“Ballast?” he said, then spelled it out on his slate when the other man looked baffled at barrus.
“Bundles of copper pipe right now,” Feldman replied. “Sometimes ingots or bars of various metals. Usually I sell it at the other end of the voyage and replace it with worked rock or salvage brick for the run home. Metal stock is cheaper in Montival than anywhere my firm trades, and you can always sell brick or ashlar here for a little something. The metal kills some things that try to grow in the bilgewater, too.”
Ishikawa grunted thoughtfully and bent to look at the scantlings as they came back up into the main cargo hold, prodding occasionally with his tanto to check the soundness of the wood. The framing was again a mixture of the familiar and the strange; and they used a thick and apparently waterproof plywood extensively, which intrigued him—it gave much larger sections than ordinary planks and presumably was stronger, though he would worry slightly about the laminations in conditions at sea, depending on what they were using for glue.
Still, it looked as if it was holding up well, and the structural planking that strengthened the decks was magnificent—straight dense-grained baulks eighty feet long and eight inches through with scarcely a knot, beveled together at the edges and bolted securely to the beams and stringers. That turned the decks into elements in a hollow box girder of enormous natural strength. The construction and fastenings were to a very high standard too, as good as the Imperial Navy’s shipyard on Sado-ga-shima. Much better than the wrecked or captured jinnikukaburi vessels he’d examined, which were fragile when they weren’t over-heavy. The storage lockers held abundant spare sailcloth and rope, along with pitch and other naval stores.
He worked his way methodically back to the main deck, which was flush for about two-thirds of its length from the bowsprit, a lovely clean curve like a sword. Then it rose to a low poop-deck that held the binnacle and wheels.
The captain’s cabin—which would be for the Heika and the other women of rank—was at the stern, with officer’s cubicles on either side of a corridor running beneath the poop. He checked what would be the Heika’s quarters—quite adequate and already being modified for more bunks—and the navigation gear, which was good and almost exactly the same as the equipment he’d trained on. There weren’t many different ways to make a sextant and chronometer and binnacle-mounted compass, and as far as he could tell the charts were good, based on pre-Change surveys but updated recently. This Feldman probably had a lot more experience with deep-sea navigation by sun and stars than he did, though he was sure his inshore skills were at least equal given that his experience was mostly of that sort.
“You design ship?” he said, as they climbed back to the deck; he thought so, from some of the other man’s replies to his questions. “You build?”
“I designed some of the details and oversaw construction in the yard we have a share in, but this is similar to most of our . . . my family’s . . . ships. My grandfather got the wreck of a big schooner that came here right after the Change, from San Francisco—bunch of refugees brought her in, an old vessel built about a century before the Change and used as a museum ship, called the Thayer. The town council let them settle because they figured anyone who could do that was worth their keep. My grandfather got the hulk for next to nothing because nobody thought she was good for anything but burning for the nails.”
“Wooden ship still froat so rong, one hundred year?” Ishikawa asked skeptically.
“She’d been heavily restored about halfway through that, but even so . . . not seaworthy anymore, not really, not even at the beginning of the trip; it was a miracle she made it this far. She’d hogged badly, and there was dry-rot above the waterline, right in the ribs and hanging knees. It would have come apart like wet paper if they’d hit really bad weather. Sweet hull lines, though, a design originally meant for this very coast. We took her draught inch by inch, recorded everything as we dismantled her for the metal and fittings, and we’ve never found anything better for our line of work. There are ships three times as large and much deeper in the keel on regular runs now, but we go where the risk and the profit are.”
Ishikawa nodded. Risk meant battle, among other things. “Catapults?” he said.
One merit of speaking the language badly was that nobody would expect him to know how to be really polite in it, which he’d realized was another language all on its own when he grasped that people weren’t trying to be rude to him. In a way it was like being drunk; everyone automatically made allowances for things that wouldn’t normally be tolerated.
“Right, here’s the armament.”
Eight complex machines crouched on the deck on either side, their snouts pointing at flaps that could be opened in the bulwark.
“We mount ’em topside because they’d take too much cargo space if a clear fighting-deck was left below.”
“Why sixteen?”
“That’s as much weight as we dare put so high above the keel, you see.”
“Hai, unbarance if more.”
Feldman peeled back the tarpaulin that covered the one he indicated, and Ishikawa bent over to peer at the mechanisms. A heady, familiar smell of well-lubricated steel and brass and a stranger one of something slightly like peanut oil greeted him.
The differences of detail were greater here—unlike wind and water or time and stars, there were more workable solutions to this class of problem—but the basics were similar. Springs of salvaged steel from railroad car suspensions were compressed when carefully curved throwing arms were drawn back, and snapped forward to pull the cross-cable that launched the projectile resting in a trough. The main frame was secured to a plate in turn bolted to the beams and carlins of the deck, with elevation and traversing screws moved by handwheels.
He rough-measured the components with outstretched thumb and little finger, since his were a convenient half-shaku long more or less, and decided they were near optimum in their proportions. Those had to be carefully calculated to transmit the maximum possible amount of the energy stored in the springs.
