Chapter 6 August 405 AD Mouth of Roman River - Gun Ship (Patreon)

            Samaki looked at the six bronze gunships and thirty wooden gunships under his command. He smiled as they were the tools he would use to ascend to admiral. Currently, he was a commander, leading a small fleet of trimarans that were given the designation of gunships. The ships had a relatively small boiler bolted onto their mast with a large piece of iron. To make sure the mast didn’t burn from the heat of the boiler, they had copper wire going from the iron, fastening down the mast into a tub of water placed there to cool the copper. Samaki had no idea how they knew that copper would move heat, but he was grateful since it kept the mast from burning while keeping the boiler close to his snipers, who were on top of the sail in their nests. The boiler, with this configuration, could feed steam to three steam rifles, and the rifles’ projectiles could pierce wood and bronze hulls.

            Commander Samaki’s little fleet was making their way down the Roman River. Their job was to break the blockade. The Romans had wisely blockaded the mouth of the Roman River, as Paulsland had a significant amount of industrialization on the river. Their blockade was costing the seventy families thousands of golden coins a day in lost revenue. Even if the factories switched to martial materials, and they had, they couldn’t get it out due to the blockade on the river mouth.

            With that said, Samaki’s little fleet wasn’t attacking the blockade alone. It had taken nearly a year, but hundreds of trimarans and their mother ships were finally in position to strike the Roman fleet. It took that long to train the sailors for the ships in Madagascar and then send them around the continent to fight the Roman fleet at the mouth of the Roman River. If this battle went well, then nearly a hundred of those ships will get the same upgrade as Samaki’s fleet, and then they will head to the Pillars of Hercules to break the fleet blocking entrance into the Mediterranean before heading to Rome and making peace.

            The reality was that the Seventy families wanted peace. This war had already cost them a lot more than they thought it would, and every commander and politician in Paulsland was well aware of Jinka’s betrayal. The Seventy families needed peace with Rome and Kush, so they could deal with the real problem, Jinka. Furthermore, they needed peace with Rome so that they could open trade back up on their west coast. Not just trade with Rome but the Merchant Guild and the land they were from. It burned the seventy families' greedy hearts that they were missing trade opportunities because of this war. In fact, the seventy families were going to send a delegation northwest as soon as this blockade was defeated.

            He smiled as he looked north to the town that once belonged to the Romans. It took a while for Paulsland forces to go through the jungle to reach it, but it was now Paulsland territory and would soon just be considered part of Magharibi. Once Paulsland had peace, they would develop both sides of the river and make a magnificent port here, and trade between Rome, the Merchant guild, and whoever else Paulsland could find would flourish. Samaki would get a small percentage of the profit because Samaki had set up a marriage between his youngest daughter and one of Malkia’s grandsons. Part of the wedding gift was a small portion of the harbor that they were setting up. To make things even better, Malkia was very insistent that her boys only had one wife. She felt that helped them focus on business, instead of scraping together stocks through a multitude of marriages. Thanks to this Samaki would have significant influence on the Paulson family.

            Granted, Samaki didn’t yet have the clout for his daughter to marry into the Paulson family, but after this battle, assuming he won, he would become an admiral, and by the time he defeated Rome, he would be the Grand Admiral of Paulsland.

            As his ships headed toward the mouth of the river, he could not help but notice that the Roman ships were keeping their distance. Thanks to the flaming ballista’s massive range, the Roman trebuchets could not stay too close. Even if the ballista had poor accuracy, their bolts were much cheaper than a trimaran, and they could fire them all day and night if the fleet came too close to shore.

            While Samaki’s thirty-six ships were coming out of the mouth of the river, nearly five hundred ships from Madagascar were coming up from the south. There would be more, except it took too much time to train sailors, especially the type with the nerve to use liquid fire at sea while your enemy was also using liquid fire. The absolute most difficult thing about training sailors was training the nerves needed to fight in a sea of flames. That said, the new rifles were expected to change that.

            The Romans still had seven hundred wooden trimarans and fifty bronze ones in this fleet, so they outnumbered the Paulsland ships. Their main advantage was that they had battle-tested Roman sailors, and so as the Romans saw the two fleets, one from the south and one from the east, they diverted ten bronze and seventy wooden trimarans to deal with Samaki’s little fleet, while the rest of their fleet continued forward to fight the main Madagascar fleet.

            Samaki welcomed this. His enemies had almost a two-to-one advantage on him, and usually, that meant his fleet would be completely destroyed and his bronze ships captured, with only half losses to the Roman ships, but this would allow him to get a great feel for his new weapons.

            When the Roman ships were two miles from Magharibi, the city began firing flaming ballista bolts at them, although all of them missed by a wide margin. The Roman ships were doing what they always did when a Paulsland ship tried to break through the blockade. They sailed hard for the ship, ignoring the flaming bolts from the city. Occasionally one of their ships got hit, and a few times, their ships even sank, but it was more important to continue the blockade than to worry about the loss of a ship here or there.

             Samaki had all his ships pointed straight at the small enemy fleet that was coming for him. He estimated that he would meet the Roman ships about a mile out at sea. His steam rifles had a useful range of about a thousand yards. The bullets they fired had iron cores with lead around them, and they were designed to go through bronze, much less wooden, hulls. Despite that, the steam guns were still experimental and rare, so Samaki’s ships still had two ballistae on them. The ballista had a range of three hundred yards, though. Furthermore, like every modern warship, every ship in the fleet had pumps for liquid fire. The upcoming battles would determine the weapons layout of future trimarans.

