Some questions:Maritime Terminology

where's christopher cross?

Shadow Master said:
So an Anchorage is something between a Harbor (without cargo facilities) and a Port (with large amounts of cargo handling capacity?
More like ranked Anchorage, Harbor, Port, by facilities. To which I'd add, you need good transport in/out of a port (harbor too, but less so).

Skilled labor is also an issue; handling cargo (today, at least) is a skilled job. (It's always been pretty specialized, AIUI, but until contaninerization, physical strength was the major requirement.)
Shadow Master said:
As I so far understand it, the slipways were (are) the 'bottlenecks' for building large ships?
Correct as far as it goes; the amount of land available limits the number of slips. (Japan learned this in the interwar/WW2 period, the hard way.)

You've also got a skilled labor issue to deal with; not just any nitwit can be hired off the street to build ships.

Needless to say, you've got to have very skilled & specialized people designing ships, but that's getting a bit far afield from the OP...;)

There are also materials issues. Are you building wood ships? Steel ones? Big or small ones? Oceangoing or lakers? Riverboats?

How are you powering them? Steam piston? Steam turbine? Diesel? Gas turbine? (Heaven forbid, but even in the 20thC, sail was still a viable option.:eek:)
 
Bottlenecks

For building ships, there's a LOT of bottlenecks, and in many cases, ways around them. For example, the Liberty Ships were driven by obsolescent Vertical Triple Expansion Engines because it was faster and cheaper to buld them in quantity than it was to build turbines. (The later Victory Ships had turbines)

Gearing for turbines is a big one, as are big guns. The big gun issue can be skirted if you have some in storage--Great Britain's last battleship was built using Great War design 15" guns for just that reason.

Note that some naval bases had minimal infrastructure--Scapa Flow comes to mind.
 
I keep getting 'crash to desktop' and 'blue screen of death' on my (used to be) good computer. Seems almost definite that having a MS office app running and one or more web browser windows open at the same time triggers this, and this really affects getting things done for any type of research, dang it.

So, third try this morning to make a post.

I am thinking along the lines of starting the main thread from the point of view of ancient times and geographically occurring natural features, and how they were made use of (and why), and trying to include at least one picture of each. It has been pointed out that the maritime technologies in use will, in themselves, dictate what is a good feature to some extent. I don’t want to go too far into writing about things pre-1900, but perhaps someone else might want to get all into all of that, so how do I phrase the OP to make linking to such a future thread, once it is written, easy and seamless?

What I am envisioning for these types of threads, are that they will each have a discussion and ideas thread, where everyone participates and contributes, and then the actual thread covering the areas of interest, and where the OP has within it links to each of the posts that deal individually with each aspect. So for this threads eventual finished form, I would follow in Saphroneth’s footsteps and make posts for each one, and provide a link to each such post, in the OP, so that someone referencing the thread can go to the OP, and then scroll down to the link to the post they are looking for, click on it, and have the info they are looking for. J
For my thread, I guess we should come up with a title, (I myself think “Maritime Terminology” might be good, but I’ll throw that out there and ask for alternate ideas from the forum community), and then a ‘list of contents’ sort of thing to build up the initial links in the OP. Before I get to far into this, a bit about how I would like such threads to be made available to the entire forum community, from now on.
Once we get several of these threads up and running, then perhaps we could have something like the Sealion thread has, in other words, we could see a sticky thread at the top of the forum, that then has a list of links (complete with descriptions and dates), for all such threads. So the maritime and logistics threads would be two of the links in such a thread. Does this sound good? Or does someone else have a better idea to make such works easily accessible to everyone? Wiki comes to mind, but until I get a better (or at least non-crashing) computer, my own efforts there are going to have to wait. L

So, back to this thread, and ideas for starting the other thread.

I would like to do something like this for the OP of my thread:

List of contents (where all the main posts will have links edited in as they are worked up in the future, and each such link gets a brief description of what that post contains/addresses, as well as some way to give credit where credit is due, to all of the community members that take the time to help me get things organized and well written. Then, as time and RL allow, posts would be added, one by one, and then we end up with a resource available to all. J
For the posts themselves, I will want to include at least one picture of whatever that particular post is dealing with, whether it be a naturally occurring terrain feature, a man made improvement to such, or an entirely artificial construct. Within the posts, I may want to include links to other threads. For instance, in the “Ports” post, I may have one or more historically important (as in post-1900 historical importance) ports getting special mention, as in a thread about that particular ports beginnings, evolution, and changing times, with particular interest in the role they played during wartime, and why. As we already have a few of these mentioned within this thread, I think that this will not be hard to find folks willing to contribute such, and of course, they will get their ‘place in the sun’ by doing so. Who knows, if such things take off, they themselves may get a direct link on the posited ‘sticky’ thread someday. The big one here, that I plan to at least start, is a “Shipyards of the (insert the timeframe, and/or location you want to include/focus upon)” type of thing, for instance, if enough folks were interested, perhaps we could get a group together that covered all the “Dreadnought Shipyards” as a thread in their own right, that focuses upon the historical shipyards that built the actual OTL dreadnought classes, with things like geographical and infrastructural limitations of each (along with all the things I could only hope to someday learn about, but cannot mention now for lack of knowledge) and especially a map of their RL locations, and then that thread could be linked to directly by the posited ‘sticky’ thread, as well as by my “Shipyards” post, and could (and hopefully would) end up as just one such thread among many.

