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Naval technology at the time of creation

This fascinating series is a combination of historical seafaring, swashbuckling adventure, and high technological science-fiction. Join us in a discussion!
Re: Naval technology at the time of creation
Post by Weird Harold   » Sun Sep 04, 2016 11:59 am

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evilauthor wrote:Edit: Furthermore, coppering the bottom of ships is a response to a problem that wouldn't make itself evident to a non-naval minded person until wooden boats and ships have been in operation for extended periods of time.


I think the need for copper bottom would show up fairly quickly; I get the impression that serious fouling and borer infestations only take one or two voyages to seriously affect performance.
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Re: Naval technology at the time of creation
Post by fallsfromtrees   » Sun Sep 04, 2016 12:11 pm

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Weird Harold wrote:
evilauthor wrote:Edit: Furthermore, coppering the bottom of ships is a response to a problem that wouldn't make itself evident to a non-naval minded person until wooden boats and ships have been in operation for extended periods of time.


I think the need for copper bottom would show up fairly quickly; I get the impression that serious fouling and borer infestations only take one or two voyages to seriously affect performance.

Yes, but by that time, the Writ is already written, and you are going to have to provide angelic reasons for using copper nails instead of iron, and when people did it anyway, could well lead to an investigation that could start into electricity, etc. Much better to just let them expend the extra energy and deal with the fouling. They can always just pull the boat out of the water, and scrape the bottom.
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Re: Naval technology at the time of creation
Post by Whitecold   » Sun Sep 04, 2016 12:47 pm

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evilauthor wrote:Honestly, the best answer seems to be, "Because the Archangels didn't give much thought to naval tech at all."

After all, all the historical savvy people seemed to have been part of Shan-Wei's faction. The rest wanted to lock Safehold in as primitive a tech setup as they could get away with. So it would seem reasonable to a bunch of non-sailors who don't know nautical history to limit naval tech to square sails and oars.

On further thinking, I'll bet the Archangels didn't think Safeholdians would need anything more advanced than a coastal fishing boat. Galleons were invented well after Creation when the remaining angels realized that the out islands and other remote settlements that could only be reached by water needed some way to connect with the Church that did NOT involve an angel in an aircar.

Galleys are a logical extension of the rowboat, and likely created to help police coastal areas. And eventually help kingdoms war with each other.

Edit: Furthermore, coppering the bottom of ships is a response to a problem that wouldn't make itself evident to a non-naval minded person until wooden boats and ships have been in operation for extended periods of time. It's an easy thing to overlook until your boat operating flock starts coming to you complaining about the bottoms of their ships being fouled.

By the same token, non-naval minded people wouldn't realize the value of triangular sails or sextants or all the other naval refinements that Charis produced before and after Merlin.


You are assuming Shan-Wei wasn't part of the decision of what technology was allowable, however we know that both draft dragons and messenger wyverns are product of genetic engineering of her crews.
She was working with Langhorne for 70 something years, and I assume the terraforming crew was very much involved in the acceptable and the necessary tech while the terraforming was still underway, as they were the ones who knew best what the colonists had to know to survive.
At least one naval-savy person must have been involved; Someone worked out the blueprints for the first galleys and galleons that were handed to the colonists, and even if you know nothing about ships, knowing where you are seems like a very good idea.
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Re: Naval technology at the time of creation
Post by evilauthor   » Sun Sep 04, 2016 2:49 pm

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Whitecold wrote:
You are assuming Shan-Wei wasn't part of the decision of what technology was allowable, however we know that both draft dragons and messenger wyverns are product of genetic engineering of her crews.


She wasn't. She was busy terraforming Safehold while Langhorne was wiping memories and creating the plans for the CoG. Shan-Wei created messenger wyverns and the like because the ORIGINAL plan did call for a low tech human culture.

What the original plan didn't call for was total technological stasis. And even within the allowed level of technology (as stipulated by the original plan), Shan-Wei favored a higher level of technology than Langhorne wanted. Steam power would have been totally allowable under the original orders for example.
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Re: Naval technology at the time of creation
Post by DMcCunney   » Sun Sep 04, 2016 8:53 pm

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Whitecold wrote:At least one naval-savy person must have been involved; Someone worked out the blueprints for the first galleys and galleons that were handed to the colonists, and even if you know nothing about ships, knowing where you are seems like a very good idea.

The somewhat minimal textev makes it appear that what the Archangels provided to original enclaves near a shore were fishing boats. I rather doubt they provided galleys or galleons. At that point in Safehold's development, neither would have been needed.

The colonists likely simply recapitulated the development that occurred back on Earth and came up with the designs themselves.
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Re: Naval technology at the time of creation
Post by Whitecold   » Mon Sep 05, 2016 1:12 pm

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DMcCunney wrote:
Whitecold wrote:At least one naval-savy person must have been involved; Someone worked out the blueprints for the first galleys and galleons that were handed to the colonists, and even if you know nothing about ships, knowing where you are seems like a very good idea.