            And so, the two fleets closed in on each other, but Commander Samaki ordered his men to hold fire until they were just five hundred yards away. The reason was that he didn’t want the enemy fleet to be able to run away once they started taking fire from his ships.

            As they drew closer, the snipers on the top of the sails began zeroing in on their targets. Each ship had three snipers, and each sniper had different targets. One was to aim exclusively for the enemy ships, trying to put holes in it and make it take on water. The next was to aim for barrels of coal oil, which were routinely put on the deck of trimarans to make changing out their pumps easy. The third was to shoot at the ship's officers and sailors, but not the weapons masters. Anyone in charge of the pumps or flaming ballista may ignite the fumes from the coal oil, assuming the second sniper hit the coal oil barrels on board.

            As soon as the trimarans hit the five hundred yard mark, the snipers went to work. They had thirty-six ships versus the eighty Roman ships. Commander Samaki had enough snipers to shoot at each of the Roman trimarans, but sixty of the men focused on the ten bronze trimarans first. In part because the wooden trimarans were behind them in formation, but also because those ships were seen as flame resistant. It was not uncommon for a bronze trimaran to survive a battle where all of its men were burned to death by the enemy. Bronze trimarans go into battle with extra crew in their hold, who are to take over the coal oil pumps in case the crew on deck all die. Taking out the bronze ships is mandatory as far as Samaki is concerned.

            With that in mind, the snipers went to work. The snipers, whose only job was to hit the ship, had the easiest job. They began poking holes in the bronze as the iron core of their bullets tore through the outer hull of the bronze ships, albeit after they passed through the ship’s hold they did not have the power to continue through the bottom hull of the ship. Instead, they ricochet inside the hold of the bronze ship, causing injuries and death for everyone with the misfortune to be inside.

            The snipers whose job was to hit the barrels of coal oil on deck, faced a much harder job, as the waves affecting their ship and the enemies meant that they missed often. That said, when they hit, it certainly caused an immediate reaction on the ship as everyone in the crew wanted to stop their liquid fire from spreading all over their decks before it ignited. When the iron cores of the bullets struck iron, whether in nails, weapons, or various tools on board, they created sparks, and since sailing ships, particularly war ships, had iron implements scattered around small fires soon spouted on the Roman ships due to the leaking coal oil and the sparks.

            The third snipers had the hardest job of all. They had to hit moving targets on a moving deck while their ship was moving in the waves. Although they had the hardest job, every time they hit someone, everyone on deck just stopped and looked to the men who now had a gaping hole in them. Albeit most of the time they missed and just added more holes into the deck of the ship of the Roman they missed.

            By the time the two fleets were four hundred yards away, the Roman fleet was in confusion. Half of their ships had leaks, twelve of thier ships had small fires on decks, and men were mysteriously dying. Although the ship's crew had heard rumors of a new Paulsland weapon, most of the sailors were superstitious and assumed some sort of spirits were attacking them.

            By the time the ships were in range of the ballista, the Romans were in complete confusion, and the Paulsland ships were able to fire their ballista without the Romans returning fire. The Romans were so confused that half of their ships had not even loaded their ballista with fire bolts. That said, the snipers who had a job of shooting the barrels with coal oil had done a masterful job, and so there were a lot of coal oil fumes around many of the ships, and as soon as the flame ballistae bolts caused sparks nearby eight of the Romans ships became a massive fireball.

            That caused the Roman weapon masters to wake up and begin firing on the Paulsland ships, but by then, the Paulsland ships got off two more shots with their ballista, and three more Roman ships became massive fireballs due to all the coal oil leaking on their decks.

            The bigger problem for the Romans was the reality that the closer they came to Commander Samaki’s ships, the better his snipers became. At this point, some of his snipers had shot so many holes into the top hulls of the bronze ships that the top of the ships had gapping holes in them, exposing the hold, and the bottom hull of the ship. Although the bullets couldn’t make it through both hulls of a bronze ship, with the top hull having gaping holes from the bullets the snipers were starting to make holes in the bottom hull, making water gush in. By the time they were two hundred yards away, the Roman’s bronze trimarans were all sinking, and the wooden trimarans were ordered to retreat, but it was too late. Before any of them were five hundred yards away, each of them had so many holes in their ship that they were either dead in the water or sinking.

            This battle did not go unnoticed by the main Roman fleet. A full retreat was commanded by the main fleet, and so their ships did not do battle with the ships from Madagascar. That was just fine as far as Commander Samaki was concerned. They were going to refit as many ships as possible with the new rifles made by many of the seventy families and head to the Pillars of Hercules. After Samaki’s dominating victory he would be leading them as an admiral.

            The era of gun ships had arrived, and every nation on earth had a lot to learn if they wanted their nation to survive.


Authors note-Trimarans are about to be very outdated. Expect a lot of changes in ships over the course of part 2. We still have to go from sail to steam, from coal as a fuel to oil, maybe even from steam ship to internal combustion ship. Also note that basiclly all the fighting that will be done in this book will change a lot as guns are introduced, better transportation is introduced, and technology evolves.

I am not sure if I will introduce torpedoes in part two or not, that said once they are introduced trimarans will likely make a comback as a destroyer, at least for a couple of navies, as destroyers main jobs were protecting bigger ships from torpedoes. Depends, as we are a long way from that.