Okay, lacking in any area of knowledge about nautical stuff if Wyerth, I need some insight into the ships of this realm. How fast do they go, how much cargo do they carry, how long can they travel non-stop, how many crew members does it take(should there be a minimum and a maximum for this?), are they capable of being stocked with archers, or catapults, ballista, mangonels, etc.. and if so, how many? Which ships are ocean faring? Which are not? How much do these ships cost to buy? How much do they cost to crew, and to maintain?(the repair costs of sails, rigging, wood, etc)

After much talk with Mike Holmes on IRC, we came up with some historical ship types, like caravels and such, but I'm not sure the time periods of the late 1400's and of Wyerth at the recommended Wyerth time for starting a campaign are the same... *shrug*

Ideas? Suggestions?

-Ingenious

Some of this stuff will be in TFOB, assuming I ever finish writing the naval part.

Brian.

I'll be interested in how you handle ships, as in a homebrew I've also been confronted with the issue of how to design ships with a renaissance feel, but without the huge impact of gunpowder. Having caravel or even galleon class ships without having cannons makes for some real heavy speculation on naval tactics, since it's really unprecedented.

You need oars to ram effectively, but it would be very difficult to oar such a large ship with enough maneuverability and speed - and all of that extra crew might be difficult to maintain on the open ocean for long periods of time. Further, I suspect that siege weapons just aren't designed properly to really be effective against such large ships.

I think that light marines (does armor really pose a drowning hazard or is that a myth?) and boarding actions would really be the order of the day. There could also have developed merlins along shiptop to benefit the increased role of archery that might also have taken on.

Fire could also be a useful tool - in particular if something like Greek Fire could be brought to play, but uses of other burning materials might also be effective.

It's really a tough subject, IMO. Without gunpowder at the time, naval development would have really developed along drastically different lines. I think it's also an interesting one because the discovery of gunpowder, from what I understand, was somewhat of a accident of history, so this kind of alternate timeline could have been very possible in the past.

kenjib wrote: I think that light marines (does armor really pose a drowning hazard or is that a myth?) and boarding actions would really be the order of the day. There could also have developed merlins along shiptop to benefit the increased role of archery that might also have taken on.

Uh, no. There was a great deal of naval conflict before the invention of gunpowder, so there's no need for Weyrth to develop all that differently from Earth (unles we decide on something cooler). The sticker is that before gunpowder 90% of all naval conflicts were just that both ships sailed up to each other and boarded. The losing ship was either captured or fired.

Thus boarding actions are being worked in of course, but I kind of prefer the other kind of ship-ship combat, so there will be plenty of scope for ship-ship firing of siege weapons and such, plus of course there *is* gunpowder on Weyrth...

Having said all that, it's all pre-alpha at the moment anyway, so completely subject to change. And then it has to pass before Jake.

Brian.

Hello Brian,

Your point is why I was trying to extrapolate from those earlier kinds of bording actions into how they might have evolved in conjunction with medieval siegecraft and renaissance ship class technology if gunpowder had not existed (or was just on the cusp of emerging like in Weyrth).

The older ships you are referring to weren't as large and heavy, right? And they weren't as stable on the open seas as a caravel or galleon nor did they have the same kind of complexity in the rigging. It seems that things would change once these larger and more complicated ships become more prevalent and also when the technology of offense/defense escalates further along in the manner that it did in the medieval/rennaisance art of siege.

I agree that boarding actions would be the primary focus, but wouldn't that technology continue to improve past what we have known?

What I'm after myself, though, is kind of like a golden age of sail, but without gunpowder (certain technologies such as sailcraft advanced faster than on Earth for reasons particular to the world). How would naval combat have continued to evolve past what we see in the pre-gunpowder world of Earth had gunpowder not been discovered? Does Weyrth have such advanced shipbuilding? I suppose there's no compelling need for it to have it, but if you've got bigger ships than existed historically before gunpowder, and they don't have cannons, then things are probably going to be different from anything pulled directly from our history. No?

EDIT: Why wouldn't they have taken the castle technology that was developing and apply it to naval boarding operations? Likewise there might have been entirely new types of naval "siege" weapons.

I remember reading books that detailed greek ship combat, the using of battering-ram type apparati at the bow of these ships and sometimes they would be set on fire and then they were rowed and ramed into another ship. Also archers were used historically as well as arbalests and ballista type weapons to puncture holes in ships, and then the birth of gunpowder really triggered the advancements in naval history, after which you saw ships that were made to be faster to evade the broadside of a cannon equipped ship and also to manouver faster and easier into an advantageous firing position themselves. So depending on all of this, it will be interesting to see what Brian comes up with, if it passes muster with Jake... and also what hand I can play in all of this stuff.

-Ingenious

Not prone to post to myself too much, I think this situation warrants it.. however, anyone with access to a library or an encylcopedia would know this stuff:
Roman ships. The Romans chiefly used the same ships as the Greeks. They built the largest merchant fleet of ancient times. The largest of these measured 180 feet long and 45 feet wide, and could haul more than 1,000 tons of cargo and as many as 1,000 passengers.
Viking ships. Example: 78 feet long and 16 feet 9 inches wide. 16 oarsmen on port and starboard sides. Had a square sailed mast approximately 40 feet high and a steering oar to near the stern.

