Excellent timeline - well done.
That leaves just Dresden?
Looking forward to your Troubridge Story
That leaves just Dresden?
Looking forward to your Troubridge Story
The Rainbow. A World War One on Canada's West Coast Timeline
- Thread starter YYJ
- Start date
A truly excellent tale, well written, thrilling, and worthy of being printed.
Farewell SMS Niagara.
Can't find anything about the SS Trevanian, but I'm assuming she likely played a similar role OTL as a collier for Royal Navy units in the Pacific.
Though the SMS Niagara is lost, by taking two key auxiliary warships with her, that may at least temporarily give SMS Dresden more time.
Can't find anything about the SS Trevanian, but I'm assuming she likely played a similar role OTL as a collier for Royal Navy units in the Pacific.
Though the SMS Niagara is lost, by taking two key auxiliary warships with her, that may at least temporarily give SMS Dresden more time.
A fitting end for the Germans in the Pacific, there was never really anywhere to run forever and that eventually played itself out. Can’t wait to see what you do in the future!
SS Trevanion
Here is a map of the search for SMS Dresden, which would unfold pretty much the same ITTL. The RN had 1 Battle cruiser, 2 Light Cruisers and 3 Armoured cruisers looking for Dresden. HMS Newcastle was off Chile as well, and the map mostly does not bother showing the AMCs. HMS Otranto and Macedonia were in theatre too, either could stand in for the loss of Orama. Dresden was on borrowed time, but at least managed to tie up all these RN assets. The biggest effect on the RN of TTL's Battle of The Galapagos Islands might be the loss of the coal on Trevanion.
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Trying but life always seems to get in the way haha, planning for a solid release for a chapter tonight and finally moving back to some semblance of a regular release.
It’s definitely interesting to think how the folklore of Canada would have changed after such an event, Stan Rogers singing about Vancouver on fire instead of oil fields and cod fish lmao. It’s very fitting for the Germans to go down fighting another armed merchant ship, I wonder if they’ll end up naming a ship after Nurnbergs captain later in history.
Driftless
Donor
I would think so, even carrying that into a modern German naval warship.
There would be some irony in naming a German warship after the Niagara too......
Thank you all for the kind words.
The Writing Process
I started writing this story with very little in mind. Having visited Fort Rodd Hill in Victoria since I was a kid, I always wondered, “What kind of situation could have led to Fort Rodd Hill firing its guns in anger?” I knew that Von Spee’s squadron was loose in the Pacific from the start of the war, and a little research told me that the Scharnhorst and Gniesenau were not in position to reach BC, nor where they likely to want to, but Nurnberg and Leipzig were within striking distance, and the local population of British Columbia was sure they were lurking just off shore from August to October 1914.
@RelativeGalaxy7 wrote this post, https://www.alternatehistory.com/fo...eipzig-alongside-a-potential-timeline.455880/ which got me started thinking about, then writing my own timeline. I think the post was already a couple of years old when I read it. I had no idea that he was already working on a very similar thing to me, and we coincidentally launched our first chapters a few days apart.
I had intended to write something much shorter, just about the battle itself, doing only the minimal amount to set the stage. But once I began reading about the real history, I found it so bizarre and entertaining that I had to include it. A Canadian province buying its own submarines? And effectively stealing them out from underneath their legal owners? And then the subs almost getting sunk by shore batteries on the first day of the war because no one was told. A very junior officer being left in charge of wartime defense of the whole West Coast, who then had a nervous breakdown?
The single simple POD was Nürnberg and Leipzig being ordered to British Columbia, and to meet with the German Trade Commissioner in Barclay Sound. The Trade Commissioner had lined up two German-Canadian coastal pilots who were willing to do their bit for the Fatherland, but this was not revealed until much later when they met Nürnberg.
The events very much unfolded as I wrote, and as I researched. I did not have a story outline, just an OTL bullet list of dates when the cavalry, in the form of Izumo and Newcastle, would arrive and make the coast inhospitable to the Germans. My idea of the scope of the German attack grew as I wrote. I was originally scoffing at the paranoia of the Canadian politicians and civilian population, fearing that the Germans would attack small ports on the Inside Passage, or in Georgia Strait, but the more I read, the more I realized: who will stop them? So Von Schönberg gives a number of speeches about how they must take advantage of this historical moment.
I have read an illuminating article on the scale of plausibility in Alternate History, which says that the most realistic writing follows logically from the POD, and does not attempt to steer the plot towards a particular outcome. I have tried to be true to that ethic, and most of the events of the story arose from the previous events. However, I did add some plot elements to solve timing problems. Following events at Anyox, Nürnberg ran aground, and the Brave Boys got treed by a grizzly in order to have the message from the Boys arrive just in time. I have a map of both their routes hour by hour, including the tides, and I agonized over how to make the timing work until I found that solution. Likewise, the Saxonia (a real OTL German freighter hiding in Seattle at the time) was evoked to slow the Rainbow down just a bit so the epic battle would happen off Esquimalt, rather than off Point Roberts.
