McGuiness wrote:n7axw wrote:Textev for first paragraph is found in AMF. In addition to this it is noted that one of the reasons Desnair never developed as a sea power was its focus upon its competition with Siddarmark, another land power.
The church paid for the building capacity developed at Ithyria and Gerya which did not exist prior to that despite Ithyria's excellent natural harbor.
Don
That sorta makes me wonder what Desnair would have done if the CoGA hadn't intervened and prevented Siddarmark from seizing both Silkiah and North Watch. A navy would have come in rather handy at that point.
It probably would have started coming in handy just to lean on Silk Town to get them to capitulate to Desnair rather than keep dealing with Siddarmark. And likewise for Siddarmark. I guess both of them just had more than enough power on land and too much commitment to furthering it to want to dabble in a navy that would be an additional expense for secondary use. I think Bismarck felt about that way about a Prussian/Imperial German Navy when he was in power, for similar reasons.
An answer to the argument - for those without resources coming out the wazoo - has to be in terms of what you can get with a
small navy, second to many. A lot of conventional thinking answers, "Not enough." Maybe Desnair and Siddarmark accepted that and left their coasts defended by nothing more than guns on the shore.
At the very least, a fast bunch of schooners are needed to inhibit piracy and smuggling, even if Desnair didn't build galleys - which is pretty hard to swallow no matter what the Wiki says. Almost every other country that isn't swallowed up by decadence and bribery (think Harchong) had a navy composed of dozens of galleys that were actually seaworthy, yet Desnair didn't. (I get the feeling that Siddarmark got a message or ten from the CoGA that building a navy would be a very bad idea...)
If Siddarmark didn't have galleys, then Desnair didn't have a serious worry historically about another navy. So a navy for them is just for use against opponents of opportunity or piracy suppression. The Treaty of Silk Town eliminated their only real target of opportunity. I doubt they ever considered seriously the naval ambitions it'd take to make Tarot one, and the mutual defense agreement with Charis would make that even less appetizing.
So, pirates. With naval warfare being practically galley warfare, it'd be very hard to handle pirates at sea. Maybe the desultory little navy Desnair did have was enough to keep harbors patrolled, or to escort troop transports to go stomp pirate bases to discourage the practice.
Or, there's money. Desnair may have had a policy of buying off pirates that became nuisances. It's risky, certainly, and rubs anyone's pride the wrong way. Or if they wanted to react violently and in a naval fashion, money could buy them Tarotisian mercenary galleys. Tarot's a plausible candidate for the source of the galleys they bought from outside their own ports, too.