Bay doesn't mean that there isn't anywhere up to 2-3000' of elevation change involved. And if you look at the run of the rivers that are shown flowing into the bay, the western side of Charis is clearly _much_ higher ground that the coast of Howell Bay - one of them is even shown running _through_ the Styvn Mountains to empty into the Bay! Given the obvious advantages, if building and operating a canal was anything close to a simple exercise, there's a good chance it would already have been done - in fact, Shan Wei might well have done it a millenium ago.

You don't seem to have spent a lot of time around a working canal, either: 2500 miles less distance does not translate into a saving of 4 days in transit time. Even in the unlikely circumstance that a near-sea-level canal were feasible you won't be transiting it at 23 knots. Not with more than one ship, at any rate, even if the first one could make it through at that speed. And the next one would be months behind, given the repairs that would be needed. If it's not a nearly flat route, it wouldn't surprise me if an emergency run through the Throat wasn't actually faster.

You are completely overlooking the question of _why_ The Cauldron is called The Cauldron, and why there don't appear to be any major settlements on that part of the coast. IIRC [and I will cheerfully admit that I'm not sure that I do] there are references to that area being some of the worst sailing on the planet. Something that any sane mariner would happily go 2500 miles out of his way to avoid. I'm not sure where you got the notion that the Med is relatively calm sailing from, BTW: the number of Roman wrecks on the bottom should be enough to disabuse you of it, without considering the huge population covering every other era, back to when people first pushed off in hollowed logs.

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. Even the semi-static lines at El Alamein only held because by the time Rommel ran up against them he was beyond the effective operating range of his logistics base [which is one reason the Auk put them there], with an army that had actually been rather effectively mauled by the forces they were pushing back ahead of them. Stalingrad likewise, and those are really the only two examples of effective defensive stands in the entire conflict; nobody elsewhere accomplished anything better than delaying actions. And neither was based on permanent fixed defenses. The only example of those that wasn't over run is the Maginot Line - which was never attacked directly, so we have no idea if it would have held against modern [for the period, but they haven't really changed much since] light-infantry tactics. It's often overlooked that prior to WWI Europe re-equipped its armies with light infantry weapons, and then tried to fight using the good old tried-and-true heavy infantry methods. So, essentially, did the AoG and MHOGATA on Safehold. It would be extremely foolish to presume that anyone attacking Old Charis itself won't have digested their lessons at least as well as US forces had before they hit North Africa or the Northwest Pacific. They certainly won't be any worse-equipped than contemporary Charisian field armies, or they wouldn't have made it that far in the first place.

BTW, your guess about the cause of the limited tidal range in the Med is incorrect. For one thing, it's not much more limited than at any mid-ocean site in the Atlantic or Pacific. For another, it's the shape of of the basin that affects tidal range most. The Med is long, narrow and very deep, making it look much more like a typical lake in profile than any other ocean basin. Lake Winnipeg, which is unusually shallow for its size, looks a lot more like the Pacific basin - and is just as tidal.

SilverbladeTE wrote:Note the canal I proposed saves about 2500 miles from the Throat to the Cauldron by a Northern route and 4000 miles or so from Southern route!

from the Cauldron to Silkiah it's about 5000 miles
so, a canal from Howell bay to the Cauldron is a pretty dern major improvement

most cargo ships from that kind of tech period (steam triple expansion) go about 10 (11.5 mph) to 12 knots usually.

and warships around 12 to 16 knots for their best cruising consumption speed depending on size/design etc.
20 knots (23 mph) is pushing it hard for long term high speed run for such a warship

Charisan warships are noted as max speed in TFT of 23 knots
(all in our Terran knots of course, not Safehold's saner system, sigh, the sooner frikkin Imperial measures and "knots" are gone from use the damn better! )

so, at a high speed emergency run, a Charisan warship might make, 609 miles a day, not counting issues pro or con with wind, water or fuel
a cargo ship 304 miles a day
26 1/2 hour day on Safehold

thus, the proposed canal would save more than 4 DAYS of travel for a Charisian warship from the Throat to Silkiah in an emergency,
and a cargo ship 8 days of normal cruising!

