Subject:
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Re: medieval warships
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.castle
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Date:
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Wed, 14 Nov 2001 17:57:29 GMT
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Viewed:
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394 times
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In lugnet.pirates, Magnus Lauglo writes:
> Hi all,
>
> Hmm, seems like several of us are on a spree of building medieval warships.
> I recently (finally) got brown boat hull pieces, and want to make a medieval
> warship, you know the kind with a crenelated tower at the front and back.
> Can anyone help me out with any of these specifics?
You're looking at building a cog, developed on the Hansard coast
in the 13th-14th centuries, or a nef, which wasn't a double-ended
ship and had a modern rudder. Other purely European ships had some
provision for oars. It's worth noting that the "towers" were
usually aftereffects; medieval navies were usually made of ships
conscripted from the private sector, and the towers were fitted
when the ship was requisitioned. "Standing" navies don't really
appear until the 16th century, and until then the crews were
usually the same as the peacetime mercantile crews. Only the
officer class was replaced for naval operations. But after the
return of peace, merchants would sometimes keep the towers in
situ.
> How early did shipbuilders discard the single square sail. In other words,
> can I use the two blue and white striped sails from the original admiralty
> ship, or didn't those come into use until the 16th century?
The lateen was new, IIRC, with the caravel (15th century), and
it allowed ships for the first time to tack close to the wind.
If you want to build a xebec or something like that, then you
can predate the 15th century--but that's the Arab world, which
provided the technical improvements that allowed modern European
oceangoing ships to be viable.
> Is there any evidence for cataputs or balistas being mounted on European
> warships?
I'm not sure about ballistae, but catapults were too large and
slow-loading. Crossbows and primitive cannon were more likely.
However, E. H. H. Archibald cites examples of small catapults or
slings being used "on occasion" in the 13th century. Definitely,
projectiles were considered.
> Did they ever have more than just one main mast?
Not before the 15th century, as far as archaeologists are aware--
those ships were built specifically for the Norman campaign of
the Hundred Years' War, another unusual point, and they were
HUGE.
> Would there have been seperate rooms or cabins under the raised towers, or
> did the whole crew (and their horses etc) just sleep exposed to the
> elements? Would there have been a lower deck?
These are difficult questions, because they would have varied.
Later cogs and, of course, caravels could have permanent towers
but "true" medieval cogs wouldn't, so there wouldn't be any
rooms under the castles. That's not a hard and fast rule, though;
if the crew was sufficiently unafraid of the roundship capsizing,
they might enclose a space under the tower, but that would be
unusual until they were designed as such from the start.
As to lower decks, it depends on the size of the ship. A standard
Hansard cog might be about 50-60 feet long; it might have one
covered deck, primarily for cargo (which needed to stay dry) but
also for crew if necessary. The nef was definitely enclosed,
usually also under the castles. An upper deck also allowed for
greater stability and resistance to hogging; test the stability of
a tube vs. a U-shaped structure to see what I mean. But without
any complete examples of this sort of ship, we can only make
educated guesses about standards in shipbuilding technique.
*phew!*
best
LFB
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