Chapter 5: Administrivia

We got back to Widemouth after about two weeks on the road. At least, me, Aldo, Brian, and the boat crew did. The guys bringing the horses back would be several more days.

Dolphin had been repaired and was back at the quay being watched for hull leaks. It still had some, but the problem wasn’t as bad and could be handled as long as it got no worse. The leaks may even go away on their own, as the new planks swelled in the water. I wanted to use Dolphin as a transport, for spare crew and marines or for refugee workers, but we couldn’t put people on it until we made it seaworthy.

Thunder was pulled halfway out of the water, and they had found a broken timber in the rudder sticking out to one side instead of being inline with the other timbers. No one knew how that had happened, which meant that the ship had been backed into something solid when no one was paying attention. It was a good thing that we over-engineered it. If the whole rudder had broken the ship would have been uncontrollable under sail.

Well, at least it was easily found and easily fixed. They could re-float Thunder, move her to the sheer-legs we’d moved to one corner of the quay, and pull the rudder off for repairs. When they were done the ship would probably be even faster since we were eliminating some drag.

Several of the fishermen had volunteered to sell their boats to me for exorbitant prices. Apparently the part about “only junk boats because I’m ripping it apart to build a river-galley so I’ll only pay junk prices” got missed in their excitement. What would I do with a brand-new never-used top of the line luxury fishing boat with golden toilet seats? That’s what I was hearing described to me. No, the town needs your fish. I’ll just build a boat from scratch over at my shipyard.

I decided to spend a couple of days with the family while the rudder was being repaired, then take Thunder out on a shakedown cruise. On the one hand, it was a good idea. Don’t just try it once and assume everything is great. Take it out to sea, work everything, and see what breaks first like that rudder.

On the other hand, when I did that with Wrong Place, we ended up selling three captured pirate ships at Bridgetown and our crew was spread pretty thinly between the four ships. If we had run into a fourth pirate ship, we would have been in big trouble. This time when we went out we had to treat it as an actual wartime cruise with a full crew and everything.

Meanwhile, the yard could pull Dolphin out again and replace some more planks. I’d rather replace some that are going bad now, instead of waiting until the leak was worse. What if the ship got rammed, or ran aground? Those marginal planks would probably just give up. Better to fix them now.

That wasn’t the attitude the shipyard men were used to from a customer, so we had to sit down and talk for a while. If I was a trader, trying to make a living from a decrepit ship, I’d probably keep trying to defer repairs the way old Jimmer had. With the same end result, right?

However, my case was different. I owned the ship in question, yes, but I was also the shipyard owner and I had to pay those workers anyway, whether they were doing anything useful or not. So, until they were ready to start building the cargo-galley they may as well be improving our ships. Further, I was likely to be one of the men out there depending upon the ship to get home again.

If it made any difference to them, I thought that having the fastest, most watertight ships out there would make a difference when we got into trouble. If my ship could take a good hard bumping but the pirates’ ship could not, it gave us an additional tactic to use. If our ship was about to fall apart then it limited our tactics.

Like most of the fishermen, Erna had been up to the Narrows. He said that his pile-driving setup couldn’t make that trip, but if they took it apart it could go up there as two separate boats. When they got into the protected waters of the South Cliff River they could reassemble it and do what I wanted. I told him to get his team together and whatever supplies he would need, but to wait until the rest of my surveying team returned in case they had something to say.

He pointed out that the quay I wanted built would happen faster if I also hired a second rig, one that had the driver at one end instead of in the middle like his. Why not, it’s only money. Besides, either I capture more pirate ships and have lots of money for things like this, or I get killed and it’s not my problem any more.

I told him sure, and make sure he takes enough men to cut the trees he’d need for pilings. And arrange for a boat to take them some food in ten days or so. If they couldn’t take enough food with them to survive for that long, and they couldn’t catch any fish, they probably weren’t worth feeding. Erna had to allow that a bunch of fishermen and woodsmen could probably survive for ten days on what they took with them.

Next I went to talk to the blacksmith I’d asked to make a saw blade. He said he’d thought about it and believed he could do it but it wouldn’t be easy and it would take a lot of steel which I would have to provide. Well, of course. He doesn’t have that kind of stock just lying around.

I’d been thinking about it, too. If we wanted to cut a log three feet across, we had to have a blade that stuck out at least three feet. With the center mounting hole, that meant the whole blade had to be at least seven feet across. I was thinking a huge foundry pouring a slab which was then rolled down in a huge rolling mill to the right thickness and then trimmed to shape, teeth cut, and the edge heat-treated, but none of that was going to happen here. If he thought that he could make a circular saw blade that large with the tools he had, I should support him. If nothing else, it got people thinking about better ways of doing things.

The first better way was the way the sawmill should be set up. For some reason, I was thinking about having this huge spinning wooden shaft overhead, driven by the water coming out of the Narrows and driving the saw blade. Put a table under it, slide your logs down the table, get two half-logs.

