As in Poul Anderson's stories set on Avalon, knowledge of seamanship is evident.
A New Lemurian fighting ship:
thirty meters long;
broad beamed;
high prowed;
high sterned;
fiercely figure-headed;
two square-rigged masts;
also a fore-and-aft mizzen sail;
wheel-controlled central rudder;
magnetic compass;
cannon;
catapults;
mangonels;
few professional warriors;
mostly fishers, farmers, laborers and sailors with inherited weapons.
Details on every square inch of a page.
5 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
Professional, long service navies seemed to have come rather late in European history. Not till the 17th century, really, in my opinion. Before then, navies seemed to have been raised more or less in the improvised, ad hoc manner seen in STAR PRINCE CHARLIE.
Sean
Sean,
Hornblower becomes a professional gambler between wars.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
That I had not known or recalled. I did remember that Hornblower liked playing whist.
Sean
European navies had cores of "royal" ships long before they became fully professionalized; well back into the 1500's, in fact, as soon as broadside-firing cannon became important.
The basic problem was money; ships that did nothing but fight or get ready to fight were extremely expensive. They needed huge crews, as well -- ten times or more the number needed to -sail- the ship, which is why all navies have a tradition of obsessive cleaning and other "makework", to keep all those hands busy when they're not serving the guns.
Even in the classic age of sailing navies in the 18th and 19th centuries, most ships were kept "in ordinary" (laid up, with the armament stored) during peacetime, ready to be outfitted in time of war.
Likewise, crews were made up from civilians and pressed seamen when war came. Most of the work of manning the guns wasn't very complicated, though it required endless drill to do it really fast and well. Learning to handle sail aloft was much more demanding, which was why you needed as many men with experience as you could get.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
I did have, rather vaguely, in my mind that there were a few more or less permanent navy ships even in the 1500's.
I had forgotten or not known that peacetime navies of the 1700's and 1800's were kept "in ordinary," because it was so expensive to have a Navy. Hence the phenomenon I do recall of Hornblower being "beached" on half pay during interludes of peace during the Revolutionary/Napoleonic wars. Which explains why he eked out his half pay with professional gambling.
And naval ships needed far larger crews than civilian ships, contributing hugely to their cost, of course.
Sean
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