These weapons could be quickly rerigged to throw either eight-pound steel balls or four-foot javelin-arrows. Some of those had sickle heads to cut rigging or bisect anyone unlucky, and some of the roundshot were of glass filled with incendiary compounds and wrapped in cord that could be soaked in the stuff and set alight just before they were shot.
He traced tubing with his eyes, and grunted with delight—the recoil force was transmitted through cylinders of its own and used to partially recock the loading system, salvaging energy and speeding up the process.
Really very clever.
The Imperial Navy had something similar, but that was much easier with the purely mechanical cocking system his service used. In the bows and right aft at the curved stern of the poop deck were the chasers, single rather larger catapults running on steel tracks set into the decks, so that they could be rapidly traversed to cover a cone before or after the ship. Those had sloping steel shields built on either side of the throwing-trough to protect the crew while they reloaded and aimed.
“Cocking mechanism is . . . pump liquid . . . hydrauric?” he said.
“So desu,” Feldman said, surprising him a little. “Long-stroke hydraulic bottle jacks from Donaldson Foundry & Machine in Corvallis, twenty-five-ton rating on the broadside pieces and thirty-five for the chasers in bow and stern. Those rocking-pump levers unfold and are clamped behind the piece for action. Forty-five seconds to reload with two hands on the pump, twenty-eight with four. Range is about fifteen hundred yards at maximum elevation with bolt ammunition, a bit more if you shoot on the uproll. More effective and accurate the closer you get, of course.”
Ishikawa grunted again—that was a slightly better rate of fire than the ones he’d used; on the other hand, his threw heavier shot farther and he would bet that they took less maintenance and were more reliable than these.
Then he looked up. The long booms on the masts looked as if it was mainly a fore-and-aft gaff rig, but t
here were spars for square sails on the main and foremast.
“Sail plan?”
“There we did make changes. It’s a topsail schooner rig now; gaff mainsails on all three masts, square topsails on the main and fore, jib topsail on the mizzen. That’s a compromise, but everything’s tradeoffs, right?”
“Hai,” Ishikawa said, when they’d gone back and forth to make sure that tradeoff meant toredoofu. “Honto ni,” he added for emphasis. “Definitely truth. Anything better one way, not so good the other. Nothing ichiban all way.”
This rig would sacrifice a little speed with the wind abaft the beam for more when you were working into the wind plus ability to point closer, and a very little less on a reach for considerably more with a following wind. For a ship that might have to either chase or run in any conceivable wind conditions, not just get from Point A to Point B regularly at least cost and time, it was a very sensible compromise.
Hoses were rigged to the dock. Rumbles came from below as the liquid gushed through them, filling the coated steel tanks below with fresh water.
“Crew?” he said.
With the work of loading going on so fast it was impossible to tell exactly who were part of the ship’s complement and which were dockside workers helping out or shore-based carpenters making last-minute alterations. Neither type wore uniforms, just rough shapeless patched working clothes differing only in detail from their Japanese equivalents.
“You can handle her with as few as ten if you’re not in a hurry—schooners are economical that way.”
Ishikawa shrugged agreement. Gaff-rigged fore-and-aft sails like those on the lower parts of the Tarshish Queen’s three masts could be raised, lowered and reefed from on deck, with most of the muscle-work done by winches, and they had them. For maximum speed the square topsails on the main and fore would need hands to go up the ratlines and out the spars. Plus there was little point in having catapults without crews.
“For foreign work . . . forty-five at least. That allows eight-hour watches with one on and two off in good weather, plenty of reserve for storms, and enough to help with loading and unloading if there aren’t good harbors. And to fight, of course.”
“Prentry vorunteers?” he asked.
The ones who definitely were sailors looked capable and they didn’t have to be driven to work. They also looked as if they knew what they were doing. At first glance half seemed to be women, but when he counted it was more like one in three or four. He would have thought mixed crews could cause disciplinary problems, especially on long voyages, but presumably the locals knew their business.
I will have to tell General Egawa to caution his men about making assumptions; we want no problems there.
Women in Japan also did things now that hadn’t been customary in the old days—the really old days, not the otherworldly-strange period between Meiji and the Change—because there simply wasn’t any alternative. They helped crew family fishing boats, for instance, if usually not on bigger craft. And ladies of the upper classes did much of the Empire’s routine administrative work.
Feldman nodded. “There are plenty who’ll ship out to do one watch on and two off with a strong chance of a fight, rather than one on and one off, and there’s no run without some chance of pirates anyway, even along the coast. And my crew works for a share in the voyage as well as a wage. That can double or triple straight pay rates, if we’re lucky. I get my pick; no first-voyage runaways fresh from the farm for the Tarshish Queen. First-rate hands prefer to work with their own kind, too, not spend half their time cuffing and shoving and cursing at plowboys. I could ship half again the number I do without taking anyone I wouldn’t want.”
“Why not more hands?” Ishikawa asked.
“I’m not a government—I can’t pay wages out of taxes.”
“Tradeoff again.”
“Yes. Speaking of which, just exactly how many . . . soldiers . . . am I supposed to pick up? The . . . Sir Guilliame said that wasn’t certain yet, just that there would be a fair number.”
