Ships Of Cerilia

[lord_arioch]

I did a little research on the topic of the development of the sailing ship. The carrack was an improvement (for war) of the Caravel and lead to the development of the galleon.
Perhaps all the "galleons" in Anuire should be carracks and all roundships should be galleons.

I plan to explain my point further with a later post.

Just wanted some feedback.

[RaspK_FOG]

Without further information/notes, I don't know what to say...

[Raesene Andu]

A good site to research ships (one of the best I found anyway)
http://www.grinda.navy.ru:8101/sailship/sh...p/shipanote.htm

Unfortunately the english version of the site is not as complete as the russian version yet.

[irdeggman]

Originally posted by lord_arioch@Nov 25 2003, 03:32 PM
I did a little research on the topic of the development of the sailing ship. The carrack was an improvement (for war) of the Caravel and lead to the development of the galleon.
Perhaps all the "galleons" in Anuire should be carracks and all roundships should be galleons.

I plan to explain my point further with a later post.

Just wanted some feedback.

Now regardless of the historical accuracy of this issue (I'm assuming it is accurate by the way), one of the reasons to keep the ships designated the way they are is for cultural issues. Only the Brecht make roundships, the Khinasi carracks and the Anuireans are the primary builders of the galleons. Keeping these distinctions helps with cultural lines and flavor.

[lord_arioch]

A good site to research ships (one of the best I found anyway)
http://www.grinda.navy.ru:8101/sails.../shipanote.htm

Wow, that is an excellent site!

The classification and size of ships is a tough topic. Galleons ranged in size from perhaps 200 upwards of 3000 tons(or more). The Carrack had a similar range.

As for cultural flavour, the brecht would design a flatter bottomed hull which would make their galleon with a larger cargo capacity. The carrack is similar to the galleon except for the massive fore and aft castles on the carrack making it the ideal warship. The castles make the carrack top heavy and less seaworthy than the galleon.

I think it should be possible for a regent to build large ships. As an example, I equate one hull point for 100 tons.
The Anuirean galleon (or carrack as I call it) would be roughly a 600 ton ship. If a regent wanted to build a 1200 ton galleon then it would cost twice as much.

The rules for the ships in birthright need to be touched up a bit (eg. all ships loose their rams, except the Sepents galleys).

I am by no means an expert in this matter. I just hope to help bring revision through discussion. B)

[Osprey]

The real problem in dealing with ships is the lack of cannons in the warships being built. By the time galleons were afloat, cannons were standard armament. With cannons, rams would be pretty obsolete. But until that time, ramming and boarding would still be primary means of fighting in ship-to-ship combat, I would think.

I've run into a lot of contradictions when researching ships of the medieval and early Renaissance. There doesn't seem to be a lot of agreement on classification and evolution...I think because the naval history gurus are a fractured lot of historians, maritime archeologists, and naval buffs who all have different ideas of which ships came when, how shipbuilding evolved, etc...it's not until Renaissance and later that there starts to be much agreement about ship nomenclature.

What I've discovered is that a cog is a distinctly medieval, northern European ship. A small tub of a ship really, though they did have the distinct fore and aft castles in most cases (which are few). Which would include Brecht culture for certain, but also English, French, Dutch, etc. Caravels get sticky...I've read some pretty contradictory stuff on what exactly a caravel is...it seems a loose term for a variety of medieval ships, thanks to no standardization in shipbuilding.

Same for carracks...I've read some descriptions that place them before caravels, others that put them after. Who to believe?

Galleons seem to be pretty agreed upon, however, as a late medieval/early Renaissance development. Most accounts I've read make them much more sleek, seaworthy, better designed, and always equipped with cannons. They seem to be the first generation of dependably seaworthy ships of decent size. Certainly they were the dominant warships and seagoing cargo ships of the Age of Exploration (16th and 17th centuries).

For Birthright, though, we need to adapt a fantasy element of sailing ships that developed without cannons, if we're sticking to the no-gunpowder rule. Part of that concept must take into account the fact that cannons were extremely heavy! A 30-gun galleon would have to be designed with that in mind - i.e., built to hold all that top-heavy weight. I think that's one of the main reasons ships kept getting bigger. The need to carry more cannons to protect all that precious cargo. Especially when we're talking about the big galleons of the Spanish Main, or a few other grand Renaissance warships.

All that mass in an Anuirean galleon would probably be redistributed for troop fighting capacity (deck space, castles, battlements on every inch of the fighting deck, perhaps arrow loops instead of gun ports along the sides&#33. I've been struggling to figure out how 3 companies of troops could all fight at once ona galleon. Stll struggling, in fact, so if anyone's got any ideas, I'm all ears. The arrow slits along the sides is the best answer I've come up with so far.

Besides that, I'd say ballistae and catapults would have to round out a galleon's armament. Rotating mounts would be a necessity. In my campaign, I've had galleons euipped with fore and aft heavy catapults, and several mid-ship ballista (perhaps 2 on each side).

