[HR] Naval Rules

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The best information I’ve found so far on cargo ships came from Lionel Casson’s dissertation, which was published by Yale. He used references from Greek and Roman sources to extrapolate information on merchant galleys. One of the vaguer ones is the lembas, which was a 50-oar galley that carried 25 tons of cargo.

However, far more detailed was the curcuros. This was a broad range of ships, which (according to source material) varied from around 9,000 to 18,000 artabs. From other sources, it is known that 40 artabs equal a modern ton (so these ships ranged from 225 to 450 tons burden, or around 375 to 750 tons displacement). It’s also known that a cubic cubit was considered to be 3 3/8 artabs, and that 10 cubic cubits is 1 cubic meter. Casson knew that merchant galleys had a beam:length ratio of about 6:1 (compared to 10:1 for war galleys), and that merchant galleys had their maximum beam for about 70% of their length, and that they had around a 2 meter depth of hold. Based on this, he estimated the size of a 750 displacement ton curcuros at 50 meters long and 7.7 meters maximum beam.

I’m still waiting for an opportunity to examine The Archaeology of the Roman Economy, which I am hoping will help further with developing non-warships. Honestly, though, the developments were so relatively minor from Greek to Medieval times (compared to the massive changes wrought by gunpowder and the need for gunports), that most sailing ships at this level of granularity have no distinguishing characteristics by era.

Also, there is a 10 that I forgot - ideas for nonhuman ships. This is partially done.

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#1 (ship hull points) is done. #8 (ramming and shearing) is done (shearing can be a captain’s choice of attack or a random critical). #5 (sailing) is mostly done. #6 (using stone) is just a math change, and I have started recording things in stone rather than pounds or tons, using a 10 pounds to 1 stone ratio (or 200 stone to 1 ton when working with larger numbers). I think I will just live with #9 (the speed chart) unless I get some sudden spark of inspiration. It is mildly clunky on the bookkeeping side, but it works well enough as a unified mechanic that I don’t have a better replacement.

#2 (ship tonnages) I need to sit down and work math on; I was traveling for work last week, and didn’t have a chance to do any reading or number crunching. This goes likewise for #3 (number of marines that can comfortable fit on deck). #4 (siege engines on deck) may need to wait for D@W’s release, since I’ll want to utilize that information as best as possible.

#7 (masts) I will possibly get to this weekend. I’m still mulling over ideas.

#10 (ships for other races) has a tiny bit of work done so far. There’s a special piece of equipment for elves, and a type of ship for dwarves. Both are based on actual historical nautical things, but ones which I believe are unusual enough to work well for nonhumans.

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Just a post to say I’m looking forward to seeing how these turn out.

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I have a few questions for the peanut gall…I mean crowdsourcing participants.

  1. Does anyone have any good fiction references for ships? I’m keeping a bibliographic list, and currently it’s entirely non-fiction - useful for research, but unbalanced. I’m aware of (though I haven’t read) the Aubrey/Maturin and Hornblower series, but there seems to be very little fiction predating the Age of Sail that focuses on naval travel or combat. I suppose I could include the first few novels of David Weber’s Safehold series, since up until Like A Mighty Army it’s heavily naval-based, with the technology being late Renaissance to Elizabethan up through A Mighty Fortress.

  2. Are there any particular cultural parallels that people see with the nonhuman species (i.e. elves, dwarves, gnomes, Thalassians, orcs, goblins, etc) that would allow me to focus on making their ships a certain way? I already have ideas for dwarves, and I have a really nice reference work I want to incorporate into another species’ ship types (although I may have to really file off the serial numbers to avoid the appearance of Unfortunate Implications). However, if people say “oh, I see goblins as being similar to X,” then I can try to make their ships fit in with what X culture made.

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Hm. Finding:

http://www.amazon.com/forum/historical%20fiction?_encoding=UTF8&cdForum=Fx1GAYRAS8PX4CC&cdThread=TxZ3OJ37BXHRHP

http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6239462-ship-of-rome

from this thread on GoodReads, there’s not much else going on for ancient references however.

http://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/791866-historical-naval-nautical-fiction

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For the first one, both of Christian Cameron's series, The Long War and Tyrant have a lot of ancient Greek historical naval stuff in them.

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Actual! New! Rules!

