Send the Marines!

Further Corsair depradations along the coastline have sharpened the need for an end to naval gazing.  Earlier this week,  an Imperial Navy xebec spotted a Corsair ship and gave chase, but had to let it ecape as the ship was fulled to the gunwales with vicious looking villains.

Admiral Periplos and Commander Villaineuse are of one voice "We Need a Regiment of Marines, then we don't have to ask the Army every time we want to put men on board".

Vizier Ekonomikos is against the idea, and the Basileos knows that he will have a deputation of  Harrumphing Generals if he agrees. But then Periplos pulls his mastercard....

"They could have Dark Blue uniforms, Sire, like you have always wanted!"

"With a hint of Purple?"

"Oh, more than a hint, Sire"

"Think of the cost, Sire - Purple dye is not cheap"

"My own Marine Regiment - that would look splendid"

"Let's start with a Battalion, Sire" 

"Oh alright, just a hint of purple then, and One Battalion of Marines to be recruited. - Sign the order Ekonomikos - Lord knows there are enough harbour-rats at the docks who could be recruited."

Doffing their hats, Periplos and Villaineuse retired backwards in as dignified a way as possible from the Imperial Presence (as it reached for its crayons to start designing a uniform), and the scowling visage of the Vizier. Once the Varangian Guard has swung the audience chamber doors shut, they high-fived each other and raced back to The Admiralty (a small tavern, not too far from The Admiralty building), proclamation in hand..

"I love the smell of Naphtha in the morning...."

....there was some considerable excitement at the waterfront early this morning when a large bang and a lot of smoke appeared from the Byzantion Naval Yard, sending every foreign spy scurrying half dressed down the Dockside Road (pursued by half the Harbour Gals, also semi dressed and  wanting their money). The crowd was shoo'ed away once the Vardariots had feasted their eyes on the Gals.

Doctor Leonardo Pipette , the Imperial Chief Alchemist, was later seen wandering homewards a bit dazed , his new-fangled bi-focal glasses broken on his blackened face, muttering about how he loved the smell of Naphtha in the morning.  

Capain Kostas Bravos, who we spoke to at the Golden Horn tavern, was sailing into the bay from an all night fishing trip, and said he was just putting a tack in when he saw a jet of flame, then a big explosion, then clouds of smoke, and then a Navy piquet hailed him and told him to move on, sharpish like....

(Inset - one of Dr Pipette's assistants seen just before the Big Bang)

Naval Manouevres.....

New Byzantium has a small but convoluted coastline, with one good major port, a second reasonable one, and a large number of small bays and coves dotted with fishing villages. One of the growing problems with its emergence as an (officially, anyway) Christian state has been the growing menace of Barbary (and other) Corsairs.


The Corsair nations of North Africa were among the first to recognise New Byzantium as an independent state, it took a while for the Basileos and his court to work out that all this meant was the pirates therefore saw them as no longer an Ottoman province, and thus fair game.

However, over the last decade, especially since New Byzantium's miltary success in 1750-51 (or more accurately, it's not losing) led to the Truce of Edirne with the Sublime Porte in 1751, the raiding has become progressively worse - the Byzantine Foreign Office believe that the Turks may even be aiding and abetting these Pirates with local bases.

So, what to do?

There has been a major attempt to woo the British, offering the main harbour of Byzantion as a naval base as part of a deal for Britain to fund Byzantine military activity against Britain's opponents on the continent, but so far the perfidious Albions have been far more interested in jaw-jaw than war-war. 

The Byzantine Admiral,  Periplos, who claimed to haver served in the French Navy as a young man (what he is less keen to admit is that it was as a Galley slave) has felt out of his depth for some time, and recently recruited the French ex-Corsair (and now Boucannaire) Commander Pierre Villaineuse , who recently had to leave his native Caribbean island of St. Jacques for mysterious reasons.


Villaineuse's first step has been to hire some of his Caribbean cut-throat friends and their ships, and has thus incurred the disapproval of Byzantion's well to do (but also the enthusiastic approval of its harbour gals) and now has raised the Admiral's ire by arguing for Byzantium to create its own "Corsair's Charter".


The Emperor was rather interested in all the talk of spankers, feluccas, sloops and tartanes until he realised that the sailors also referred to ships as "she"


The Court can see the potential problems this may cause diplomatically, but on the other hand a self-funding Navy makes a strong case for a strapped-for-cash statelet. As for the Byzantine seafaring folk, they are all for it. "Villaineuse has brought us into the 18th century", said Captain Kostas Bravos, captain of the sloop Ionnas B.

Old Salts on the docks noted that the Corsair's Charter would just legalise what Bravos and his ilk do anyway under the guise of "coastal trading"....