When Fred entered the town, he brought the knights and marines and headed straight for the governor’s castle. He could see the worried and frightened looks of the locals, he looked over to the wall that he was bombarding, it was reduced to rubble, and quite a few houses were damaged or destroyed that were stationed behind it.

He looked over to the port area, which was also in ruins. The cannons did a number on this town. Although, Fred was numb to this situation, he saw way worse in his old life.

“Looks like we are going to need to improve all of our walls,” Fred commented.

“Agreed,” Mendes commented.

“We will get the men to set up camp on the outside, where the hole is in the wall, so they can have easier access to the city if needed, I also want the cannons brought to the port, most likely, Normandy will try to blockade the port when they get wind of this.” Fred issued out orders to his command staff.

“Understood.” They each went off to carry out their duties.

“The troops are going to want to let off some steam,” Daniel commented.

“Let them set up camp first, and” Fred turned to a scout. “Go and send for Dominic, he should be in summerset by now.”

“Yes, Sire.”

“Governor, show me to the castle, I want to check the accounting books.”

“Yes,” the governor reluctantly agreed.

In the afternoon, Dominic finally showed up, “Ah, young master Frederick, how come you seek me.”

“This war is only financeable as long as our trade isn’t hindered,”

“Yes, I have noticed.” Dominic agreed.

“I need to know which merchants in this city I can loot, without angering the trade union.”

“I see, are you keeping the city?”

“Yes,” Fred confirmed.

“Then I have a better suggestion.” Dominic offered.

“Go on,” Fred was intrigued.

“Sell the business here to merchants under Aquitaine.”

“Would that not cause more unrest for the populace. Looting is bad enough, but I need to give my men compensation.”

“Looting is just part of the course, the fact that your men haven’t started already is very strange. Usually, the soldiers end up killing the stubborn people during the looting, and they are the ones who are most likely to cause resistance and increase unrest.”

“I see,” He had heard that looting and thuggery was a common commotion during an occupation during the medieval period. “Look, I want to set an air of professionalism amongst my troops, if other towns get wind of an absence of looting or bloodletting, it may cause them to surrender faster.”

“Have you seen the walls and ports?” Dominic chuckled. “You were pretty harsh with that.”

“Yes, Brutal to the enemy, merciful to the surrendered, it is the most effective way of forcing capitulation.”

“I see, that would be effective.” Dominic went silent in thought. “Still, I would go with ‘selling’ certain businesses. Those with money have more say, and if the ones with money are on your side, all the better. Heck you could even ‘sell’ the business back to the original owners”

“Alright, let us go over the business in town to see who we sell them to.”

Fred had given the soldiers the loot and issued them an order that they could pay for ‘services’ but couldn’t take it for free. And that if he hears any service being unpaid, there will be punishments handed out.

It looked like they would be spending a month here to repair the town. Their biggest problem now was gaining naval dominance in the immediate surrounding waters. The sixth ship was built, but it only had half the cannons.

Fred issued another cannon foundry to be open, and with the steam engine in place with the copper mine, the ore was being excavated at a much faster rate. Fred was thinking of opening the copper mill and a cannon foundry in Summerset, it would be cheaper to transport the copper in ingot form over ore form. But he would have to make sure his foundation in that area was secure first.

___

A week later, Normandy had sent a fleet to try and blockade the port.

“Are we just in a standoff for now?” Daniel asked.

“Well, we have to pick the battles, they have 30 ships, and we don’t want them to get the chance to capture one of our ships,” Fred commented.

“We need to bait them into an attack, otherwise we won’t have the land cannons in range,” Mendes claimed.

“The ships have the speed, let’s use hit and run tactics.” Henry offered.

“Fine let’s do that,” Fred agreed.

The lightships started sailing towards the east side of the enemy ships, they started turning east as well to blockade them. However, the lightships turned to the right and started coming broadside to the enemy, as they were sweeping past, the first ship let out a salvo to the second ship of the enemy, they continued to load and fire the cannons into the enemy as they sailed parallel to the enemy ships.

Some of the ships at the west side of the enemy blockade, turned in to try and ram the lightships, but they were too manoeuvrable, and the enemy ships who came too close, got a raking down the length of the ship, breaking a mast and paralysing it. The light ships rushed back to port after an hour of fighting, where they managed to knock out 4 ships and damage an additional 8.

Some of the enemy ships tried to chase but had to withdraw when they came into the range of the cannons on land, who gave them a good salvo.

They spent a good two weeks fighting small battles, and the enemy was just bringing more ships over to blockade.

“This is going to take a while, are we just going to have to financially bleed them dry,” Daniel complained.

“We are going to need to bring over more cannons, to advance, we can’t leave this town as is?” Thomas asked.

“We will have to send word back to increase production. I’ll also have to establish a copper mill in Summerset.” Fred answered. “Actually, I want to try something with the cannonballs, so I think I’ll have to go back for a while.”

“Ok who will stay here?” Mendes asked.

“Daniel and Henry.”

“What, you going to make me stuck here,” Daniel complained.

“I need Thomas to manage Summerset, we need to increase copper production as much as possible. And I need to help with improving the production capabilities of the cannons.” Fred explained.

Fred rode back to Bristol with the marines and a force of 300 men. Thomas broke off halfway with 200 of his own men and moved towards Summerset.

Fred spent a good 2 months working on two more cannon foundries, in this time, a copper mill was set up next to the mine in Summerset, massively increasing efficiency.

Fred also spent time researching new ways of designing cannonballs, he found out that a magic spark travelled through lead at a much slower rate to Iron. Which was what he was looking for. He had a couple of balls made, one where the outer shells of the lead were mixed with fire powder and one where the iron inner core was mixed with the fire powder.

