Re: Steel and Gunpowder

Tower of London, Kingdom of England

The reality of the 16th century was dictated by those who controlled the waterways...

To command the oceans was to command the global flow of raw materials, silver, and wealth.

But as the acrid stench of burning pitch rolled across the dark waters of the River Thames, it was clear that the monarchs of Europe still viewed naval warfare as a feudal vanity project.

It was the summer of 1526. The congested docks of Deptford and Woolwich were engulfed in a massive inferno.

Standing atop the battlements of the White Tower was Lord Alistair Blackwood, Master of the Royal Ordnance.

As he watched the flames lick at the hulls of the anchored English carracks, his mind calculated the devastation.

The mainmast of a thousand-ton warship collapsed into the churning river...

The Kingdom of France had declared war.

King Francis I, seeking a victory to offset his continental defeats, had authorized a surprise naval assault.

The French fleet had bypassed the English Channel patrols and sailed directly into the Thames estuary, bombarding the ports of the English capital.

"My Lord Blackwood!" a voice shattered Blackwood’s calculations.

Bursting through the heavy doors was Thomas Howard, Duke of Norfolk and Lord High Admiral.

The Duke was fully armored in ceremonial plate mail, his face slick with sweat.

"The French have breached the estuary!" the Duke screamed. "They caught the fleet at anchor! King Henry demands an immediate counter-attack! We must launch the longboats, board their vessels, and engage them in honorable melee!"

Blackwood turned his gaze onto the Duke.

"Engage them in honorable melee?" Blackwood repeated with biting sarcasm. "You want to row hundreds of men in wooden longboats directly into the broadside cannons of French galleons?"

"It is the English way!" the Duke puffed out his chest. "Our men-at-arms are unmatched in close quarters!"

Blackwood let out a sigh, pinching the bridge of his nose.

King Henry VIII and his admirals failed to comprehend that warfare had transitioned into a science of ballistics and metallurgy...

"..." Blackwood sighed. "If you send the longboats, the French bombards will shred them into splinters before they cross the river."

"How dare you speak to the Lord High Admiral in such a tone! If we do not board them, the French will burn London to the ground!"

Blackwood marched toward the edge of the battlement, looking down into the courtyard of the Tower of London.

For the past six months, he had been restructuring the capital’s coastal defense grid...

He had not wasted the royal treasury on primitive halberds. Instead, he had secretly purchased advanced artillery from a heavily industrialized Kingdom on the continent.

"Captain Sterling!" Blackwood’s voice boomed over the wall.

Down in the courtyard, an artillery officer snapped to a salute.

Positioned on reinforced stone embankments sat twelve field cannons.

These were Alemannian cannons... forged in the blast furnaces of Konrad von Frundsberg, bored horizontally out of solid bronze to achieve a perfectly smooth barrel!

"Are the firing solutions calibrated?" Blackwood demanded.

"The trajectories are locked, My Lord!" Captain Sterling shouted back. "We are tracking the lead French galleys as they round the Deptford bend!"

Down on the waters, the silhouettes of the French fleet came into view.

The lead French galleon, unaware of the trap, began to pivot its broadside toward the Tower of London...

Blackwood pulled a pocket watch from his coat, tracking the seconds.

The French galleon shifted, exposing its flank.

"Fire." Blackwood commanded.

Captain Sterling dropped his arm.

An ear-shattering crack of powder ignited in twelve sealed pressure chambers.

A wall of white smoke expelled from the embankments.

Twelve solid iron spheres screamed across the surface of the Thames.

The solid iron rounds slammed into the hull, shattering the ship’s structural integrity, obliterating the gun crews, and detonating the internal powder magazines.

A fraction of a second later, the vessel’s own powder stores exploded!

A dome of fire swallowed the galleon... The pride of the French navy was reduced to a shower of burning splinters in less than three seconds.

The remaining French galleys, witnessing the instantaneous annihilation of their flagship, abandoned their discipline.

The French captains screamed conflicting orders, their ships colliding as they attempted to turn and flee back down the Thames.

The Duke of Norfolk fell to his knees on the stone battlement, crossing himself.

"Sweet merciful Christ!" the Duke gasped. "You have summoned the wrath of God himself!"

Blackwood looked down at the Duke with disdain. He adjusted the collar, turning his gaze eastward toward the continent.

The dome of orange fire from the detonated French flagship, La Grande Françoise, cast a daylight-bright glow across the Thames.

