The Suppression Fleet

Composition

Manpower

While at its height the Suppression Fleet composed well over a hundred ships (with at least thirty Siege-sails), the current strength of the fleet is four training carracks, used to teach new Principality Navy sailors the fundamentals of traditional sailing prior to their service on Power propulsion ships. Sailing the Great Circular Trade Route is considered a plum assignment, with the possibility of putting into a new port every other day; the Fleet has no problem maintaining recruitment.

Weaponry

Siege sails may be spectacular when their turret launchers smash huge holes into enemy ships, leaving them broken and sinking, but the ordinary work of naval warfare remains the same as it has for hundreds of years, that of the boarding marine capturing a ship and forcing the surrender of it's crew. In the cramped confines of a ship's deck, the sword remains the preferred weapon of the naval marine.

Vehicles

At the peak of its combat strength, the hundred ships of the Suppression Fleet were a mixture of turreted Siege-sails, powered boarding carracks, and light skirmisher sloops. The current Fleet is an intentionally obsolete formation of four old sailing carracks, unpowered and used for training purposes.

Tactics

During the pirate suppression campaign, two tactics predominated. The first tactic was giving battle to pirate ships directly, in open water - a Principality Navy ship, using its powered flywheel, was almost certainly faster than any pirate sailing ship, and the naval ship would either attempt to overpower the pirates in a pitched boarding battle or sink it with launched flywheels from its turret. At the Suppression Fleet's height, any ship that gave battle was virtually assured of a friendly ship joining the battle within a half hour, as the next ship on the Route would join the fight.
The second tactic was having marines and sailors serve directly on commercial vessels, ambushing pirates that attempted to board the ship. A riskier and bloodier tactic, this was intended to increase the risk that any pirate ran, when boarding a 'helpless' trader's carrack. While pirates could spot naval ships and avoid them, it was this tactic that made piracy fundamentally unsound, as hundreds of pirates were killed by marines, who tended to be veteran soldiers from the Unification wars.

Training

In the modern era, the Principality Navy has mandated that all sailors continue to learn the basics of sailing by wind. The Suppression Fleet, while still named after its originating formation, serves as a training course for sailors to learn the art of traditional sailing, making at least two full circumnavigations of the Great Circular Trade Route before moving on to another assignment.

Logistics

Logistical Support

By virtue of conquest of the mainland of Saibh, all Etoilean ports were open and friendly to ships operating as part of the Suppression Fleet, greatly simplifying logistics - crew could be rotated and resources could be supplied virtually everywhere on the Great Circular Trade Route. While the Principality maintains cargo supply ships for sailing deeper into the unknowns of the Feryll Sea, the Suppression Fleet always operated within a day's travel of a friendly port.

Upkeep

The pirate suppression campaign was almost as costly as Unification proper, with a number of ships lost to skilled pirate ambush and fairly high casualties among the marine volunteers. In the modern era, the four sailing ships are considered remarkably cheap to maintain, in comparison to the finicky Powered propulsion systems of a modern Siege-sail.

History

During the early days of the Principality of Etoile, a top priority of the fledgling nation post-Unification was the suppression of the pirate fleets that have harassed traders on the Great Circular Trade Route since time immemorial. While pirate attacks varied in their severity and frequency, the underwriting cost overall was severe. The Principality aimed to unlock cheap oceanic cargo shipping by annihilating the pirate threat against commercial carriers, once and for all, and put its new Navy to the task, as the Navy had only been minimally involved in The War of Unification.
While the Etoilean campaign against the pirate lords in The Stagonids dominated the headlines and entered the history books, it was the day to day work of the Suppression Fleet that served to end the pirate threat. The Suppression Fleet was conceptually simple. A number of Siege-sails would simply sail the Great Circular Trade Route themselves, protecting merchant traffic from pirate attacks, while Principality Navy sailors and marines would serve on merchant ships, revealing themselves and doing battle with pirate crews if they landed. 
While the first few battles against pirate crews were indecisive, the sinking of a Siege-sail by a coordinated pirate fleet off of Raefel Island caused the Navy to double down on its efforts. The Suppression Fleet at its largest composed nearly a hundred ships, almost half the number of regular commerce ships transiting the Great Circle. By order of the First Princeps, the pirate fleet operating in Western Saibh was hunted to a man and destroyed, with no quarter given; in an act that would now be considered horrifying savagery, the pirate crew responsible for sinking the Redoubt were lowered into the water, tied to ropes, and intentionally fed to sharks. Pirate ships sunk by turret fire would see their survivors thrown back into the water to drown.
While this brutal campaign ended with the passing of the First Princeps, the pirate threat had been successfully eliminated across much of the Great Circular Trade Route, and are a distant memory for most. In the modern era, the Suppression Fleet is a mere four ships, sailing the Great Circle out of tradition, and as a way to train new sailors in basic naval operations.

Type

Navy

Founding

630

Overall training Level

Professional

Assumed Veterancy

Experienced

Used by

• Principality of Etoile