Designing ships for my fantasy

I'm far from a ship expert, but I think you'd need to decide on the weather and height of waves and a fun resource (not sure how accurate, but seems pretty good for the things I have looked up) is the computer game, "Sid Meier's Pirates." There's a pirate-o-pedia that describes the different ships, speeds, cargo capacity, sailing preferences etc. There's probably a wiki about it on line, so you probably wouldn't have to buy the game, but it is a fun game.

efreysson said:

The setting tech-level is roughly analogous to the 11th century and ships rarely stray far from the coast, but I'm not sure what else to give up that might affect development.

Any advice? Tips? Links to sites amateurs will understand?

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Some would say this is a wives' tale -- the argument is, sailors, of all people, are in fact the ones who know, and have known for eons, that 'close to shore' is the most dangerous place in the sea due to tidal currents, sand or gravel barres, rocks, etc. You mentioned the 11th century, and that is the heyday of the Vikings, who sailed to Iceland, Greenland and the North American mainland in that time-frame.

Possibly what you're thinking of is 'within sight of land', navigating from landmark to landmark, rather than 'close to shore', which suggests 'hugging the coastline', which would put you at risk of the rocks, sandbars, outflows, deadheads, etc. ?

efreysson said:

The setting tech-level is roughly analogous to the 11th century and ships rarely stray far from the coast, but I'm not sure what else to give up that might affect development.

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GeorgeK said:

...a fun resource (not sure how accurate, but seems pretty good for the things I have looked up) is the computer game, "Sid Meier's Pirates."...

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I believe Sid Meier's Pirates is set around the 17th/18th century, by which time ships were quite different to the 11th century.

Ships in the 11th century in Europe are Viking style. See the Bayeux “tapestry” (actually an embroidery) for some examples from around 1066. Those are mostly war ships with oars all down their length. The Gokstad ship, buried around 800 ad, is very similar to the ones on the Bayeux embroidery.

Viking ships were not transatlantic as later ships were. But they did make it all the way to Canada by going from one point of land to another with no more than, usually, 4 or so days at sea at a time. They’d set out from Norway to the Orkneys or Faeroes and then head to Iceland and then to Greenland and then follow the current around to Labrador and Newfoundland. One of the Sagas has directions for making the voyage from Norway to Greenland.

The Norse had many different sizes of ships for different uses. Hauling cargo, fighting, fishing, etc. Vessels from the 120 foot long high status war ship found in the Roskilde fjord (so large that at first they thought it was two ships) all the way down to a two-strake one person boat. Plus wide, fat ships with few oar ports to carry lots and lots of cargo.

What do you want for your story?

Viking style ships do well in heavy seas, but you wouldn’t want to make a steady diet of it as they did not have bailing pumps and all the water that could easily wash into the open ship had to be hand bailed back out again by the crew. And hope you can keep up with it!

If you’re going to have your characters fighting from Viking style ships, I highly recommend you read the sagas for some descriptions of sea battles.

ULTRAVIKING

efreysson said:

Well, the setting I'm specifically thinking of for the WIP is a large inland sea with a lot of trade, and therefore ships suited to the task. The story doesn't include warships or ship-to-ship combat; The main characters swim to a transport ship close to shore and attack the crew.

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If you want viking style ships, then you probably want to research knarrs and karves. Those were the large transport ships.

W. Hodding Carter sailed a knarr named the Snorri from Greenland to L'Anse aux Meadows, Newfoundland and wrote a book about it called A Viking Voyage.

There's also an online journal.

There are two knarrs at the Roskilde Ship Museum in Denmark. They built a replica of one called the Ottar and another called theRoar Ege. I've sailed on the Roar Ege.

You might also want to think about fishing vessels.


While a knarr certainly could be anchored away from shore, they also could be pulled up onto the beach to be unloaded and that wouldn't have been uncommon to get horses and cattle out of the ship. Just FYI if your story could use attacking a beached ship instead of one out in the water.

If you attack a ship anchored out in the water, your characters wouldn't need to do much swimming as Viking style ships have very shallow keels and a knarr could be anchored in less than six feet of water, no problem. They're not like later ships from Master and Commander that need dozens of feet of water for their very deep keels.

Mind you, it's a bit of a haul to get yourself from the water up over the gunwhale. We practice man overboard drills in the Longship Company and it's alot easier with the onboard crew helping out. You cannot do it without rocking the boat and alerting the crew.

If they live around an inland lake, there are probably smaller boats around that they could use to row out to the anchored ship. It's easier to get from a boat to a ship quickly than from the water to the ship. The culture will have small boats--from between two to ten oars--that will be used by families or as afterboats that would be lying around beached for your characters to "borrow" if you want.

If you decide to go with Viking style ships feel free to PM me with questions.

Regards!

efreysson said:

The setting tech-level is roughly analogous to the 11th century and ships rarely stray far from the coast, but I'm not sure what else to give up that might affect development.

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Their ships were capable of crossing the atlantic at that time, the problem was navigation. They hadn't figured out how to navigate by the stars yet.