MC Mil R&D III-Naval Warfare

Last update: O8.15."12

Patent 13: Le Bateau de Debarquement

















See illustration. A stern drawbridge (not appearing in this sketch of an early stage of the design) will allow cavalry to disembark mounted, ready to charge. Support variants are planned, with either two siege mortars or multiple rocket launchers.


Patent 13 bis: La Barbette Rotante









This cannon mounting was initially developped for escort & support variants of Project 13, hence the irregular numbering.
Instead of being wheeled, the carriage is gliding along a wooden rail. The whole is fixed on an axis and is supported by cannonballs filling a circular groove. The arc of fire is limited only by the superstructures of the boat or ship.
While the project is illustrated here mounting one of our new pattern Canon Naval Raccourci Surpuissant (CNRS), ordinary naval guns can equally be used on it; thus the acquisition of this Patent is independant from that of Patent 05.


Patent 14: Le Bateau a Vapeur















Paddlewheels were used to propel boats in Ancient times, both in Rome and China; our combined staff of mechanists and shipbuilders replaced the animals by Denis Papin’s steam engine. The steam-propelled ship can move in any direction at high speed regardless of the direction and strenght of the wind: a tremendous tactical and strategical advantage. The paddle wheels are powered by the same type of steam engine as the Fardier a Vapeur, but far larger. A working model at 1/10 scale can be seen navigating the Grand Bassin of the Grand Parc Recreatif on Sunday afternoon. Two Monte-Cristan Ladies, both of great ingenuous natural inquisitiveness about any matter related to Ships and Sea (and for one of them even Sea Creatures), saw in some foreign harbors (one in the North, one in the South) a similar ship under construction. Obviously the security of our R&D services is in dire need of drastic improvement!

One way to keep both the paddle-wheel protected and the broadside undiminished is to build a ship with two hulls like the Hellenistic so-called '40' galley. Such a wide ship would not be very seaworthy, but very powerful for coast defense.

Patent 15: L’Helice de Propulsion Navale

While mechanically simple, the paddle-wheels are highly vulnerable in battle, and unfortunately decrease the weight of the broadside. Indeed the later shortcoming can be nullified by the installation of Canons Navals Raccourcis Surpuissants (Patent 05). Nonetheless the Bureau des Sciences Appliquees et de l’Ingenierie is currently adapting the Helice, developped for our man-driven subaquatic boats (see Patents 16 & 17), to the steam engine of surface ships. The problem is complex, so Patent 14 by itself is still far from obsolescence. To own the intellectual property of Patent 14 is a prerequisite to practical use of Patent 15, so the simultaneous acquisition of both is compulsory.


Patent 16: Le Petardier Subaquatique

Will enter any enemy harbor under the cover of the sea, and fasten a heavy petard against the hull of an anchored warship, definitively sinking her.















Patent 17: Le Belier Explosif Subaquatique Evolutif (BESE)

















Able to navigate the high sea, and to attack a warship under sails. The ramming power being insufficient to break through a warship’s hull, the very long and thin ram will end with a removable huge explosive fougasse. Two other ones will be carried inside, allowing prolonged corsair cruises. Folding light blue sail(s) will help the crew during surface navigation out of view of the enemy. An addendum to Patent 16, so the simultaneous acquisition of both is compulsory.


Patent 18: Les Hussards Immerges Vedettes (HIV)

















The best counter to the increasing threat of subaquatic mine-delivering boats is to deploy screens of subaquatic light cavalry. Then –just like when dealing with land light troops– to be protected from their annoyance, your main force (whether surface or subaquatic) would have to be escorted by patrolling troops of their exact counterparts. The attached illustation depicts an artist’s impression of an encounter between two such patrols. Individual diving bells and hermetic helmets connected to the surface by a length of flexible tubing are known since Antiquity, and were improved by Da Vinci, albeit only at the theoretical level. But nowadays steampower allows to compress enough air in metallic bottles to give divers complete and lengthy autonomy.


Addendum: Monte-Cristan shipbuilders and engineers are serious and honest people: they never would offer the patents of such blatlantly non-functional aberrant contraptions, as adverstized (in full colours!) in some Maritime Country that shall not be named:

Now this is serious:





This long-distance communication device is perfectly operational.

A glimpse of things to come?

In the near future the irruption of reliable air vehicles will revolution naval (and siege) warfare. Wooden ships are terribly vulnerable to fire: simple firepots dropped from dirigible balloons (or even simply, close to the shore, by men hanging from kites) will easily burn down entire fleets without retaliation. The answer is of course to cover the vessel with sheets of metal, as the Koreans did long ago with their Turtle ship. But masts and highly flammable sails have to be reduced to the minimum, the boat has to be propelled mostly from the inside: Koreans used oared, which strictly limited the size of their 'cataphract' galley. Steam engines powering a submerged helice will allow a large armoured ship to move at high speed, independently from the wind. In the same time 'advanced' gunnery will allow for more destructive broadsides with far fewer pieces. All in all a single Frégate cuirassée will outclass single-handed an entire squadron of the heaviest ships of the line, in the same way as the single warship Le Bon routed 36 galleys in 1684.

.

(against airborne aggressors the deck also will have to be plated with steel)