They turned out to be duds, maybe the powder was burned off during the smelting process. Then he tried to melt a fire crystal in with the lead ore, but this prevented the lead from cooling, and when they quenched the metal, it shattered.

The last try was with the iron core. This worked a lot better, once a magic spark connected with the lead, within 0.5 seconds it would glow bright red, then white as it melted off, there was also a glow of fire around the cannonball, this lasted until the magic ran out and at that point, the iron ball was half-melted as well.

However, this was a lengthy process, and it took another month for 100 of these cannonballs to be made. He would have to come up with a better solution, as the fire crystals were quite expensive as well.

He had been kept updated with the sea battles in the south port. The enemy was relentless, and they were learning how to avoid the cannons.

Fred Rode back to South port and was joined by Thomas on the way.

“Did you have a productive holiday?” Thomas asked.

“Holiday? I wish, I got a new present for the enemy though.” Fred answered

“Really, that’s great, I presume you’re not going to tell me before the show.” Thomas inquired.

“Of course not. Why would I spoil the fun?” Fred chuckled, “How was the Copper mill, any problems.”

“Great, no problems at the moment. It’s a lot easier to transport the Copper in an ingot form.”

___

They reached back to South Port.

“How’s it going?” Fred asked.

“The enemy has tried to rush the ports a few times, and we have nocked out over 30 ships by now, but they are still holding up.” The admiral said.

“We have brought over another 30 cannons, we can press on to the next port, if need be,” Mendes said.

“I would rather deal with this problem first, plus control of the sea will give us a big advantage,” Fred responded.

“How about any more ships?” the admiral asked.

“The last of the lightships are built and one of the heavy ships has been built, we have tripled our cannon production, and they should be fitted in 2 months. The problem is, we won’t have enough experienced sailors to safely bring them here.” Fred explained.

“So, what is the plan?” the admiral asked.

“First, we are shipping building materials over here, to build up defences, I have some new toys for you to try out as well. However, they are expensive and time consuming to make for what they are.” Fred showed the group a cannonball.

“A cannonball?” Daniel asked.

“Captain, I want you to stack your best cannon crew on one ship, I want you to get a salvo of these rounds off,” Fred explained.

“Ok,” he picked one up. “These are warm.”

___

The next day the ships went out for another skirmish.

Fred was standing on the docks watching the battle.

They managed to knock out two of the ships before testing out the new rounds, and then the ship with the rounds opened up its broadside against another ship, it was light bright orange flashes whizzing past the sky straight into the enemy ship.

In a matter of moments, the ship started to smoke and within a minute it was ablaze. The lightship had enough ammo for one more round and quickly found its target while the enemy panicked over this new situation, that was 2 ships alight in their first test round, after this, the lightships returned to port.

“Holy, crap that was amazing,” Daniel exclaimed.

Although the fleet had rendered a lot of ships non-operational, they could still be towed back to Normandy for repairs and such, but with the burning wreckages, they are now likely to down more ships.

They had used up 30 of the 100 cannonballs for this attack before the ships returned to port.

The next day, the lightships had split up the remaining 60 cannonballs, managing to set alight 7 more ships and knocking out 12 more, this was their biggest push, and caused the enemy to flee.

They were now able to capture the 12 ships without the presence of the enemy. All in all, they must have sent a good 100 or so ships, back for repairs, with at least 40 would probably have to be scrapped. As well as 20 or so, sunk, not included what was set on fire.

The ships of this era were smaller, even compared to Fred’s lightships, and therefore had less crew needed.

The next day, Fred came to the meeting room with a bunch of papers, “For now, we will dismantle the captured ships and start the work on expanding the port.” He laid the paper down on the table for the others to see.

“Isn’t it too early, what about if the enemy comes and harasses us?” Henry asked.

“Yes, I thought about that, with these plans, if we build them up to a certain level, they will act as a barrier for enemy ships, these pillars are made out of reinforced concrete. It’s similar stuff to what we built the forts in the north out of, we can build them up to just below the waterline, this will rip apart any of their ships that they try to dock.”

“What about our navy?” Henry asked.

“I want them to return to Bristol, we have a few more ships ready, but I don’t want the enemy to have a chance of attacking when the fleet is divided,” Fred explained.

“How long would that take?” Daniel asked.

“About a week, I want to move onto the next port before winter. Dominic said he heard rumours that the army on the mainland would be ready to move out by winter, I’d like to have a chance to sink some of their transports before they come ashore, and this requires increasing their travel route.” Fred said.

“When are the fleet returning to Bristol?” Mendes asked.

“Today, the enemy backed off a bit and it should give them plenty of time. Scouts along the shore have said they cannot spot any enemy ships other than the one in a stalemate with Aquitaine’s ships.” Fred answered.

“I see.”

It took them a week to complete the pillars, at this they received a raid attempt from the enemy 2 days before completion, but the ships were repelled by the land cannons.

“Right, is everyone ready?” Fred asked. They were able to boost the army up to 2500 over this time as well as an extra 200 for garrison duties for the south port. Once they take the next port, the enemy will be faced with the white cliffs until Ludnus.

On their way, Daniel asked. “What are you going to name that town?”

Fred responded, “I was thinking of Southampton.”

“Any plans you are thinking of?”

“Well, I was thinking of making commercial shipwrights here and turning it into a bigger Trade port, and then down a bit further east, there is a nice area to put a naval base.”

“And what would you call that?” Daniel asked again.

“Portsmouth,” Fred answered.