That was silly. With that arrangement, we would be limited by what would fit between the table and the saw. Instead, put the shaft and the blade down low, in a pit. Put the table on top of it and slide your logs over the blade.

If the log was so large that the blade wouldn’t cut all the way through it, we could simply turn the log over and run it through again to cut the other side. Maybe we should start small until we knew what we were doing. A three-foot blade would cut one foot deep and allow us to cut logs that were two feet across. Even logs thicker than that would be mostly cut through and could be easily split.

I went back to the shop and talked to ‘the wife and kids’, Millie and Henry and Jim, about their pile of crappy weapons. They had refurbished just about everything they had gotten from the pirate attack and all the ships we had captured. In fact, the ones they were working on now had come from Filo’s last voyage and the two ships he had taken. He had taken the ships somewhere else to sell but kept all the weapons for Widemouth.

In every case, we collected some weapons which were already very good. They just needed to be sharpened, and maybe a new scabbard or sheath provided. There were other weapons which could be improved, and they took most of the work. All of the good weapons were sold, kept at the shop for later sale, or simply turned over to the Guard for their use.

Last, there were inferior weapons which shouldn’t be used if there were better weapons available. There were a lot of those. Four hundred pirates killed or captured during the attack had carried a lot of steel weapons, swords and knives and axes. The two ships we had captured at the same time and the ships we’d captured out at sea later on had carried even more.

If there was anything that Widemouth had a glut of, it was melee weapons. The better swords all went to the Guard and the militia. The axes all went to woodsmen and farmers and a lot of them got used to cut down the trees we’d used for all the construction work being done.

A few of the knives got distributed or sold, but most of them were in the scrap pile with the worst of the larger weapons. They had value because of their steel content but not much else. If I bought the whole mess, the shop could strip the handles, decorations and whatever and then deliver just the steel parts to the blacksmith as he was ready for it. We decided upon a price for the lot and stripped down a sample, about one-tenth of them, and took them to the blacksmith.

With materials to start with and a promise of more whenever he was ready, he could start work. It wasn’t urgent; it just gave him something to do when he had no other customers. It wasn’t like the mill was already built and standing idle with no sawblade. Meanwhile, he could make some more saws for the shipyard. We could use them and it would give him some practice.

I went and talked some with the town’s miller. He agreed that if he had some more room he could set up a walk for a cow or an ox. That wasn’t going to happen where he was, though. He had a walk that was big enough for three men to push on the pole and they could be replaced by a cow, but there was no place to put the cow when it wasn’t grinding grain.

He’d have to move to a larger place. This could be done, but it would take some time. The two mill-stones were heavy! It would be worth it, though. The ox could work whenever needed, and the miller wouldn’t need to keep two or three strong men on hand to push the pole around and around. He could grind more grain and it would cost less to do, since it cost less to keep one ox happy than it cost to pay three strong men.

If he was grinding enough grain, it would be worth it to get two oxen and have them take turns. Or, he could grind it longer and get finer flour. Having oxen to drive the mill would allow it to operate much longer than with men.

But, it would be expensive to build a new mill somewhere else where there was enough room for the mill, a storeroom, and a barn for the ox. A living apartment could be built above everything else so that didn’t take more space. We found a good place not far outside the moat out by the river-road. Yes, I’ll help pay for the new building and mill setup. But, that will mean that I get a part of the ground grain until he has paid me back.

There was no rush. We wouldn’t need the new mill until we started getting the next harvest and that was some months off. He could keep the old mill working until the new one was ready, and only stop when it was time to move the stones. That way he would only be unable to work for a few days.

I told him that he knew better than me how much space he needed, and to do it right. I didn’t want to have to move him again in a year because he’d tried to save time or money making it cheap. Do it right. Doing it right now will cost less than doing it wrong and then doing it again next year.

There were several different projects going. I had the paper-boy as I thought of him working in an unoccupied building outside of the walls that the pirates had ransacked, just to get him working. He was going to have to move someday to wherever we put his hemp farm, but meanwhile he could start putting his tools and equipment together and work on what was available.

The surrounding farms had all kinds of straw left over from the last harvest. Could he make anything out of that? Even crappy paper was better than none, as we had quite a few people who needed to learn how to read and write.

Several of the town’s unemployed men and women helped him get started. I wasn’t going to pay them, but if he said they were helping I’d feed them.

I also took the time to set up a decent-sized sundial, about twice my height, in one corner of the shipyard. I wanted to use bronze for the point, but I realized that the first time we left the yard with no guard, someone would steal it just for the metal. Instead, we built a sort of triangular stone wall and at the top we set the hardest most pointed stone the masons could find.

That gave us a way to mark the seasons, which was the thing I wanted the most. Whether anyone else was going to listen, I was going to call when I showed up and helped fight off the pirate attack ‘Year One’ of my time here, and I was going to call the winter solstice New Year’s Day. We were now in late spring of ‘Year Two’, but I had no way to know what day.