Why do so many sci-fi wargame designers seem obsessed with Q-Ships?
I'll forgive Dave Weber this once, partly because this book does at least make clear that the damn things are death traps, but mostly because it's a wonderful book. In fact this sixth book in the Honor Harrington saga is my personal favourite of the current 18 books which Weber and his co-authors have set in the "Honorverse".
The Honor Harrington universe or "Honorverse" is a wonderful space opera series set some three thousand years in the future and the eponymous heroine is one of David Weber's best fictional creations.
These books are best read in sequence and I strongly recommend that you start with "
On Basilisk Station (Honor Harrington)" which is the first one.
Most of the Honor Harrington stories are full of parallels with the time of the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars. In particular, the Royal Manticoran Navy in which the heroine is an officer is clearly based on the Royal Navy at the time of Nelson.
Technology of space travel and warfare in most of the Honor Harrington stories has been written so as to impose tactical and strategic constraints on space navy officers similar to those the technology of fighting sail imposed on wet navy officers two hundred years ago.
In this book however, and unlike the rest of the early books in the series, the main naval parallels are with a 20th century situation. Honor Harrington is commanding Q-ships, e.g. vessels based on one of the most crack-brained concepts from World War One era - and considering how many weird ship designs were sent into battle in the early 20th century, that's saying something!
This book also continues the pattern of thinly veiled (and amusing) hints in the stories that they are to some extent a tribute to C.S. Forester. The main heroine of the books, Honor Harrington, appears to owe more than just her initials to C.S. Forester's character "Horatio Hornblower." One of the in-jokes in this book is that another character actually gives Honor one of Forester's novels to read.
In this sixth book in the series, there is no sign of an end to the all-out war between Honor's home nation, "The Star Kingdom of Manticore," together with allies like Grayson in whose navy Honor has been serving, against the People's Republic of Haven or "Peeps." As the demands of the front line grow ever greater, Manticore has been forced to pull ships away from anti-piracy duties in other parts of the galaxy such as the Silesian Confederation. Space pirates have been taking full advantage of this and merchant losses have started to increase alarmingly.
A number of influential politicians and business people on Manticore who don't like Honor Harrington very much, but who nevertheless recognise that she is a first rate fighting commander, see an opportunity to use one problem to solve another. They let the Admiralty know that they will withdraw their opposition to Honor going back on active service in the Manticoran navy if they give her a squadron and send her to get rid of the pirates. There are no proper warships available, so all she can have is Q-ships. Whether Honor takes out the pirates, or they get rid of her, her domestic opponents come out ahead either way.
However, as usual, Honor's opponents, and a lot of other people, have badly underestimated her.
A word on Q-ships. This was a glamorous, but not terribly successful tactic used during the First World War to hunt German submarines (U-boats) and commerce raiders as a feeble alternative to the convoy system. The idea was to take an expendable merchant ship, arm her with lots of carefully concealed weapons, fill the hold with material lighter than water such as cork so she won't sink quickly when torpedoed, and sail her unescorted along a trade route looking like a big, fat, vulnerable target.
If a U-boat fired a torpedo at a Q-ship, the tactic was to try to deliberately ensure the torpedo hit, and then a "panic party" would dramatically take to the lifeboats, pretending to abandon ship, while the rest of the crew would wait for the submarine to surface to finish the supposedly abandoned ship with gunfire.
Sometimes a U-boat, seeing what looked like an easy target, would surface with the intention of sinking it with gunfire without wasting a torpedo, which greatly improved the Q-ship's chances of getting home. Either way, when a surfaced submarine came close, the Q-ship's concealed guns would suddenly open fire and hopefully sink the enemy.
Some very brave men served on Q-ships during WW1, and they earned between them no fewer than EIGHT Victoria Crosses. That's an amazing record of heroism for a comparatively small force.
But this bravery was much less effective than defeating the germans at sea than the convoy system was. Naval historian Deborah Lake quotes a detailed study of Kriegsmarine and RN records from which it was estimated that Q-ships sank a maximun of eleven U-boats and contributed to the destruction of two more, but at the price of 44 Q-ships lost. You can see why Honor's worst enemies would like the idea of giving her command of a squadron of them!
Perhaps the one wasted opportunity in this book: maybe it could have been dedicated to the brave men who risked their lives in Q-ships to keep the sea lanes open?
For anyone who wants to read more about the history of Q-Ships I can recommend Lake's book "
Smoke and Mirrors: Q-Ships against the U-Boats in the First World War."
"Honor among Enemies" is a very complex book: Honor has to deal with opponents back home, one or two nasty pieces of work on her own ship, a Manticoran merchant family who start out as deadly enemies, pirates, corrupt Silesian governors, and the Peeps.
Weber also moves the quality of his treatment of people on the opposing side into another gear: the development of characters on the Peep side goes beyond being just evil or honorable enemy figures to the point where some of them effectively become secondary heroes. Some of Honor's internal opponents also show that they are more than mere two-dimensional bad guys.
This was the book which persuaded me to raise my view of David Weber from thinking him an entertaining author to being, at his best, a first rate one.
A note on how this book fits into the series as a whole:
At the time of writing there are sixteen full length novels and five short story collections in the "Honorverse" as the fictional galaxy in which these stories are set is sometimes known. The main series which tells the story of Honor Harrington herself currently runs to twelve novels; in order these are
On Basilisk Station
The Honor of the Queen
The Short Victorious War
Field of Dishonour
Flag in Exile
Honor among Enemies
In Enemy Hands
Echoes of Honor
Ashes of Victory
War of Honor
At All Costs
Mission of Honor
The five collections of short stories set in the same universe, not all of which feature Honor Harrington herself, are
More Than Honor
Worlds of Honor
Worlds of Honor III: Changer of Worlds
Worlds of Honor IV: The Service of the Sword
In Fire Forged: Worlds of Honor V.
A new spin-off series set a few centuries earlier will be launched later this year with the novel "
A Beautiful Friendship, which is an extended version of the short story with the same name from "Worlds of Honor" and features Stephanie Harrington, a young girl from an ealier generation of Honor harrington's family who was the first person "adopted" by a Sphinx treecat.
The four spin-off novels in two groups of two which have already been published are "Crown of Slaves" (with Eric Flint) which is a story of espionage and intrigue featuring a number of characters first introduced in earlier Honor Harrington novels or "Honorverse" short story collections, and a sequel, "Torch of Freedom," and "The Shadow of Saganami" and its' sequel "Storm from the Shadows." The latter two represent a kind of "next generation" sequence set in the Talbott Sector featuring a number of younger officers in the navies of Manticore and her ally Grayson, and "Storm from the Shadows".
Ginger Lewis and Aubrey Wanderman, two of the principal characters from one of the main sub-plots in this book, "Honor among Enemies," turn up again in "The Shadow of Saganami" and Ginger has a minor part in "Storm from the Shadows."
For amusement, if you want to try to look for the parallels to nations and individuals from the French revolutionary period and the Hornblower books, one possible translation would be:
People's Republic of Haven = France
Star Kingdom of Manticore = Great Britain
Gryphon = Scotland
Grayson = Portugal
Prime Minister Alan Summervale = Pitt the Younger
Hamish Alexander, Earl White Haven = Admiral Edward Pellew
Honor Harrington = Horatio Hornblower
Alistair McKeon = William Bush
Crown loyalists and Centrists = Tory supporters of Pitt
Conservative Association = isolationist/hardline High Tories
New Kiev Liberals = Whig Oligarchists
Progressives and traditional liberals = Whig radicals
Legislaturist former rulers of Haven = Bourbon monarchy and French nobles
Rob S.
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