Interesting things that could happen on a ship

HourglassMemory · Dec 1, 2007

I'm really really really sorry if this isn't the forum where I should be creating this thread.

I'm currently thinking of interesting stuff that could happen when a group of scientists is on a ship heading blindly towards the horizon.
Their objective is simply to find land. But obviously they can't just find it right away!
I want to entertain the reader with a few events before they find land.
The ship looks a lot like those 17th century ships, but it's a bit futuristic.

This is the sort of stuff I've already come up with:

It stops working in the middle of the ocean.
They can explore underwater.
They can find big sea creatures and other aquatic beings. Tehse could be studied, since 1 character is a biologist.
They can go through a storm
They can face water spouts
They can gain extraordinary speed at one point (just for the show)
They can find a floating nest of birds and the birds start attacking them because they got too close.
A large hall inside the ship has a transparent floor.

Then it's little stuff like having breakfast on an open balcony on the side of the ship.

What do you think would be interesting stuff that could happen on a trip like that. What stuff could happen until they found land?
Even creatures. What sort of creatures would you think would be cool to find on a trip like that? Peaceful creatures, evil creatures... it's your choice.

And this is a fantasy world sort of planet, so the creatures and the events can be really weird and extreme.

RLB · Dec 1, 2007

Pirates!

maestrowork · Dec 1, 2007

Bad shrimp. And no toilet paper.

HourglassMemory · Dec 1, 2007

RLB said:
Pirates!

Sorry, pirates are not going to show up.
The sea is unexplored. ehy're the first to roam these waters!
Something I've already scraped from the list is finding floating civilizations.
I think those two things have been just overused.

But thank you for replying anyway!!!

And bad shrimps does make me think about food...

Chasing the Horizon · Dec 1, 2007

What could possibly happen would depend to some degree on what type of ship exactly you're talking about. You said it's like a 17th century ship, but then you said it could 'stop working'. Ships in the 17th century were wind powered, so they couldn't just break down (the equivalent of 'breaking down' for a wind powered ship would be losing a mast, but it takes a pretty drastic event to break a mast). If the ship has engines but just looks like a 17th century ship, then I suppose there would be more mechanical things that could go wrong (though to actually look like a 17th century sailing ship, it would have to have masts and sails, and thus could switch to wind power if the engines broke down).

Anyway, regardless of what kind of ship it actually is there's really a limited number of things that can happen far out to sea. My first thought was that they could encounter intelligent deep sea dwelling creatures. The creatures somehow capture the ship and those aboard, and put your group of scientists in an underwater 'air tank' (like how we put fish in an aquarium, only reversed) and study them. I personally find the idea of scientists being studied in a tank quite amusing. Eventually they could either be let go or escape, get their ship back from the creatures, and continue on their way. *shrug* Sounds more interesting than pirates or storms or mechanical issues, at least to me.

rwam · Dec 1, 2007

If these are unexplored seas, I can imagine a strange bird or something coming into contact with the ship & crew....causing an outbreak of some type of contagious disease.

Death Wizard · Dec 1, 2007

They slowly begin to realize that something just out of sight below the surface is following them. And it's very, very large.

Perle_Rare · Dec 1, 2007

It can hit something and spring a leak (read iceberg and Titanic), sending everyone madly trying to fix it before the ship sinks.

How is navigation done? If it's not by GPS, give them a few days of overcast weather and have the current pull them away from where they think they are.

Running out of fresh water is always a fun one when there's no rain for several days.

Weevils in the ship biscuit. Speaking of which, what's the diet on board? How long are they gone for? Can scurvy rear its ugly head?

You could have severe disagreements on board. I'm assuming it's close quarters for everyone and very little privacy so that tends to mean there's going to be some fights. You could even throw in a mutiny while you're at it!

Give them situations where the reader is concerned about the scientists' survival so it doesn't just feel like a pleasure cruise.

I have to say I like Hope's scientists in a 'air tank' idea too!

sulong · Dec 1, 2007

The way the ship is powered is important. If it's sail, then you have constant maintenance and upkeep to the sails and rigging. Sails can split at the seams, or even be torn outright in heavy wind. Also a sudden shift of wind direction can be catastrophic to a sailing vessel if the crew are unprepared for it. Depending on the length of time on the voyage, at some point resupply problems will come up. What happens if the food supply or the fresh water supply becomes contaminated? Lots of sailors have died from thirst and starvation during a passage.

If not a sailing ship, then I don't know.

Akuma · Dec 1, 2007

Scurvy.

san_remo_ave · Dec 1, 2007

rwam said:
If these are unexplored seas, I can imagine a strange bird or something coming into contact with the ship & crew....causing an outbreak of some type of contagious disease.

An albatross. Like The Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner.

which leads to...

MUTINY?!?!

lfraser · Dec 1, 2007

Doldrums. As in stuck. Then they run out of booze. Tempers flare, hopes fade, rivalries breed, couples split, rumours start, and someone starts killing off the scientists one by one.

or, something nasty presses its face to the glass floor you mentioned.

or, staring out to the horizon, the lookout sees another ship coming towards them. Wait, it's them, a doppelganger ship, and it's already been where they're going, and it isn't a very nice place.

JohnDavidPaxton · Dec 1, 2007

To be blunt: If you're writing a fantasy landscape and you're setting up a "this is all new" scenario, you shouldn't be asking anyone else what could happen in your imaginary world. You're imagining it. You have the ideas and the characters. Even if someone comes up with THE BEST idea for your world, it's someone elses and you're just going to squeeze it in and try and make it fit.