In the first chapter where Rainbow appears the ship was involved in the Komagata Maru incident, still seen as a low water mark for Canadian anti-Asian immigrant racism. So race became one of the themes running through the story right away, and remained so.
Other events got added from reader suggestions. I was pestered in the comments to add airplanes, and we had a number of discussions about the lack of female characters. I was looking for fresh points of view, so why not women in a plane? Some friends read the early part of the story and complained about a lack of heroism from the Canadians, which I thought was a good point, so the later part of the story has more desperate acts by the home team.
The chapter where the pilot Herman Mueller is slowly going crazy from cabin fever while waiting for Nürnberg to show up was written while I was in a 2 week quarantine.
I certainly know a lot more about the history and geography of the coast of my home province than I did before I started writing this.
The Writing Process
I started writing this story with very little in mind. Having visited Fort Rodd Hill in Victoria since I was a kid, I always wondered, “What kind of situation could have led to Fort Rodd Hill firing its guns in anger?” I knew that Von Spee’s squadron was loose in the Pacific from the start of the war, and a little research told me that the Scharnhorst and Gniesenau were not in position to reach BC, nor where they likely to want to, but Nurnberg and Leipzig were within striking distance, and the local population of British Columbia was sure they were lurking just off shore from August to October 1914.
@RelativeGalaxy7 wrote this post, https://www.alternatehistory.com/fo...eipzig-alongside-a-potential-timeline.455880/ which got me started thinking about, then writing my own timeline. I think the post was already a couple of years old when I read it. I had no idea that he was already working on a very similar thing to me, and we coincidentally launched our first chapters a few days apart.
I had intended to write something much shorter, just about the battle itself, doing only the minimal amount to set the stage. But once I began reading about the real history, I found it so bizarre and entertaining that I had to include it. A Canadian province buying its own submarines? And effectively stealing them out from underneath their legal owners? And then the subs almost getting sunk by shore batteries on the first day of the war because no one was told. A very junior officer being left in charge of wartime defense of the whole West Coast, who then had a nervous breakdown?
The single simple POD was Nürnberg and Leipzig being ordered to British Columbia, and to meet with the German Trade Commissioner in Barclay Sound. The Trade Commissioner had lined up two German-Canadian coastal pilots who were willing to do their bit for the Fatherland, but this was not revealed until much later when they met Nürnberg.
The events very much unfolded as I wrote, and as I researched. I did not have a story outline, just an OTL bullet list of dates when the cavalry, in the form of Izumo and Newcastle, would arrive and make the coast inhospitable to the Germans. My idea of the scope of the German attack grew as I wrote. I was originally scoffing at the paranoia of the Canadian politicians and civilian population, fearing that the Germans would attack small ports on the Inside Passage, or in Georgia Strait, but the more I read, the more I realized: who will stop them? So Von Schönberg gives a number of speeches about how they must take advantage of this historical moment.
I have read an illuminating article on the scale of plausibility in Alternate History, which says that the most realistic writing follows logically from the POD, and does not attempt to steer the plot towards a particular outcome. I have tried to be true to that ethic, and most of the events of the story arose from the previous events. However, I did add some plot elements to solve timing problems. Following events at Anyox, Nürnberg ran aground, and the Brave Boys got treed by a grizzly in order to have the message from the Boys arrive just in time. I have a map of both their routes hour by hour, including the tides, and I agonized over how to make the timing work until I found that solution. Likewise, the Saxonia (a real OTL German freighter hiding in Seattle at the time) was evoked to slow the Rainbow down just a bit so the epic battle would happen off Esquimalt, rather than off Point Roberts.
In the first chapter where Rainbow appears the ship was involved in the Komagata Maru incident, still seen as a low water mark for Canadian anti-Asian immigrant racism. So race became one of the themes running through the story right away, and remained so.
Other events got added from reader suggestions. I was pestered in the comments to add airplanes, and we had a number of discussions about the lack of female characters. I was looking for fresh points of view, so why not women in a plane? Some friends read the early part of the story and complained about a lack of heroism from the Canadians, which I thought was a good point, so the later part of the story has more desperate acts by the home team.
The chapter where the pilot Herman Mueller is slowly going crazy from cabin fever while waiting for Nürnberg to show up was written while I was in a 2 week quarantine.
I certainly know a lot more about the history and geography of the coast of my home province than I did before I started writing this.