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Beowulfians in the Solarian Navy?

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Re: Beowulfians in the Solarian Navy?
Post by saber964   » Sat Sep 09, 2017 6:25 pm

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Weird Harold wrote:
cthia wrote:SLN personnel wanting to defect is interesting, and humorous, and it would surely give the League a black eye — especially politically if the SEM chooses to highly publicize it. Which I would in their shoes. It would represent one more gear engaging a sprocket in the Harrington Plan.


IIRC, the problem of POWs requesting asylum and/or refusing repatriation after hostilities cease has a historical precedence in the Korean Conflict. A significant percentage of North Korean POWs objected to be repatriated or exchanged for UN POWs.



It also happened in the aftermath of WWII several thousand German and Italian POW's didn't want to go back, because they had little or nothing to go back to.
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Re: Beowulfians in the Solarian Navy?
Post by cthia   » Sat Sep 09, 2017 7:26 pm

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Weird Harold wrote:
cthia wrote:SLN personnel wanting to defect is interesting, and humorous, and it would surely give the League a black eye — especially politically if the SEM chooses to highly publicize it. Which I would in their shoes. It would represent one more gear engaging a sprocket in the Harrington Plan.


IIRC, the problem of POWs requesting asylum and/or refusing repatriation after hostilities cease has a historical precedence in the Korean Conflict. A significant percentage of North Korean POWs objected to be repatriated or exchanged for UN POWs.
saber964 wrote:It also happened in the aftermath of WWII several thousand German and Italian POW's didn't want to go back, because they had little or nothing to go back to.


How would they all earn a living? All for that nasty animal rearing its ugly head called security/vetting isssues cautioning their use by the host navy. Hope they have backup careers to fall back on. No doubt many of them would, but then many probably wouldn't either. Certainly not a backup in which one can be trusted. No?

It isn't like absorbing an influx of civilian immigrants, or even naval officers from an ally. These would be ex-enemy officers less than weeks/months prior.

Son, your mother says I have to hang you. Personally I don't think this is a capital offense. But if I don't hang you, she's gonna hang me and frankly, I'm not the one in trouble. —cthia's father. Incident in ? Axiom of Common Sense
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Re: Beowulfians in the Solarian Navy?
Post by cthia   » Sat Sep 09, 2017 7:41 pm

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ldwechsler wrote:
saber964 wrote:The only example I can come up with in this scenario is the U.S. Military in the months surrounding the CSA attack on Ft. Sumter. Several units in the western states disintegrated as units. IIRC the 5th Cavalry regiment operating in western Nebraska and Wyoming lost 70% of it's officers and 50% of it enlisted. You also had several northerners who stayed on and served in the CSA IIRC the Confederate commander in Vicksburg was born in Pennsylvania and had served most of his career to that point in the South.


It will not be as simple as it was before the US Civil War. The US army was very small. People were generally friends and honor was considered vital.
In this case, I think there may be some form of parole. But there are ships all over the League. What happens on an OFS ship a couple of months away? We've seen that there are places where the navy has no idea a war has started.

Things will get messy. And if there is an attack on Beowulf they are likely to get messier.
phillies wrote:Is there any reason to suppose that the Solarian League has a death penalty for general crimes, not including Deneb?

Absolutely positively yes. If you don't, piracy and every other jack-lag business under the sun is going to set up shop in your system.

In the Honorverse, certainly in the crime filled streets of Old Chicago and throughout the Solarian League, capital punishment is as much a deterrent as you can get, but certainly not as much as needed.

You must enact laws that will at least attempt to keep the mindset of the Verge out in the Verge.

Ironic OTOH, as the League uses a liberal sprinkling of the word barbarians, and non-barbarians are those that are above capital punishment. Yet, barbarians are those who would allow evil to rule.

Hence, the League are barbarians themselves.

.
Last edited by cthia on Tue Sep 12, 2017 6:10 am, edited 1 time in total.

Son, your mother says I have to hang you. Personally I don't think this is a capital offense. But if I don't hang you, she's gonna hang me and frankly, I'm not the one in trouble. —cthia's father. Incident in ? Axiom of Common Sense
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Re: Beowulfians in the Solarian Navy?
Post by pappilon   » Sat Sep 09, 2017 7:52 pm

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cthia wrote:
IIRC, the problem of POWs requesting asylum and/or refusing repatriation after hostilities cease has a historical precedence in the Korean Conflict. A significant percentage of North Korean POWs objected to be repatriated or exchanged for UN POWs.
saber964 wrote:It also happened in the aftermath of WWII several thousand German and Italian POW's didn't want to go back, because they had little or nothing to go back to.