The real issue is: oars and ramming. Currently, Anuirean galleons are described as rowed warships - they sail for distance, and reef for battle and put out the oars. But the number of rowers for such a large ship would mean a huge extra crew requirement, and it would be like maneuvering a tub. Galleys are good oared warships (Khinasi-style, I'd imagine), but galleons? Good ocean-going sailing ships would not be ideal for rowing, would they? Not to mention the provisions and bunk requirements for all those extra crewmen. Not very feasible for long-distance voyages, is it, after throwing in 3 companies of troops?

Well, there's some thoughts to chew on, anyways.

[teloft]

I like to see some more relistic ship rules.

where I could recreate the battle of salamis

http://www.grecoreport.com/kitsos_on_the_s..._of_salamis.htm

2 fleets of raming ships
the largefleet having x3 or x4 times more ships, but it still losses the battle to the smaller fleat.

h34r:


btw read this link of the ship page earlyer mentiond

http://www.grinda.navy.ru:8101/sailship/sh...hip/dromone.htm


Ill Quote the howl thing here: Note the Bold words

After the fall of the Eastern Roman Empire the struggle on the Mediterranean Sea was held between Byzantine and the Arab world. The dromon became the main type of ships at that time and besides, both opposing sides used them. She was a war ship who dismissed biremes and liburnas. Firstly the dromon was launched about the 6th century A. D. and was used in different variants up to the 12th century. We little know about this ship, however the Byzantine manuscript dated by the year of 850 contains an engraving with the dromon of that period. Her construction resembles that of the bireme with two rows of rowers. She had two masts with Latin sails on them. But the first vessels of such a type had only one row of rowers and they looked like a liburna with a single mast. Later on two- and three-masted dromons appeared. Their length was varied from 30 to 50 m, the width - from 6 to 7 m. There were helms on the stern - one at each side of a board. The ships had sharp forms and were sufficiently fast. The crew consisted of from 100 to 300 people depending on dimensions of a ship. There was another ship in Byzantine called heladion, but we know quite less about her than about the dromon. The dromon's keel ended by an underwater ram just like for the bireme. The main weapons on the dromon were catapults, which threw fiery shells at a great distance. On the bow and the stern parts of the vessel there were raised decks for bowmen. Powerful and heavy catapults had a possibility to throw shells with the weight of 500 kg at the distance of 1 000 m. Dromons were also armed by light flame-throwers (syphonopho-rami), which flooded enemy ships by fluid burning mass (Greek fire) consisted of tar, sulphur and nitre dissolved in oil. At slight contact with water this fluid blazed up. Such a fire only flamed up in extinguishing by water and it was put out only by wine, vinegar or sand. The precise consistence of such a mixture as well as a construction of weapons did not come to us. Dromons were defended by metal armour against enemy's rams.

h34r:

I remember a story about chinis Empire. Where thay had large war ships, with the best seaworthyness seen in the world. But then the empire sayd thet he had no intrest in the sea, and retierd the navy. The only resanable large ships were the royal plesure crousers.

and the shipindustry and knowlege about it sufferd.

h34r:

[RaspK_FOG]

Teloft, you gave there two excellent examples of sea-battling history. As a Greek, I happen to know of both situations...

• In the 1st occasion, we have two fleets: the persian, and the athenean.
  
  While the persian fleet had many more ships than the athenean, the latter had a great advantage, since the persian warships were too large when compared to the greek ones; thus, they were much slower.
  
  The Atheneans used a simple tactic, since the sea near Salamis is not to be trusted. The "tubs", as Osprey, nicely put it, had a difiiculty at manoeuvering and finally lost the battle.
  
  
• On the other hand, the Byzantin Empire had the advantage of basing its naval technology on the native greek and ionian civilizations, which were both seaworthy from quite early (since they both are islandic and peninsular folks).
  
• As for the catapult, there is something that troubles me here... I don't know how many of you are aware of this, but the word catapult is a paraphrase of the greek word katapeltis (kataPEltis, e as in red, and i as in ship). The original meaning is what is now known as a ballista, also a paraphrasr of the word vallistra, which originally meant what is known as a catapult! I don't know if there is a confusion here...
  
• As a last note, we don't know the exact nature of greek fire.

[Athos69]

One sure way to tell the difference between a Caravel and a Cog is in the hull construction. The Cog was merely a larger build based on the same old technology as teh earlier longships -- the hull sheathing was built in a clinker style, with each successive plank was overlapped on top of the one below it.

The Caravel had smooth sides, and each plank was butted up against the last, then sealed through the action of water swelling the wood into a tight seal. Some tar was used in between the planks to ensure a waterproof seal.

The Galleon and larger ships used the new Caravel-style technology.

[lord_arioch]

It seems the more I look into the history of sailing ships the more I realize I know very little of the history of the sailing ships !
Well said by OSPREY regarding the historical accuracy of ships. There is a lot of contradictory info out there.

I think I will content myself with a revision of the explanations given of the Cerilian ships and a touch up on their MC. To me a galleon with a MC of B is hard to believe. As for armaments, I think the ballista (very large crossbow) would be the only weapon allowed on ships with lots of sail.

Anyways, I'll see what I come up with .