Paris Temps

[maddox]

September 1 1908

Minister Dupuytren at the Pulpit.

Messieurs. The news I carry is good, but also expensive.

With the selling of Mozambique, we can send more of the fleet units to the critical area's. Namely South Indochina and French Polynesia.
But this means we need more merchants shipping coal to the resupply spots. At the moment, UNK, CSA and a few Italian merchants are taking up the slack.
A few merchants we aquired lately are being converted to naval resupply vessels.

Other great news is that our factories, capable to support our military expansion are back to 80% of 1905 levels,and the finishing of the Great Canal removes that drain on resources.

This means we can go on with the 1900 plan of rejuvination. The 2 Valeur class battleships will be in the fleet inventory in august 1909, and the smaller , just layed down Demarce class cruisers will be build in groups of 6, each generation with the knowledge aquired with the previous groups.

All in all, Glorious France is safe, the military is guarding our prosperity and civilisation.  But that vigilance comes with a cost. I must ask the parliament for more funding.

[maddox]

November 11 1908

Paris Temps.

DISASTER strikes

In an unexplained accident, the sloop MN Chardon-Marie suffered an explosion at the entrance of the Suez Canal in the Mediterranian sea, and the out of control ship rammed the Italian merchant steam ship Andrea Doria.
The ensuing fire on the merchant vessel also engulfed the hapsless manowar and during the evacuation of the Andrea Doria, aided by the tugboats Le Four and L'abeille the burning sloops munition lockers exploded.
Unfortunatly, the Andrea Doria carried the first group of Italian bureaucrats for Mozambique.
The death toll surpasses 500 hapless souls.
Both ships sank at the rade of Manakh in shallow waters.

[Desertfox]

I see the French are suffering a case of Filipiniotis. Might it be related to the attack on the Italian Cruiser?

[maddox]

You see correctly.

But , as long the wreck isn't raised and inspected, or any other evidence is popping up, it is an accident.

[Ithekro]

Those involved can feel proud of themselves I'm sure.  As long as noone else knows, the Lion that is France may functionally sleep a little longer while it lookes its mane and teeth.

[maddox]

December 1 1908

Tahiti.  Naval port Papetee

Admiral Geon salutes Capitaine Greagar.

Mon Capitaine, I leave Napoleon the Great in your capable hands.

Mon Admiral, I accept the responsibility. But I'm afraid our great ship will need more support than Patetee can give us.
That is realised, and I will do my utter best to get that support here, even if I have to dig out the drydock myself to accomodate her. Take care of my lady as long she's here. She needs your capable command.

partialy OOC, some know what and why, a few days earlier

Come on you bunch of slackers, who doesn't want to earn the munition carrier promotion?  Those 140mm daddies need you.
Shove in that coal, shuffle those shovels. You little one, put your back into it, be glad that neither The Admiral nor the Captain wants to go back to the time of the galley. Me whipping you assholes to get the speed into the ship as the captain demands. So I'll yell you into speed.
Bang BAOOOOM

sizzling of steam, moaning of wounded, screaming of the panicked.

here, here, come on...
Close that valve, the Q turret magazine is heating up, Move Move MOVE it.
Carry him out,
Get that firehose here, extinguish that ready supply.

Open the fanshafts, reverse the fans
Sir, we can't the mechanisme is damaged.   Moron, untighten the belt, make an 8 of it, it will do the job.

Admiral, Ensign Jacques here, the temperature in Q magazine is rising, we can't take it much longer.
Open the seacocks, flood the magazine
The pipes are bend or blocked, we only get a trickle of water.  I ordered the magazine filled with steam from boilerroom 5.
YOU Idi BOOOOOOOOMBoombooooombang

[Borys]

OOT
Oooooh - unlucky ship.
And "unhappy" France.
Borys

[Borys]

The notorious busybody Linienschiffkapitaen von Fernseher, the Habsburg Naval Attache to France, offers the assistance of the SMHS Kugelschreiber. The ship is fully equipped to attend to the needs of battleships. And having performed  maintance work on the SMS Frankreich - with its many French built components - the articifers are reasonably well versed in French naval technology.
The shp could be ordered to sail to French Polineasia within a few days.

[maddox]

Capitaine Greagar telegraphs the offer to Paris.



Paris responds directly to Viena.

"Offer accepted"

[Borys]

After telegraphing all institutions which might be suspected of making any proposals to the French, and after a few tense hours, the cable from the Embassy in Paris brought down the pulse-rate and blood-preasure at the Foreign Minisitry. After sigh of relief heard from Patagonia to Aden, a runner was despatched to the Marineamt with instructions to send the large fleet tender SMHS Kugelschreiber (from wherver it might be at the moment) to Papete.

[Borys]

The Auslaenderminsiterium sent a strongly worded protest to the Kriegsministerium, blasting the intrusion into foreign policy of incompetent, francophile officers.

[Desertfox]

Ouch!!! The French are getting a serious case of Filipinosis.

[Tanthalas]

IDK if i was the austrian ship id be nervous about geting close to it.  the last ship that got close to a blown up french ship went to the bottom with it >.<

[maddox]

Ouch!!! The French are getting a serious case of Filipinosis.

No shit Jack...

[maddox]

17 january 1909.

Marseille.  The docks.


Hello Louis, had a good trip?

Jean, don't ask, and I won't bitch.
So I'll ask, you bitching tends to be funny.  Were did you go?
There were Angels fear to tread. We went to Indochina, then returning via Calcuta.
But I still don't know what idiot came to that idea, had to wait at full sea, untill a goddamn sailing boat came along with 15 tons of silk paper sheefs. It came in trough Marconi from the boss. Wait in location X and recieve the goods. As said, 15 tons sheefs of Silk Paper, and a freight letter to our name, stamped and approved in Phuket.

That sounds mightely strange. I can understand you don't sail into Siam. But why not load the silk paper in Touranne or Saigon?

Because it's not Indochinese paper. According to the accompagnying documents its New Swiss paper with silk and cotton reinforcing, 85 grams m². The buyer, La Maison D'Arte Contemptare in Paris wants it to print the posters for the motion picture "Les Joyeux microbes".

As long its payed for. But it was dangerous to work that way.  For the same amount of trouble it was a New Swiss pirate trap.

Now you get it. Also, every post we entered and got the papers checked had questions about that paper.  One of the customs officers at the Suez Canal said "feels like money, but that's a BIG note then", and the questions about the origins weren't friendly either. "You trade New Swiss", with the unspoken but felt "traitor" added.
I don't want to go deeper in that. we had our share and the boss will know i won't do a thing like this again. That he hires an Agrival for such actions.