This does feel a tad rich coming from Isambard Kingdom Brunel of Great Eastern/7ft-broad-gauge fame.Brunel laughed. “You didn’t really think we’d be content to copy a French design from eighteen years ago, did you? Maybe under Gray, but with His Cleverness in the PM’s chair? Come aboard, gentlemen. Let me show you.”
“Captain Farquhar? Is that you?”
Farquhar and Douglas turned. A thirtyish man in a wide-lapelled black coat was striding up to them, a fiftyish man struggling to keep up.
“Commander Farquhar. I am not yet on board. And you, sir?”
“Isambard Kingdom Brunel, very much at your service, and this is John Patch of Nova Scotia, likewise.” John Patch nodded. “I’ve been supervising the preparation of this fleet. In particular, Mr. Patch and I have been focusing on the construction of your own vessel. Let me show you gentlemen to it.”
They walked past the bomb-ships being made ready—Meteor, Sulphur, Erebus, Terror, and beyond them the razeed giant that had once been HMS Hood and was now HMS Typhon, and the almost-as-large Campe. The ships were studded with little hooks for the battle swathes. As it happened, the crews were practicing the lowering, soaking, and raising of those swathes, so the names on the sterns were sometimes obscured, but Douglas had learned them last week.
“Pity about Fury and Hecla,” said Brunel. “I had them refitted for an Arctic expedition a couple of years ago, but they were lost. But I think we have sufficient to give the Yankees pause. And have you seen the rocket-ships?” He gestured off in the direction of the Isle of Wight. “Basilisk. Hailfire. Tambora. All equipped with Woolwich’s new rockets, and special launching-chambers to keep the rigging from getting scorched. Duncannon wanted everything to be ready to attack on July 4, weather permitting. Now even I cannot work miracles, but soon—within the week—you will be ready to launch. And…” They were now coming past the Campe. Brunel pointed in the much smaller ship in that vessel’s shadow.
“Behold HMS Telchine,” he said. “Still a bit of an experiment, but I hope she’ll prove the first of many more.”
Farquhar pointed at something sticking up out of the hull between the mainmast and mizzenmast—something Douglas suddenly recognized as a steampipe. “I see the Navy has built a steam-frigate.” High time, thought Douglas. France, Italy, and Denmark have steam warships older than some of the boys serving on them. “But how did you fit those carronades amidships?”
Brunel laughed. “You didn’t really think we’d be content to copy a French design from eighteen years ago, did you? Maybe under Gray, but with His Cleverness in the PM’s chair? Come aboard, gentlemen. Let me show you.”
Once on board—“Careful not to touch that pipe when the engine is running, it does get hot”—Brunel led them to the stern and gestured over the side. Coppered contrivances—certainly not guns—were barely visible on either side of the keel, pointing to the rear. They were something like metal helixes, something like the blades of a windmill.
“Screws,” said Brunel.
“A boat-builder in Hannover named Ressel[2] has been experimenting with these for years, on riverboats,” added Patch. “Mr. Smith[3] and I have been doing our own experiments, and we’ve taken his work a little further. I must confess, we still haven’t found the best possible design—there are many possible lengths and conformations. Herr Ressel himself is still at it.”
“But they should still turn a ton of coal into more speed than paddle-wheels would, and they’re a lot harder to damage down there,” said Brunel. “And as you saw, they save a lot of room amidships for more guns.”
There was a certain institutional lag there, mostly because about the time France started experimenting with paddle frigates the Royal Navy had (a) a track record of success, and (b) a large, expensive fleet to maintain already. When they finally did decide to start work on steam warships (some time after Isola di Cenere) there was some delay precisely because they wanted to come up with a better design first, something that didn't take up so much space amidships… and then the Hiemal Period hit and budgets got tight. But now they have a better design, and it's everybody else who has to play catch-up, so from the Navy's point of view this rather sluggish process has apparently been vindicated.Shiny. It had always seemed to me one of the stranger aspects of this TL (which I've been seriously enjoying for years) that the Royal Navy, which spent the entire 19th century being at worst second with any new invention that might help them take, sink, burn or destroy the Queen's enemies, had sat on its hands for 20 years whilst the French, Italians and Americans started the steam age without them. They'd certainly be a fleet of samples, because none of the solutions to building a paddle warship work, but I couldn't really see them not bothering at all - even OTL they had ocean-going steam sloops with few but very heavy guns by 1831. Monitors were a bit of an exception but that was because monitors and North Atlantic weather really don't mix.
South America is mostly peaceful… except for Brazil, which is anything but. More detail later. The resurgence in the transatlantic slave trade at this particular moment has given Dutch Suriname a chance to import some slaves they're going to wish they'd left in Africa.Good to see the British won't just be playing catch up with the continent. With Spain crumbling at the edges again we need something to balance the power of Bonapartist France and United Italy.
Nit going well for Carlos over any sea is it these days? How's South America these days by the way? We have head about issues in Central America, New Spain, and the Caribbean but that big ol' continent seems quiet lately doesn't it?
Britain's much too busy right now.Looks like the Spaniards will be hard pressed to control the Philippines. I wonder if Britain will intervene.
I guess it doesn't hurt to drop the name early. The President Pro Tempore is currently Thomas L. Winthrop (DR-Mass.), mostly on account of seniority.Do we know who is president pro tempore of the US senate ITTL?
If impeachment is successful we have a new president then...I guess it doesn't hurt to drop the name early. The President Pro Tempore is currently Thomas L. Winthrop.
Britain's much too busy right now.
If impeachment is successful we have a new president then...
would not surprise.I still think it will come to resignation with Clay brokering some deal.
I still think it will come to resignation with Clay brokering some deal.
You know, if it goes the resignation route, this is going to have some major Nixon parallels: I'm imagining Daniel Webster thundering "what did the President know, and when did he know it!?"
Clay sabotaging Webster....Nah, Webster is a DRP; any deal Clay makes would likely have him onboard even with clenched teeth.
We know Gran Colombia survives to the present, actually.I'd like to make a comment on the big picture based on hints in the previous updates.
So Aristism is an ideology which we know the gist of by this point, a rationalization for ultrareactionary thought promoted by the aristocracy in areas where they haven't been supplanted by the bourgeois.
Elmarism we are still fuzzy on. But it generally seems like future liberals tolerate Elmarism more than Aristism. Since we know Aristism is centered in the Viceroyalty of Peru, we can assume Peru modernized and expanded more over time. I think they likely consume at least Paraguay and Colombia at some point and maybe all of Patagonia.
Really? When it is mentioned. On the other hand, surviving does not mean they are intact. Perhaps Peru will eat what is left of Ecuador.We know Gran Colombia survives to the present, actually.
https://www.alternatehistory.com/forum/threads/the-dead-skunk.194832/post-11962818 strongly implies (in my reading) that Gran Colombia is still around as of 1980 (as is the aristist Virreinato).Really? When it is mentioned. On the other hand, surviving does not mean they are intact. Perhaps Peru will eat what is left of Ecuador.
This is pretty close. Both ideologies will have their adherents all over the world, but Peru/Chile will be one of the places where Aristism rises.I'd like to make a comment on the big picture based on hints in the previous updates.
So Aristism is an ideology which we know the gist of by this point, a rationalization for ultrareactionary thought promoted by the aristocracy in areas where they haven't been supplanted by the bourgeois.
Elmarism we are still fuzzy on. But it generally seems like future liberals tolerate Elmarism more than Aristism. Since we know Aristism is centered in the Viceroyalty of Peru, we can assume Peru modernized and expanded more over time. I think they likely consume at least Paraguay and Colombia at some point and maybe all of Patagonia.