Four days in an emergency, like a war, is a lot.
Eight days of sailing time reduces is a lot of profit for a merchant.
Note that if you halve a transport's travel time, you sort of double your carrying capacity and thus might greatly increase profits.

a ship in Tellesberg, closer to the canal at the far end of Howell Bay from the Throat, going to the Cauldron through the Canal, would of course be even quicker than from the Throat,
as it's around 2000 miles from Tellesberg to the Throat.


Likewise it makes East to West passages much much shorter for ships from Emerald, Chisholm etc if they chose to come through Howell bay
and of course, all those lovely extra passage fees for Lock Island :p

Honestly, the merchants of Charis, never mind the Navy, would be going nuts for this


note
ancient (Roman) era ships in the Mediterranean went about 5 knots, an area with very calm conditions compared to the North Atlantic or Safehold! (but quite like Howell Bay we'd guess)

recently the super container ships on our seas with very advanced engine and hull design, went back from 25 knots cruising, to 20 and some as low as 12 knots to save fuel, which has become a more serious issue nowadays on costs.

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.

Take the maps of Safehold, for example: they do _not_ show anything remotely resembling contours. Mountain ranges are simply sketched in with little to indicate even relative elevations, and high ground is often simply shaded in with a very coarse interval indication. Given what is mentioned in text, that shading could well be showing land over 1000 or even 2000 meters - and probably isn't consistent from one part of the map to another anyway. So just because there aren't any mountains on the short line between the Cauldron and Howell Bay doesn't mean that there isn't anywhere up to 2-3000' of elevation change involved. And if you look at the run of the rivers that are shown flowing into the bay, the western side of Charis is clearly _much_ higher ground that the coast of Howell Bay - one of them is even shown running _through_ the Styvn Mountains to empty into the Bay! Given the obvious advantages, if building and operating a canal was anything close to a simple exercise, there's a good chance it would already have been done - in fact, Shan Wei might well have done it a millenium ago.

You don't seem to have spent a lot of time around a working canal, either: 2500 miles less distance does not translate into a saving of 4 days in transit time. Even in the unlikely circumstance that a near-sea-level canal were feasible you won't be transiting it at 23 knots. Not with more than one ship, at any rate, even if the first one could make it through at that speed. And the next one would be months behind, given the repairs that would be needed. If it's not a nearly flat route, it wouldn't surprise me if an emergency run through the Throat wasn't actually faster.

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.

I don't think Charis will use railroad guns for several reasons.
1) Manpower intensive as hell. The two railroad guns the Germans used in the siege of Sebastopol used up an entire infantry division in manpower. Anzio Annie used roughly a reinforced battalion (1000-1500 men)
2) Can not aim worth a damn.
3) Slow firing most railroad guns averaged 4-6 shots per hour. Sebastopol averaged 1 round every hour IIRC.
4) Getting the guns on site. Plus special road beds. You also wasted time building them disassembling them transporting them then reassembling them.

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

saber964 wrote:I don't think Charis will use railroad guns for several reasons.
1) Manpower intensive as hell. The two railroad guns the Germans used in the siege of Sebastopol used up an entire infantry division in manpower. Anzio Annie used roughly a reinforced battalion (1000-1500 men)
2) Can not aim worth a damn.
3) Slow firing most railroad guns averaged 4-6 shots per hour. Sebastopol averaged 1 round every hour IIRC.
4) Getting the guns on site. Plus special road beds. You also wasted time building them disassembling them transporting them then reassembling them.

true for the very large ones, but, those giants DID smash the defences at several locations when nothing else could.

harassment fire of a specific point, like a harbour, or a gorge etc is useful though since we're talking weapons capable of killing any poor berk in a 100+ yard radius, and blow down structures or turn a tank into a collander

emplaced guns are way more accurate of course, but require time to build etc

however, what railway guns might be extremely useful to Charis and its allies, or enemies, would be 6" to 10" inch size as they could be used on ordinary tracks (though, beefed up for prolonged fire)
useful because you could move them so much quicker and hide them as need in tunnels.
hell of a lot more mobile than conventional guns of that era/tech
be a while before Charis builds self propelled guns using steam but those too might come!

the Chungduk (Spelling?) Valley could do with a few long range guns, considering how narrow the enemy front line is and possibility of rail link up.