Ishikawa’s face remained impassive. His heart suddenly ached for the crew he’d lost. And which he’d recruited, trained, led and fought beside—fisherman’s sons, mostly. He’d known every one of them, their names and natures and families. He took a deep breath and went on stolidly:
“I have eight sailor and self. Besides that, Heika . . . Her Majesty . . . blings . . . brings thirty-two samurai Imperial Guard, herself, General Egawa, and party of Crown Princess—same number. Pick up twenty-eight more place you know. And six horses.”
He thought Feldman winced slightly, and he sympathized; carrying large animals on a ship was nothing but trouble, and the farther you had to go the worse it was. He’d done it himself, mainly bringing breeding stock to new settlements or remounts to garrisons, and the memory was not a fond one. Pigs were bad enough, but oxen and horses . . . The man nodded stolidly and replied:
“For a voyage of this length, quite doable. The winds are from the northwest consistently this time of year, and the longshore current runs south most of the way.”
“That herp . . . that will help, hai,” Ishikawa said. “If not storm.”
Feldman laughed. “Oh, storms, of course. It’s summer, but . . .”
Ishikawa had been grave, as was fitting. For a moment they shared a sailor’s smile at the vagaries of the weather kami.
The merchant slapped the mizzenmast they stood beside. “We’ve weathered some storms together, this old girl and I.”
Old? he thought, and remembered the smell of the bilges. He asked: “When built?”
“She’s six years old this spring.”
Ishikawa thought for a moment, then bowed. “This is a fine ship, Feldman-san. Must see sailing, but still . . . fine ship. I will inform the Jotei.”
And Egawa, he thought.
Trusting the Empress to a foreign ship, and a foreign merchantman with a civilian crew at that, had understandably put the general on edge. The voyage here had been bad enough, and that was with an Imperial Navy vessel and picked professional crew. Under an impassive face, the commander of the Imperial Guard was as jumpy as a cat on a salvage-metal roof in summertime.
Feldman returned the gesture, rather clumsily. Ishikawa didn’t think the Montivallans were any better shipwrights than his people, but they had access to some materials that would give them an advantage. Some other things they did differently, though that mostly seemed simply different, not substantially better or worse, like the catapults. They definitely had more in the way of ships even though they were mostly concerned with the land and the interior of this huge continent. Newport alone had as many slipways as the Imperial Navy base at Ryotsu on Sado-ga-shima, and from what he understood there were bigger ports and shipbuilding yards.
“We’re building another to the same draught and plan right now; she’s just about ready to have her sticks mounted and standing rigging put up.”
Feldman pointed to a hull in the fitting-out basin a mile away, under the big A-frame cranes that would slide the masts in.
“From what I’m given to understand, if she’s ready when we get back, a certain sovereign-to-be plans to buy her and transfer her to another sovereign we both know so she can get home when she wants to go. By then you should be familiar with her elder sister here, Ishikawa-san, and ready to take command and sail her.”
Ishikawa came to keenest attention, and felt a cold chill run through his belly. To have a ship again!
“Ichiban,” he said softly. “Sank . . . thank you very much, Feldman-san.”
“I’m not the one giving you the ship, Captain Ishikawa,” Feldman said, chuckling. “My family will be getting her full price, enough to replace her and make up the loss of a season’s trade. But I would like to think she’s in good hands.”
Ishikawa didn’t say aloud that he felt like a cripple without a deck of his own to command, but he thought that the merchant understood it.
“We load tonight,” Ishikawa said instead. “Leave
morning tide.”
• • •
Droyn and Sir Aleaume settled their contingent in to the ship, more than a score of men-at-arms and spearmen and crossbowmen, all in plain civil garb now. Their equipment was bundled or bagged, the weapons in long canvas sacks, the half-armor for each man wrapped in padding and stuffed into big duffels, even the unmistakable four-foot teardrop shapes of the shields disguised by stacking them pointing in alternate directions and tying them up in sailcloth. The troops were visibly unhappy without their weapons to hand; it would be as bad as walking down the street in your drawers for them.
Órlaith stood at the gangplank and greeted each one by name, a brief word and a nod. When they were all by their gear and sleeping bags below, she stood and caught their eyes. The long low space of the hold was like a shadowed cave, only the glimmer of lights off the water coming through the open portholes. The lashed-down, tarpaulin-covered supplies rose like hillocks behind them, and the light stalls of canvas-covered wicker for the horses they’d pick up later. The air had the inevitable smells of troops in transit, slightly rancid canola oil on leather and metal, old sweat soaked into armor-padding so that it never quite came out, as well as the brackish water and tar and spoiled fish of a working port.
“You were with me when my father the High King fell,” she said, not abruptly but without prologue.
Silence. That had been when he fell . . . and these men hadn’t saved him. They’d won the brief savage battle handily and he’d actually been murdered by a prisoner, but many would still be smarting from the greater failure, and savagely determined to redeem their names.
Even if it wasn’t their fault. Hearts have reasons that heads know not. I feel the same way and I know there’s nothing I could have done.
The Golden Princess: A Novel of the Change (Change Series) Page 41