The concussive shockwave of the exploding powder magazines had shattered the windows of Deptford storehouses and sent a wave rolling up the embankments of the Tower of London.

Standing on the battlements, Lord Alistair Blackwood, Master of the Royal Ordnance, did not flinch.

His pocket watch ticked in his hand... The annihilation of a thousand-ton galleon in a single volley was not a miracle; it was the result of Alemannian engineering.

A mile down the river, Admiral Philippe de Chabot stood on the quarterdeck of his secondary flagship, Le Léviathan.

Chabot commanded forty-two vessels carrying 5,400 French marines and pikemen.

In his mind, the destruction of his flagship was a fluke... a catastrophic accident in their own powder stores.

He could not fathom that the English possessed artillery capable of striking with such kinetic force from a vast distance.

Determined to engage in the honorable melee that defined his worldview, Admiral Chabot drew his broadsword.

"Lower the longboats! Deploy the marines!" Chabot bellowed. "Their cannons cannot reload before we reach the shores! We will take the Tower embankments by storm!"

Over one hundred and fifty longboats were dropped into the Thames.

Over 3,000 French marines crammed into the small vessels, rowing against the current toward the Tower docks.

Simultaneously, the surviving French galleons turned their broadsides and opened fire with crude, hollow-cast bronze culverins and sakers.

Clouds of black smoke filled the air...

However, due to the massive windage in their flawed barrels, the French cannonballs splashed into the Thames short of the Tower, or shattered against the stone masonry Blackwood had designed to deflect impacts.

On the battlements, Thomas Howard, Duke of Norfolk, drew his sword in panic.

"They are launching an amphibious assault!" the Duke shrieked. "Three thousand men! We must summon the Yeomen Warders and man the walls with longbows and boiling pitch!"

Blackwood snapped his pocket watch shut and returned it to his coat.

"Longbows and boiling pitch?" Blackwood repeated. "I do not need more men."

Blackwood leaned over the parapet.

Down in the courtyard, Captain Sterling and his four hundred artillerymen were already swabbing the smoking barrels of their twelve Alemannian 24-pounder cannons.

"Captain Sterling!" Blackwood’s voice cut through the roar of battle. "The French are clustering their infantry into wooden boxes. Switch to canister!"

"Canister loaded, My Lord!" Captain Sterling shouted back.

Instead of a iron sphere, the artillerymen loaded thin-walled tin cylinders packed with over two hundred lead musket balls and iron scrap.

Upon exiting the horizontally bored barrels, the tin casing would disintegrate, turning the twelve cannons into massive shotguns.

"Depress the elevation!" Captain Sterling commanded. "Target the center mass of the flotilla!"

The French longboats crossed the two-hundred-yard mark. The marines began to scream battle cries, brandishing their halberds.

"Fire!!" Blackwood stated from the battlement.

Down in the courtyard, Captain Sterling dropped his sword.

The twelve Alemannian cannons roared.

Over two thousand lead balls and iron shrapnel tore across the surface of the Thames at supersonic velocities.

The lethal cone of shrapnel intersected with the packed swarm of longboats.

The French marines were instantly pulverized.

High-velocity lead balls punched straight through steel cuirasses and hulls...

Rowboats were shredded into kindling, dragging armored men to the bottom of the Thames.

In a single volley, over two thousand marines were eliminated!

The river turned a frothing crimson, choked with floating splinters and bodies.

The remaining longboats ceased rowing... The surviving marines dropped their oars in terror.

On the quarterdeck of Le Léviathan, Admiral Chabot collapsed against the railing, his helmet falling from his head.

"Sound the retreat!" Chabot screamed. "Turn the galleys! Flee to the Channel!"

The French fleet abandoned their drowning marines. The galleons clumsily collided with one another as they attempted to catch the wind and flee the Thames estuary.

On the battlements of the White Tower, the Duke of Norfolk stood frozen, his sword hanging limply.

"You... you killed them all..." the Duke whispered.

Blackwood pulled out a small leather-bound ledger and a stick of charcoal, his eyes locked on the fleeing French sails.

"I expended exactly twenty-four powder charges and twenty-four tin canisters of scrap lead," Blackwood calculated, jotting down the numbers. "The total cost to the Royal Treasury is roughly forty-two pounds sterling. In exchange, we have sunk two French galleons and eliminated three thousand elite marines. That is an exponential return."

Blackwood snapped the ledger shut and tucked it into his coat, turning his back on the river.