The all-important Cog. Standard merchant and warship of 1200-1400. They were ocean-faring vessels. These ships also had a structure called a castle at the prow and the stern. The forecastle at the prow, served as a platform from which marines could fire arrows or throw stones. The sterncastle provided shelter for important passengers. Cogs also used a rudder as a steering apparatus.(Invented around 1300)

Lateen rigged ships. Mediterranean design. The shipbuilding techniques for these ships became standard. They built a skeleton of keel and ribs first and then fastened the planks of the hull to the framework.(Like the skeleton of monocoque, semi-monocoque, and shell-based fuselages of any AIRCRAFT ironically). They also greatly increased the use of triangular sails called lateens. Square sails worked well with winds blowing from behind. But unlike lateen sails, did not work well sailing into the wind. Galleys had always been used in the Med, as cargo/passenger and warships. But about 1300 the use of cargo and merchant galles increased quickly. They used oars when there was no wind or when entering or leaving port. Most had two masts, with the forward mast carrying the larger sail. Some galley's had 3 masts. The merchant galleys could carry about 140 tons of cargo, and were longer and wider than the warships.

FULL RIGGED SHIPS. Mid-1400's Mediterranean shipbuilders combined the best features of the Cog, and the lateen-rigged ships. Resultant ship became standard throughout Europe for the next 300 years. Replaced steering oars with a rudder. Adopted forecastle and sterncastle of the cog. Most importantly, they changed the rig to gain more power and better maneuverability. The basic full-rigged ship, or square-rigger, had a main-mast in the middle of the ship, a foremast in the forward deck, and a mizzen-mast on the aft deck. The main and foremasts each carried a big square sail, and a smaller square sail above it. The mizzen-mast held a lateen sail(nudges ithron, thanaeon). A pole that stuck out from the bow carried a small square sail. These were the ships that Columbus, Vasco da Gama, Sir Francis Drake, and Megellan used.

Galleon's appeared during the mid 1500's, with East Indiamen around the 1600's... packet ships in the 1800's... clippers in the mid 1800's... etc etc etc.

Hope ANY of this helps, and isn't just wasted space.
-Ingenious
::edited to ask this question,
With all of the complexity of ships, would it not be reasonable for me to create a bird's eye view of a ship, its decks, shape, rigging, mast positions, sails, quarters, cargo areas, and possibly side views with that?
(I have AutoCAD2000LT so I can easily use that to draft it all so it looks professional)

A couple of representation of the Battle of Sluys, one of the more famous naval engagements of the middle ages.
http://www.english.upenn.edu/~jhsy/battle-sluys.html

Not all medieval combat vessels were sailing vessels; the reason for the Battle of Sluys is that that Philip was assembling a force of galleys, which were still the dominant naval superiority weapon.

Kenjib asked: " Why wouldn't they have taken the castle technology that was developing and apply it to naval boarding operations? "

They did - that is why these ships have a forecastle and aftcastles, although they are not much apparent in the images above. Here is a brief link on the topic: http://cma.soton.ac.uk/HistShip/shlect88.htm#BL113

Stepping away from history and towards fantasy, I'm enjoying this image I'm getting of these great floating fortresses with fast sail and oar ships with marines on board, catapults at high sea, and some fool swashbuckling up the walls of a three masted, two towered galleon to do battle with the captain of the castle...ship....thing.

There's one hugely important distnction that was sorta mentioned above but is getting glossed over. In all the time periods were talking about there are basically two kinds of ships. Galleys and Sailing ships.

Galleys have sails, but that's not their main means of propulsion. They're driven by manpower at oars instead. Galleys are excellent for fighting for several reasons, mainly in that they can go faster (in the short run) and out-maneuver sailing vessels. They're also much, much cheaper to build. Combat with Galleys is mostly about ramming the opponent and boarding as described, but not entirely. There was fire from catapults and balistae, etc. This wasn't all that effective, but it was important. Flaming materials could catch a ship on fire, and that could put one out of commission for a battle (or even destroy it if fire control becomes a problem. Even bowfire was important. This is true from ancient times through the renaisance. Only after cannon are really widespread do catapults completely dissapear off of ships.

The big problem with Galleys is that they can't go out in the ocean. If/when they do, the capsize. They can stick near coasts, but that means that any oceangoing vessel can evade them with ease. For this reason you mostly see Galleys on the seas. The Mediterranean, Black Sea, Red Sea, etc. Outside of there, you need oceangoing vessels, or sailing ships.

With these vessels, there's no ramming because it's just too difficult to accomplish to any effect. Instead, there's the same fire portion of combat, and then boarding. So, very much so, the location of the battle is going to tell you alot about tactics. You don't take your expensive sailing ships into the Mediterranean because they'll get rammed and sink. Not appreciably more than with Galleys, but given the tremendous expense of sailing ships, it's just not econmic to trade them even one for one with galleys.

The Sultan of the Ottoman empire had galleys on the seas until the 1800's, IIRC. The Barbary pirates that attacked US commerce used galleys.

Note how ingenious the Viking design is, then. Essentially small enough to be a combination of galley and sailing vessel.

Mike

Well, concerning how sailing ships are more about the ocean, and how battles will needs tactics and such, I think this idea is good. There's a sea tactics skill I beleive. However, how detailed are we going to get with ships then? Can't we make diagrams for people to download to use as a reference as to where characters are on the ships, where did that catapulted boulder land?, where a hail of missile fire hit, etc?

More so than just tactics though, are how skilled your sailors are, if they don't know how to tack into the wind effectively, run with it, etc... I'd say they wouldn't be very effective in combat.

Just some more thoughts.
-Ingenious