Crew quality: As with armies, historical writings on navies focus on the captains and the admirals, but it is the quality of the crew that is vital, yet overlooked. Well-trained rowers are better able to maintain their rhythm and are more efficient with their stroke. Well-trained sailors can read the wind and adjust sails to better take advantage of the varying zephyrs.
Green crew: A green crew can be gathered anywhere, whether it’s on a coast or not. These can be bored farmboys, down-on-their-luck mercenaries, or just people too drunk to avoid the press gang. These are the same sort of folks that become spear-carriers in armies, and are paid 3 gp per month. Ships with green crews suffer a 1 point penalty to initiative, morale, and turn rate. Green crew members have the same availability as light infantry in any city.
Average crew: An average crew is made up of people who are familiar with living on water. They include fishermen and ferrymen, as well as formerly green crew that have survived a voyage or two. They are competent to run a ship with minimal oversight. They are paid 6 gp per month, and a ship with an average crew has no modifier to its stats. Average crew have the same availability as light infantry in coastal cities or heavy infantry in inland cities.
Veteran crew: A veteran crew has been on the water their entire life or been heavily trained for their job. They’ve often served on multiple ship types, or at least multiple ships, and have either sailed widely across the known world or served in at least one military campaign. Veteran crew are paid 9 gp per month, and a ship with a veteran crew gets a 1 point bonus to initiative, morale, and turn rate. Veteran crew members have the same availability as medium cavalry in coastal cities and heavy cavalry in inland cities.
Elite crew: An elite crew cannot be hired. This is a veteran crew that has served on a particular ship for at least six months and in at least one battle. An elite crew, like a veteran crew, is paid 9 gp per month, and gets an additional 1 point bonus to morale.

Hiring and improving a crew: A crew hired on to a ship has the same rating as the majority of its members, and is paid accordingly. Thus, a sailing ship that hires 4 green, 2 average, and 3 veteran crew is considered to have a green crew, and pays them accordingly (and suffers the penalties for a green crew). A green crew becomes average after one month of active travel (time in port does not count). An average crew becomes veteran after three months of active travel, and a veteran crew becomes elite after another six months of active travel.

Replacing crew: As long as at least 50% of the crew remains intact, the crew’s rating does not change. If less than half the original crew constitutes the new crew, treat it as a new hiring, counting the existing crew as their current rating. If a ship with 5 surviving Veteran crew hires 6 Green crew, 3 Average crew, and 2 Veteran crew, it now has 6 Green crew, 3 Average crew, and 7 Veteran crew, and still counts as a Veteran crew.

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Awesome stuff!

Traditionally sailors were paid more than oarsmen. Indeed oarsmen were paid different amounts depending on where they sat - those at the bottom were paid the least.

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I had an exchange, ironically, with Christian Cameron on his fora about ships. Apparently as far as ancient naval vessels go, research is really rather thin, and what we have is quite old (predating the reconstruction of the Olympias, for example).

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Yes, I’ve been running into that. Quite a bit of what I’ve been reading are the books that were written by the Olympias builders as they were working on the ship. I also found a copy of Lionel Casson’s “Ships and Seamanship in the Ancient World,” which is amazing (although very mildly outdated by newer research). My other major source so far for ancient ships is William Murray’s new book, “The Age of Titans,” which was published in 2012.

I’m looking a bit further forward, also, since I have Osprey books on the Tudor navy of Henry and Elizabeth, and the local libraries have extremely good works on the Grande y Felicísima Armada by people who dove the wrecks for archaeology. The books I’ve currently been unable to find are the ones by G. R. G. Worcester on Chinese ships (Junks and Sampans of the Upper Yangtze, Junks and Sampans of the Yangtze, and Chinese War-Junk).

I did find a Vietnam War-era American assessment of Vietnamese sampans, which I’m slowly reading through, since many of them were still built in traditional fashions.

I’ve also read a bit on Arab-Indian ships, but technical detail has so far been lacking.

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If you’re willing to go as far forward as the Tudor navy, there’s a book on the Venetian shipyards: “The art and archaeology of Venetian ships and boats”, 2001.

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Cool!

What about allowing Veterans to have reached level 1 (via the gain of 100XP, or the 1 month timeframe)? The pay for a “normal man” specialist sailor is 6GP/mo (matching your average crew) and the veteran status would add 12GP to that (D@W:C, pg 12, probably elsewhere as well) for a total of 18GP. (it also matches Light Infantry, which plain sailors are well matched to)

Veterans occur at a rate of 25% amongst human mercenaries, so that also subsumes any availability-per-market changes.

That does double the costs for veterans, however, it makes them a lot more effective in combat.

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It does make them a lot more effective in combat, but that’s a very dangerous temptation. While oarsmen can fight (and indeed there’s evidence Athenian “skirmishers” were often armed rowers), you are risking the motive power of your vessel every time you use them in combat. Plus they’ll be even more tired than they would be from rowing if they’ve been fighting.

I’m just saying it’s something to be careful about, routinely using your oarsmen as infantry can significantly increase your crew turnover.