(1)IIRC lots of Soviet Soldiers and civilians requested asylum but Stalin demanded [rather strenuously] that they be returned.

(2) The last I remember was the seizure of the Beowulf embassy, the staff AND Carmichael, charging the Beowulf delegation with 2 counts of treason, one for daring to secede the second for harboring an enemy ambassador. Head mandarin quashed this as a Very Bad precedent.

(3) Remember both Thandi Palane and Damien Harahap. Especially Damien's statement of how using so many people from the protectorates would turn around and bite them on the backside? The scattered Beowulf personnel is the least of their problems. Just the most visible one. with all those SLN ships just hanging in orbit while crew collect their pay, call-up to sail could well be met with too few personnel to actually set sail (Whatever).
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The imagination has to be trained into foresight and empathy.
Ursula K. LeGuinn

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Re: Beowulfians in the Solarian Navy?
Post by saintonge   » Tue Sep 12, 2017 5:45 am

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Brigade XO wrote:Given the description of the SL and the bureaucracy/SLN, you might find a situation such as what the US encountered in it's Civil War. Pre-war the States had militia and probably some naval forces for local defence.


No state naval forces, they are forbidden.

U.S. Constitution, Article I, Section 10, third para.:

No State shall, without the Consent of Congress, lay any Duty of Tonnage, keep Troops, or Ships of War in time of Peace, enter into any Agreement or Compact with another State, or with a foreign Power, or engage in War, unless actually invaded, or in such imminent Danger as will not admit of delay.

The United States had an Army and a Navy
Not going to go into all the problems and forces leading up to the war but once things got to the point of some of the States declaring secession from the US, a number of both officers and men resigned from the US military and went back to their home State military. Probably the best kown was Robert E. Lee who was asked by the President to command the Union forces but resigned and went back to VA and eventualy commanded the Confederate Forces.


Almost all Southern officers resigned. In the Army, this was simple. In the Navy, they continued to serve till their ships docked in the U.S., and then were allowed to leave.

With the SLN, I'd guess they'd be allowed to resign and go down dirtside on League planets. Given the size of the League, there won't be many Beowulfers on any given ship.


We know Beowulf has a major SDF but it is probable that a fair numeber of it's citizens have enlisted or are officers in the SLN. All sorts of reasons. The challange becomes how many will leave (if they are able too leave/resign) the SL military and what the SL military will do with those who don't leave before someone decides it would be a good idea to prevent their leaving?


I rather doubt it will come to preventing them from leaving. One planet among thousands? Trying to keep or imprison them would be more trouble than it was worth.

It is possible that at least officers who are Beowulf citizens could resign now- prior to the state of war after Fillerta attacks Manticore System- or shortly after that when the word gets back and they realize that what they may have been hearing about "punishing" Beowulf for attempting to leaving the League. The enlisted probably are stuck since they have a choice (rapidly going away) of waiting for end of current enlistment or going AWOL.

Also having had the SL buracracy and a bunch of the SLN Sr. Staff described as they have been, it is probable- as soon as they think of it- that any Beowulf citizen serving in the SLN or other military/police arm will be "detained" if not outright arrested and trotted out as barganing chips for leverage or used in media campains as traitors working to destroy the SL. Fun times.
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Re: Beowulfians in the Solarian Navy?
Post by saintonge   » Tue Sep 12, 2017 5:56 am

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saber964 wrote:The only example I can come up with in this scenario is the U.S. Military in the months surrounding the CSA attack on Ft. Sumter. Several units in the western states disintegrated as units. IIRC the 5th Cavalry regiment operating in western Nebraska and Wyoming lost 70% of it's officers and 50% of it enlisted. You also had several northerners who stayed on and served in the CSA IIRC the Confederate commander in Vicksburg was born in Pennsylvania and had served most of his career to that point in the South.


Yeah, Pemberton and some other Northern-born officers went South. Most of them were married to Southern women, iirc.

Some Southrons went North, most notable George H. Thomas.


But the U.S. Army of the time was very small, so it was statistically likely at least some units would be overwhelmingly Southern in personnel. Much less likely with the SLN.
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Re: Beowulfians in the Solarian Navy?
Post by Jonathan_S   » Tue Sep 12, 2017 9:27 am

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saintonge wrote:
Brigade XO wrote:Given the description of the SL and the bureaucracy/SLN, you might find a situation such as what the US encountered in it's Civil War. Pre-war the States had militia and probably some naval forces for local defence.


No state naval forces, they are forbidden.

U.S. Constitution, Article I, Section 10, third para.:

No State shall, without the Consent of Congress, lay any Duty of Tonnage, keep Troops, or Ships of War in time of Peace, enter into any Agreement or Compact with another State, or with a foreign Power, or engage in War, unless actually invaded, or in such imminent Danger as will not admit of delay.