My advice is take a step back, maybe read some classic explorer in an unknown land stories from the 50's (star with Doyle and then saunter about), and then think about your odyssey.

That, or have a giant shark attack them and have the biologist say "we're going to need a bigger boat."

Ziljon · Dec 1, 2007

Why not have them come upon not "land," but some enormous rocks jutting up out of the ocean inhabited only by birds. Maybe one or two scientists is set down to explore during a dead calm, then a black squall hits out of nowhere and the main ship is blown far away, stranding the two scientists on the rock for days in the scorching heat--maybe one dies.

Gives you an opportunity for some interesting scientific discoveries and maybe even some philosophy while the ship labors perilously against the wind, tack upon tack, to pluck them off the rock.

Sometime separating your team is a useful technique to get to know individual characters better.

Akuma · Dec 1, 2007

sanremoave said:
An albatross. Like The Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner.

which leads to...

MUTINY?!?!

Oh, hey, an albatross is leading us back to civilization and hope--I think I'll shoot it!

Oh shi--

Varthikes · Dec 1, 2007

Could have them stumble upon an inter-dimensional/temporal rift, which brings forth a vessel from a different era--the Flying Dutchman perhaps.

chroniclemaster1 · Dec 2, 2007

There was a post about the weather making it impossible to guide by the stars, and another about rocks just jutting up out of the water. The first makes me think of Capt. Worsley's description of the open boat journey that he, Ernest Shakleton, and another crew member made that saved the entire expedition. An excellent account of an amazing expedition that might give you a lot of ideas. Hold on.

Got it, Shakleton's Boat Journey by F. A. Worsley, but Amazon has no copies from resellers or otherwise.

It may be a b@#$% to get a hold of.

The second makes me think of Myst. The original version of the computer game. Maybe they have to navigate through the rocks, get stuck and wend their way down into tunnels that lead to...

Someone also mentioned a mast breaking wouldn't be believable. They haven't spent much time aboard ship. The cedars of Lebanon aren't there anymore because it was the Phonenician heartland and they were ship builders. Putting wood on water is a recipe for disaster and as every naval power in history has learned, you have to completely rebuild the thing every so often. Maybe this is a very old ship that's coming apart. Ghost story anyone?

blacbird · Dec 2, 2007

Read:

A Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym, by Edgar Allan Poe
The Boats of the 'Glen Carrig', by William Hope Hodgson
A High Wind in Jamaica, by Richard Hughes
The Sea-Wolf, by Jack London
Mutiny on the Bounty, by Nordhoff and Hall
Moby Dick, Billy Budd (and a half-dozen other novels), by Herman Melville
Lord Jim (and a half-dozen other novels), by Joseph Conrad

. . . for a start.

caw

JimmyB27 · Dec 2, 2007

HourglassMemory said:
I'm currently thinking of interesting stuff that could happen when a group of scientists is on a ship heading blindly towards the horizon.
Their objective is simply to find land. But obviously they can't just find it right away!

(Bolding mine)

Why not? If your story is about whatever they are going to do when they finally find land, why can't the trip be dull and non-eventful? You can just skip over it in the narrative and pick up at the point they hit land, and get on with the real story. Trying to find something to jam in while they're at sea smells a little of filler to me.

Evaine · Dec 2, 2007

Back in the sixties, there was an Australian kids' TV series called Barrier Reef, which was about a scientific sailing ship (so you got all the sails and rigging, and loads of hi-tech stuff below decks - the ship could be sailed by four people, I seem to remember). They were investigating, as the title suggests, the Great Barrier Reef around Australia, and they seemed to be able to find interesting things to do each week.

aadams73 · Dec 2, 2007

You say it's unexplored ocean? How about mirages? The ship heads towards what it thinks is land but turns out to either be a) more water, or b) something more sinister.

Bufty · Dec 2, 2007

If it's Fantasy or Futuristic the possibilities are limited only by your imagination, Hourglass Memory. It's your story and it should be your imagination that drives it.

Homewrecker · Dec 2, 2007

I'm reminded of Hitchcock's Lifeboat.

Project Gutenberg's always fun for free reading. I've found several public domain books in my researching with sexy titles like "Travels in West Africa (Congo Francasis, Corisco, and Cameroons)" by Mary H Kingsley 1897 or "Wanderings Among South Sea Savages and in Borneo and the Philippines" by H. Wilfrid Walker which are travel diaries.

They aren't going to be exactly what you're looking for (I don't think you'd want that anyway) but I find them great fodder for priming the imagination pump.

Cheers

The_Grand_Duchess · Dec 2, 2007

When I read the original post I was thinking that this would be great as a sort of Dinotopia esque book with journal entries and goregous illustrations on every page. That's just me. Just sharing.

Things that can happen? Ummm, I think that everything has been mentioned. Maybe they adopt a friendly sea creature as a pet?

preyer · Dec 2, 2007

mermaids, man. nah, that'd suck.

sailors are notoriously superstitious people. the reason mastheads are of half naked women is from the idea that a woman baring her breasts will create wind. some sailors would get big crosses tattooed on their backs in case their bodies washed ashore they could get the proper burial. ropes purchased from a soothsayer would be knotted, untying one knot created a mild wind, two strong winds, and three basically a typhoon.

seemingly, there was quite a bit of order even on pirate ships. no fighting was a big rule. it should be easy to dredge up the typical set of accords most pirate crews went by.

i always default to a bermuda triangle thing.

a derelict ship full of corpses always intrigues me.

it doesn't always have to be taken to the nth degree. just spending some time getting to know the ship itself is interesting to me.

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