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As with so many things about ancient times, pay depends on when precisely we’re looking at. Thucydides mentions that all of the sailors received 3 obols per day (8.45.2), while during the blockade/siege of Poteideia, pay was increased to 1 drachma per day for sailors and 2 per day for hoplites (who had an unpaid servant with them) (3.17.4). During the Quadruple Alliance of 420 BCE, the four allied states stipulated by treaty that the pay for a hoplite, sailor/oarsman, or toxotai was 3 obols per day, while a horseman would receive 6 obols. This suggests (to me, at least), that the 3/6 obol level was for domestic service, while the 1/2 drachma level was for expeditions away from the city (a sort of hazard pay, or, if you will, the difference between garrison forces and expeditionary forces). Individual captains might offer more to get better thranites, but Thuc. 6.31 states it was the captain’s decision: “The fleet had been elaborately equipped at great cost to the captains and the state; the treasury giving a drachma a day to each seaman…while the captains gave a bounty in addition to the pay from the treasury to the thranitae and crews generally…”

Roman sailors in the Imperial era were paid roughly the same as auxilia, or about 5/6 of a legionary’s pay. To the best of my knowledge, there’s no evidence of the pay varying, except for some of the immunes (like doctors or carpenters). That said, I haven’t looked that much at the Roman era yet, so it’s possible there are sources that I haven’t encountered yet.

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One thing I am adding in now are some true Seaworthiness rules. I had originally left them out because my experience with them in 2e’s Of Ships and the Sea was that the numbers seemed rather arbitrary, and were not necessarily good indicators of the actual seaworthiness of the ship. I’m also working on abstracting ship construction so that it doesn’t require multiple spreadsheets to make a ship.

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I just got a copy of Casson’s book from my local library. It’s thinner than I was expecting, but I’m looking forward to digging in.

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If it’s slim, it’s probably “Ships and Seafaring in Ancient Times” from University of Texas Press, which is 160 pages. “Ships and Seamanship in the Ancient World” from Johns Hopkins University Press is 592 pages.

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Ah, you are exactly right. I have the shorter work.

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I love our forums so much.

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So, I’ve been away on vacation, and coming back, I wanted to give a fairly long bit showing how I’m writing examples into the text now. This is intended to be part of the ship construction section. There are a couple references to tables not included in this excerpt, but the meaning should still be fairly clear. Some of the rules mentioned can be modified by special attributes.

Seaworthiness: Seaworthiness measures how well a ship performs under adverse conditions. Each point of seaworthiness allows a ship to ignore 1d6 of damage from weather each hour. Each point also provides a +1 bonus to any Seafaring checks made to repair the ship. The Base Seaworthiness of a ship is also its starting Armor Class.

Decks: The default for a ship is a single deck, plus a hold for cargo. This deck has a Useful Length equal to 70% of the ship’s total length and the same width as the ship. A second deck with the same area can be added by moving one row down on the Length to Draught column (i.e. from the 40 to 1 ratio to the 28 to 1 ratio), while a third deck makes the ship less stable, reducing seaworthiness by 1.

Rowers: The required number of rowers to achieve the Base Rowing Speed is equal to the ship’s length in feet divided by 5, multiplied by the ship’s beam divided by 4. If this number is odd, add one to make it even. Required rowers = (Length/5)*(Beam/4)

The maximum number of rowers on a single deck is equal to the ship’s Useful Length divided by 3, multiplied by the ship’s beam minus 8 feet and divided by 2. If this number is odd, add one to make it even. Maximum rowers = (Useful Length/3)*((Beam-8)/2)

Example: A ship is being built as a 7 to 1 rowed and sailed ship, 112 feet long and 16 feet wide. It has a Base Seaworthiness of 3. It requires (22.44) = 89.6 rowers to travel at base rowing speed. This is rounded up to 90. On a single deck, it can have (.737.3*4) = 104.5 rowers, rounded to 105 and increased to 106 to make it even. This ship can maintain its base rowing speed with only a single deck of rowers.

Rowers can be carried on multiple decks if desired in order to add more power without lengthening or widening the vessel.
Example: While this galley isn’t intended for combat, it may find itself being used as a swift transport, so the designer adds a second deck of rowing benches. The ship can now hold up to 212 rowers, and has a draught of 7 feet, instead of the 4 feet it would have originally drawn.

Oars weigh one stone per two rowers.
Example: Fully equipped with oars for 212 rowers and 20 spares, the oars would take up 116 stone of weight. In normal merchant service, however, the ship will only carry 50 rowers’ worth of oars, weighing only 25 stone.

Tonnage: The tonnage of a ship is a complicated thing. For purposes of simplification, these rules use Builder’s Old Measurement to calculate tonnage, which is the length of a ship, minus 60% of the beam, times the beam, times the draught, all divided by 94. Each ton of ship provides 1 structural hit point (shp). Each ton of ship also provides 200 stone of carrying capacity.
Example: The merchant galley is 112 feet long and 16 feet wide, with a 7 foot draught due to the second deck. This means its tonnage is (102.4167)/94 = 122 tons and it has 122 shp. The ship can be outfitted with up to 24,400 stone of crew, equipment, and cargo.