Illegal unless Congress allows it (as they did with state militias, and later state national guards; which would otherwise be illegal as they'd be "keep[ing] Troops"). Though a quick skim through Wikipedia doesn't seem to show Congress actually authorizing any states to have naval militias until the 1890s (when they were furnished with ex-Civil War ships to man)

I'd guess, and it's just my guess, that states weren't asking for permission because armed ships are expensive and there wasn't much for them to do - unlike state militias which were cheaper and were directly beneficial against Indians.


According to the article there are currently 6 US states with active naval militias, and a further 24 states are authorized but do not currently have active naval militias.
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Re: Beowulfians in the Solarian Navy?
Post by Rincewind   » Mon Feb 19, 2018 6:54 pm

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Jonathan_S wrote:
Rincewind wrote:Not having my copy of Torch of Freedom to hand, I cannot be certain but I believe it was mentioned in that book that Hugh Arai was freed from the slave ship he was on by a SLN warship which had a Beowulfan captain & thus was one of the few to actually enforce the Cherwell Convention.

Does anyone else remember this passage?

I did some looking finally found the details when he was talking the Berry in the ice cream parlor.

But it was a Beowulf warship, under a Captain Jeremiah. It then goes on to a long and sordid tale about jurisdictional disputes and OFS.


I also did a wide search for "Cherwell" and couldn't find any mention of a specific SLN ship enforcing it (But then the word only appeared 39 times in the whole 26 books I searched)


I KNEW that I had read somewhere about a Solarian League Navy ship with a Beowulfan captain rescuing some genetic slaves. I just had the wrong story & the wrong character. It was in the short story Let's Dance! by David Weber & the character's name was Samson X.

The passage is as follows:
...She'd insisted on that before she agreed to commit herself to working with Samson, which is why she knew he'd already been a young adult before he was liberated from a Manpower slave ship very like Reprisal by one of the unfortunately few Solarian League Navy officers who made it a point to go after slavers aggressively. That officer (not surprisingly) had come from Beowulf... (my italics)
Let's Dance! by David Weber in Worlds of Honor 5; In Fire Forged, page 217, Hardback edition.
Last edited by Rincewind on Tue Feb 20, 2018 9:23 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Beowulfians in the Solarian Navy?
Post by Rincewind   » Mon Feb 19, 2018 7:20 pm

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saintonge wrote:
saber964 wrote:The only example I can come up with in this scenario is the U.S. Military in the months surrounding the CSA attack on Ft. Sumter. Several units in the western states disintegrated as units. IIRC the 5th Cavalry regiment operating in western Nebraska and Wyoming lost 70% of it's officers and 50% of it enlisted. You also had several northerners who stayed on and served in the CSA IIRC the Confederate commander in Vicksburg was born in Pennsylvania and had served most of his career to that point in the South.


Yeah, Pemberton and some other Northern-born officers went South. Most of them were married to Southern women, iirc.

Some Southrons went North, most notable George H. Thomas.


But the U.S. Army of the time was very small, so it was statistically likely at least some units would be overwhelmingly Southern in personnel. Much less likely with the SLN.


Actually in the US Navy only about half the Southern officers resigned or were dismissed. The remaining southern officers served the Union loyally.
The outstanding example of this was David Glasgow Farragut who was born in Tennessee, lived in Virginia & married a Virginian yet remained loyal to the Union & rose to the rank of Admiral.
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Re: Beowulfians in the Solarian Navy?
Post by Theemile   » Tue Feb 20, 2018 12:59 pm

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Rincewind wrote:
saintonge wrote:
Yeah, Pemberton and some other Northern-born officers went South. Most of them were married to Southern women, iirc.

Some Southrons went North, most notable George H. Thomas.


But the U.S. Army of the time was very small, so it was statistically likely at least some units would be overwhelmingly Southern in personnel. Much less likely with the SLN.


Actually in the US Navy only about half the Southern officers resigned or were dismissed. The remaining southern officers served the Union loyally.
The outstanding example of this was David Glasgow Farragut who was born in Tennessee, lived in Virginia & married a Virginian yet remained loyal to the Union & rose to the rank of Admiral.



A few months ago, I did some research on the US army leading up to the ACW and found it's official roster was ~18,600 positions, not all of which were filled at the time. This included all the Cav regiments (which were dispersed on the western frontier), and the 3 artillery regiments (which were dispersed to man the coastal forts)
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RFC said "refitting a Beowulfan SD to Manticoran standards would be just as difficult as refitting a standard SLN SD to those standards. In other words, it would be cheaper and faster to build new ships."
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