The somewhat minimal textev makes it appear that what the Archangels provided to original enclaves near a shore were fishing boats. I rather doubt they provided galleys or galleons. At that point in Safehold's development, neither would have been needed.

The colonists likely simply recapitulated the development that occurred back on Earth and came up with the designs themselves.
______
Dennis


That would be rather surprising that several millennia of sailing technology redeveloped in progress averse Safehold. Also, while I don't recall any textevidence when the archbishops first assembled, by then ocean-going craft must have existed.
Besides, I can't imagine how they could have placed enclaves on islands/continents and not seen the need for ocean-going craft
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Re: Naval technology at the time of creation
Post by DMcCunney   » Mon Sep 05, 2016 3:28 pm

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Whitecold wrote:
DMcCunney wrote:The somewhat minimal textev makes it appear that what the Archangels provided to original enclaves near a shore were fishing boats. I rather doubt they provided galleys or galleons. At that point in Safehold's development, neither would have been needed.

The colonists likely simply recapitulated the development that occurred back on Earth and came up with the designs themselves.
That would be rather surprising that several millennia of sailing technology redeveloped in progress averse Safehold.

Why?

Also, while I don't recall any textevidence when the archbishops first assembled, by then ocean-going craft must have existed.
Sure, but It was likely a century or more before that happened.

Besides, I can't imagine how they could have placed enclaves on islands/continents and not seen the need for ocean-going craft
I'm certain they did. I'm not certain they would have seen a need to provide working models.

The main focus would be development of the mainland realms, where the canals and high roads provided the transport infrastructure. More isolated enclaves wouldn't require ocean going vessels before they developed enough to need or want to venture beyond their own lands. People back on old Earth developed things like galleys and galleons from scratch when confronted with the need. With centuries to expand, there is no reason why Safeholdians couldn't do likewise.
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Re: Naval technology at the time of creation
Post by evilauthor   » Tue Sep 06, 2016 1:25 am

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DMcCunney wrote:I'm certain they did. I'm not certain they would have seen a need to provide working models.

The main focus would be development of the mainland realms, where the canals and high roads provided the transport infrastructure. More isolated enclaves wouldn't require ocean going vessels before they developed enough to need or want to venture beyond their own lands. People back on old Earth developed things like galleys and galleons from scratch when confronted with the need. With centuries to expand, there is no reason why Safeholdians couldn't do likewise.
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Dennis


When you get right down to it, galleys and galleons are just row boats and sail boats writ large. Ship wrights are going to build bigger and bigger boats as the need arises and as long as it floats, they can put oars and sails on them.

I can just imagine an "Angel" seeing one of the first attempts at making large ships and going, "Hey, that's a galley/galleon".

Refining ship design to the point where galleys and galleons are no longer interchangeable would be a process of centuries. But then, it's been centuries since the last Angel walked Safehold.
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Re: Naval technology at the time of creation
Post by isaac_newton   » Tue Sep 06, 2016 4:55 am

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DMcCunney wrote:
Whitecold wrote:At least one naval-savy person must have been involved; Someone worked out the blueprints for the first galleys and galleons that were handed to the colonists, and even if you know nothing about ships, knowing where you are seems like a very good idea.

The somewhat minimal textev makes it appear that what the Archangels provided to original enclaves near a shore were fishing boats. I rather doubt they provided galleys or galleons. At that point in Safehold's development, neither would have been needed.

The colonists likely simply recapitulated the development that occurred back on Earth and came up with the designs themselves.
______
Dennis


Well - lets think about the main aim of the Archangels after the war?

It is to have the church in tight control over the entire of Safehold... no little enclaves going their own way and doing an Alaxandria on them! I would have thought that they would have provided any - safe - technology that would have helped maintain that grip. So providing at least close guidance on sea going shipping whould surely have been part of that.

Also wouldn't leaving the people to develop their own shipping have fostered that 'evil spirit' of creativity that thay didn't want...
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Re: Naval technology at the time of creation
Post by AirTech   » Tue Sep 06, 2016 7:39 am

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Whitecold wrote:
To make it short: Why didn't the Archangels provide the best possible wooden sailing ships they could to the colonists in the first place?


Perhaps the best reason would be why have military vessels at all? Wars encourage innovation so avoiding wars helps prevent technological development. Therefore the priority for the early archangels should logically be preventing conflict between widely separated groups (a relatively easy task for at least the first couple of centuries while the population was in the low millions and ample land and other resources were available).

If we assume square rigged clipper type ships for freight the the galleon would be a simple militarization of an existing design for a merchant ship (as was detailed in the earlier books). Oared galleys would be an outgrowth of oared barges used for river transport via the early nationalist developments for delivering infantry in large numbers (think viking long ships and roman galleys). Early naval combat on Earth was an infantry battle in a boat. Guns change everything, you go from capturing ships in hand to hand combat (and taking prisoners/slaves) to sinking them out of range of hand held weapons.
Coppering bottoms was a late 17th century development (when copper became cheap enough through the early industrial revolution) in response to ship worm not weed. Before that the treatment was paint, sacrificial wood and scraping.
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