Junks

evilauthor wrote:

Kytheros wrote:Why would Langhorne and company bother to do so?

Yeah... Langhorne being Langhorne, he would have given the colonists the most primitive boats he could get away with.

Which basically means rowboats. Galleys would have been a logical progression as they're just bigger rowboats. And since Wind is already one of the allowed power sources and windmills already exist, inventing a sail for the galleys is practically a no-brainer. Which logically leads to sail powered boats and ships, aka galleons.

And since this IS the most logical progression, it's likely that the surviving Angels supplied the terms when these things were invented... assuming they hadn't already given the galleon and galley to Safehold. There was a War of the Fallen during which this stuff might have been needed after all.

Or Dragon drawn canal boats. But then there were islands to be serviced so some ocean going craft must have been introduced, and of course fishing boats and krakening ships

Poker

Keith_w wrote:

imperatorzor wrote:Given that they could draw from any earth culture, why did Langhorne and similar not introduce Chinese style Junks to Safehold for maritime transportation?

Zor

Because galleys are less dependent on wind than junks? Also, it is easier to row a galley into a harbour than sail a junk. Also, He Who Chases After An Unsatisfying Vegetable wanted to transition from older technology ie, galleys and galleons to modern sailing vessels and ultimately steam powered vessels and couldn't see a viable way to do that with other ocean going vessels.

More likely that square rigged ships were more "normal" to both the author and his intended audience.

Remember too, at base, sailing ships are named by sail plan. That is, up to a point, the same basic hull could end up with many different descriptive names depending on the masts and sails used. There is some slack in this "rule". In this regard, "galleons" are a largish exception: Galleons incorporated specific hull changes from previous designs. The author notes these in the early books.

In a gross sense, then, a junk is really shorthand for "junk rigged" just like schooner is shorthand for "schooner rigged". There is simply no reason, technologically speaking, that Safehold couldn't have used junk rigs on their hulls as opposed to square rigging.

Incidentally, the gaff-rigged sails on a schooner share many characteristics with a junk sail. I don't know the history, but I wouldn't doubt if junk rigs influenced the original designers.

I am sitting on shore waiting for my new Betamarine 14 to replace my dead, nearly 40 year old Yanmar 8 and that is delaying my sailing this year. Don't punish me further with talk of sailing :cry: .

imperatorzor wrote:Given that they could draw from any earth culture, why did Langhorne and similar not introduce Chinese style Junks to Safehold for maritime transportation?

Zor

A lot of the other comments gave good answers to your question, but there's another angle I've been mulling over.

To be honest, it's surprising that Langhorne introduced as much multiculturalism as he did (Harchong with its Chinese elements, etc.). We know that Chinese politicians were able to push to have their culture preserved during Operation Ark due to their population numbers, but given how Langhorne ignored the rest of his orders, it's surprising that he kept that promise.

The best explanation I can come up with is that he did it to avoid antagonizing the Chinese members of the command crew. Assuming that it was a proportional distribution, then they'd have made up a significant portion of the crew.

But beyond that, I'd expect that they'd do everything they could to avoid having people wonder "where did that come from?" Visually, junks are sufficiently different that their mere presence would suggest the possibility of different hull designs and riggings. And that would lead to... gasp... innovation.

evilauthor wrote:

Kytheros wrote:Why would Langhorne and company bother to do so?

Yeah... Langhorne being Langhorne, he would have given the colonists the most primitive boats he could get away with.

Well one way or another he wanted to keep his church unified. If there is no way to quickly get from Tellesburg to Zion it does not matter how much the locals believe in Mother Church and Langhorne, the Church of Charis would soon emerged just like a new species of finch did on the Galapagos.

Zor

imperatorzor wrote:Well one way or another he wanted to keep his church unified. If there is no way to quickly get from Tellesburg to Zion it does not matter how much the locals believe in Mother Church and Langhorne, the Church of Charis would soon emerged just like a new species of finch did on the Galapagos.

Zor

Wasn't it made clear that Langhorne and Bedard didn't believe in that kind of social evolution? If they had, they'd have realized that their plan was doomed to fail from the start.

not sure if it is that they didn't believe, so much as they thought the safeguards i.e. the inquisition and the mods to the holy book, made any deviation from their plan impossible.

of course their plans didn't account for the war against the fallen and all the changes that came from that. i.e. seijins from ex marines etc