I'm exploring the idea of a arid, balkanised, TL 3-4 world. There are no oceans or seas but a large relatively shallow river that provides a strategic transport conduit linking many city states. I like the image of Mississippi-style riverboats with cannons instead of multi-mast gallions and clippers as the top-of-the-line wet navy warship. Inferior ships are usually oar-powered. Being an arid world there is no real wood grown locally, but there are copious amounts of reeds and bamboo. Would these ships be made of reed and bamboo, iron-clad reed and bamboo, or would it be economical to import wood from offworld and have iron-clad wood? (Remember they do have to support a steam engine.) Or does this idea not float?
Major thread resurrect. Hemdian, you appear to still be frequenting the Forum, so I was wondering if you had done anything more with this idea, which I like.
I am putting together a new sector, a distance towards the Rim, and while I would have to see if I already have a world something like this in it, if I do not, I might add one to it. The sector has been tampered with by the Krell, between 300,000 and 200,000 years ago, before they committed racial suicide, so it has a lot of inhabitable planets with Terran flora and fauna on them, from circa 250,000 years ago. However, the Krell never transported the Neanderthals to the area. The Bald Space Rover, aka Baldies, did transport small numbers of human into the area for manual labor circa 15,000 years ago, so they would be modern Homo Sapiens. The slaves were not trained or taught any technical skills, and in some cases, the Baldies set them down with very limited supervision to act as a sort of preparatory colony, and then they self-destructed. Some of the colonies advanced then died out for various reasons, but some managed to survive, albeit with some very odd forms. (Remember some of the Star Trek episodes of extremely advanced being playing God, or actually being the ancient Greek Gods.) There are quite a few Class "E" ad "X" star port worlds, so limiting outside information would not be a problem.
With respect to your world ideas. If you have a large river such as you describe, you will have wood in some form, as the water table in the vicinity of the river is going to be sufficient for trees. The Egyptians had large stands of date palms, but never introduced timber trees, contenting themselves with the desert acacia, and corresponding limited timber length. They did have bamboo and also the papyrus reed, which was used quite heavily in the making of reed boats as well as papyrus paper. South of Khartoum, you also have the Sudd region on the White Nile, a vast region of marshes, vegetation islands, and papyrus swamp. Samual Baker's book,
Ismalia, gives in its opening chapters a description of operating on the river. The book may be downloaded at Project Gutenberg.
As for the gunboats, the Union armored river gunboats had a draft of 6 feet, which I would assume would allow similar ships to operate on your river. A description of the building and operations of the ships can be found in Volume One of
Battles and Leaders of the Civil War, which can be downloaded from archive.org. I would recommend the copies from Cornell University, although those from the Boston Public Library could also be used. Just look for volumes that have star ratings. I have been reviewing them. For data on circa Civil War ordnance, it would be impossible to beat Alexander Holley's
A treatise on ordnance and armor, which includes drawings of the river gunboats. Again, look for volumes with the star ratings.
With respect to the idea of napalm, that requires a couple of things which might not be present. First, it is gasoline-based, requiring a source of both petroleum and a means of refining it. I am not too sure about an arid planet having large deposits of petroleum. There may have been some refining or distilling of gasoline prior to 1860, I am thinking Greek Fire here, but it was not really visible to historians. Any reasonably effective cannon could seriously outrange the probable catapults that would be used to toss fire bombs, unless used in an ambush. A width of 10 miles, as I believe one of your posts mentions, would also prove to be a major problem.
I can also see large number of mangrove trees being found on the river banks, giving some periodic flooding. Those would also be a source for both building material and fuel. This would be in addition to any bamboo or other sources.
Edit Note: I would be sadly remiss if I did not include two other readily downloadable resources on artillery circa 1860.
Ordnance Instructions for the United States Navy. 1866. Fourth edition.
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/19058/19058-h/19058-h.htm
The ordnance manual for the use of the officers of the United States Army. 1861 edition
https://archive.org/details/cu31924031187887
There are other resources online if you want information on them.