I also just realized that there is another aspect to the “Maritime Terminology” that I, near complete dullard that I am, overlooked entirely until just now, and that is the “Invasion Beaches” aspect. So yes, this is going to take a while to get it right, as now we will need some very detailed info on historical (amphibious) invasions, and how geographical and infrastructural aspects affected the choice of location, as well as limited how big a force they could be made to supply, and this will surely be a huge task. For now though, I am going to focus on the things we have started with. Below is a first crude attempt to provide the ‘talking basis’ for the “Maritime Terminology” thread that is the purpose of this thread. Please, and I do mean please, help me get this to at least a do-able point by the end of June, 2015, so that we can start moving forward with that thread. So here goes nothing:

Shadow Master said:
Maritime Terminology
by ShadowMaster


My primary focus here is upon the time frame of approximately 1900 onwards, and only the most basic information relating to earlier times will be included here, not for lack of interest on the part of people on Alternate History Discussion Board forum community, but for the sake of limiting the contents to a small enough area that I can create and maintain, an informative and useful community resource.


In this thread, and inspired by Saphroneth’s excellent thread Logistics, I will attempt to shed light on several different terms used today, with both descriptions, pictures, explanations of the eternal question of “Why this or that way?” I will start off with historical geographically occurring natural terrain features, and then a brief bit about the effect of man-made infrastructural improvements that brought us to the historical time period.

Back in the early days on man’s travels upon the waters of the world, {here is where I would want to include some pictures of early OAR powered ships, Pole powered ships, and along with Sail powered ships, so if any of you have some to share, please do so now} it was discovered that movement afloat held many advantages over movement afoot. {Here should go a couple of pictures (drawings and/or paintings) of people in ancient times, preferably ones showing folks lounging about on a small watercraft (preferably pole or oar driven), as opposed to ones that show folks toiling along on foot} However, it soon became clear that movement afloat had its own perils {and here should be some pics that show ancient ships ‘on the rocks’, and ‘floundering in the waves’, and these could really be any wooden ships, regardless of Poles/Oar/Sail}, and so some things had to be done to reduce the dangers encountered, {here should be showing things like beaching ships, and porting ships around river obstacles (such as rock filled rapids, waterfalls), etc..} and then…

Basically, what I am looking to do is get as good an OP as possible, one that has all the needed basic info and provides the framework for all the posts that will follow it in the thread. In addition to the actual contents, I am actively seeking advice on where to include the credit to folks that helped, i.e.; in the OP, in the specific posts that deal with the contributions they made, what? I’m thinking the OP, but that may or may not be the best way to go about it, what does everyone else think?

I guess at this point, I probably should ask a couple of questions.

#1 How (or perhaps, where) do I start a thread that only I can post in? Not for the ego trip, but to avoid clutter, so as to provide ‘Just the facts’ {Dragnet reference, for those that didn’t get it}

#2 How long do I have, from making the OP, to be able to go back and edit in links to specific threads, created later, that deserve one?

For instance, there will definitely be a thread or two about shipyards (even if I have to start them myself – shudders), and those threads will be much more focused, and greatly more informative about, the shipyards discussed. So keeping in mind Saphroneth’s logistics thread, create a mental image of links within it that lead readers to threads dedicated to, and inspired by, more in depth coverage of the various points he brings up and discusses. Now mentally put all such links into the specific posts they elaborate and expound upon, and picture the OP having a list of links to the specific posts in the thread, where each topic is covered.

That is what I am shooting for here, with the Maritime Terminology thread, and this discussion thread is the forge with which to hammer out all the details for the posts in that thread.

Ok, so I have much more that I want to post, but I am worried that I may not post anything if I keep trying to do more and more on this one post, and my computer may be overdue for its next crash.
 
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Ok, I am getting ready to start putting the OP together for the other thread, and looking for some clarifications.

Anchorages, these may be nowhere near land (at least not the kind that are useful for port facilities), but Harbors are in/near coastal waters, and may (or may not) be near good port locations?

Ports, (and what they must have in terms of cargo handling facilities, as well as infrastructure to facilitate the movements of cargo to and from the ports to the places it needs to be) may or may not include much in the way of harbors, and may or may not be located on/near coasts? So ports in rivers, perhaps hundreds of miles inland, should be made examples of in this section, as a counterpoint to more traditional views of ports = coastal in nature.

Anyone willing to do mini threads on just a single port, as a 'history of' kind of thing, so that on the post that coverers ports, a quick link (to include a brief description) can be added?

I want at least the OP done by the end of this month, and hopefully the MT thread will not be more than 20 or so posts in total length.

I am leaning towards covering the Geographical aspects first, then the man made improvements to these, before taking the plunge and starting to cover the infrastructural aspects, as they will quickly outstrip in sheer contents size all the posts on the Geographical aspects.
 
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