Fireside Friday, August 14, 2026 (On Financing Pre-Modern Navies)

Hey folks, fireside this week as I get ready for the start of a new semester! For this week, I wanted to talk briefly about the wrinkles that financing navies poses with regards to our worldbuilding primer on pre-modern armies. “what about navies?” has been a frequent question in comments and from patrons. Now a full answer to that question, I think, would require its own series – naval finance is complex – but I thought I would unspool a shorter ‘off the cuff’ answer. Nap time after a day of hard catwork (Ollie on the left, Percy on the right). One amusing cat fact is that Ollie and Percy are not litter-mates (Ollie is about a month older), despite their similar appearance. However, they were raised at the same shelter together as kittens, so they don’t know they’re not litter-mates and instead behave very much like they are (such as napping together). The first distinction we need to draw really clearly for this question is the difference between purpose-built warships and…