Artisan of Auspicious Artifacts
Square sails hive you the most thrust but they only work if you're traveling with the wind. You've got something like a 170 degree arc in that you'll be able to catch the wind. By contrast, triangular sails give you thrust in about a 270 degree arc, give or take. Triangular sails are essential for sailing into the wind. The Chinese swore by them. Still, you'll only get about half the thrust of a square sail.
Now, there are two kinds of turns to look out for, tacking and jibbing. Tacking is turning against the wind, for example the wind is coming from the north and you're on a north-east heading and try turning directly to a north-west heading. While facing north you've got no thrust whatsoever and run the risk of running out of speed. No-speed, no turning.
Jibbing is when you turn with the wind, pretty much the direct opposite of tacking. Jibbing has a small degree of risk with triangular sails. Triangular sails tend to hang with the wind, staying on the side of the mast the wind is blowing towards. As the ship turns the wind will switch to blowing the opposite direction and as a result a triangular sail will snap from one side to another violently. If you're not prepared it can knock a man overboard and I was taught that the rigging could be damaged like that.
Who Am I?
This link
has more information than you could possible need. It does assume some minimal familiarity with the basic principles of sailing, however.
Here are some common types of sailing vessels.
What do you plan to do with all of this information? Write a manual?
Thanks, Belesarius and De Marquis!
Deus Denuo, a manual would be great even if I'm the only one who reads it, and I will be writing, based on that manual, setting-based moments of tension in the fiction that would hopefully make some in-world sense...duh. Is this not the Worldbuilding forums, or...?
Night Clerk of the Apacalypse.
I am slightly confused by the title. You talking about a water born ship or airships or even both? If you are looking for airships as well I have something I can share with you.
Generic and common Naval Terms.
Bow-Front
Stern-back
Port-Left
Starboard-Right
Deck-Floor
Bulkhead-Wall
Porthole- Round window
Hatch-door
edited 16th Apr '15 5:38:18 PM by TuefelHundenIV
Who watches the watchmen?
I'm looking to get a deeper understanding of sea vessels for now because I expect the airships to be based on that, but if you have ideas for airships alone, I'd appreciate your thoughts. Thanks muchly for the definitions, anyway!
Crazy Kiwi
Remembering which is "port" and which is "starboard": the mnemonic is "the ship left port" (as ships tend to do) - port is left, starboard is therefore the right.
The terms date back prior to the advent of central rudders when there was a steering board on the right-hand side of the vessel because vessels tied up at the port with their left-hand sides landward (so it kept the steering board from fouling against the pier) so the "port" (land) side of the vessel was the left and the "starboard" (steering board) side was the right.
The terms remained in use even after central rudders meant that you could bring either side landward with no problem.
Night Clerk of the Apacalypse.
Oh holy cow I forgot to add this to my watch list and forgot about it in the hub-bub. Sorry to leave you hanging like that.
The Airship Thread We used this to hash out some ideas about airships. Namely we tried to come up with a less hand wavish reason for the ships to fly that didn't involve props and/or balloons.
It would depend on what you want to do with airships in terms of flight. If you want to use age of sail I have some good ideas for that still that was not covered in that thread.
Who watches the watchmen?
(Playing on the Wooden Ships and Iron Men )
I'm trying to figure out how to sail without actually doing it, because I only have the time and resources to read about how to sail, and will be applying it to fantasy clockpunk or steampunk worlds anyway. One story I'm conceptualizing keeps the pirates in the ocean, the other meets them in the sky. I might leave the latter alone for now.
Please feel free to add stuff that might be interesting to these notes, or correct me if I got anything awfully wrong.
So far, I've figured out that I should probably have
1.) An idea of the economic politics that would produce piracy
2.) An idea of the natural environment on which a vessel does sail, i.e., the currents and magnetic poles
3.) More knowledge of the vessel(s) in question
My mother used to take sailing lessons, but that was for tiny sloops. (I think they were sloops?) Her instructor was married, and sailed competitively in races…never with the spouse (also a sailor) on the same team, because if the other was a fraction of a second too late in hoisting a rope, the first would get snappish, and the tension of that alone would be bad enough to threaten the marriage. If they sailed on different boats and one beat the other, that was fine.
I'm thinking of something bigger than sloops, of course, but right now I couldn't tell a corsair from a brigantine.
Also, I'm guessing that the type of ships also depends on the purpose it has. Merchant vessels might not need to have a harpoon. Fishers might not need cannons.
to-do: learn the names and makes of different models of ships well enough to make up my own names for ship models/types in my own world
The way I understood it, a sailor in a traditional ship has got to get a feel for both the ocean currents and the wind currents.
The helm is simple enough. It controls the underwater rudder of the ship, although I don't know how that can be quite as effective as turning the sails.
conjecture: the helm is not the ship equivalent of a car's steering wheel
Motivational poster time! "When the wind's not going the way you need it to, then turn the sails."
There are names for all sorts of sailing maneuvers that are basically different ways of saying "turning the ship around" using the sails: weaving, tacking, heaving to... And to get these done, the captain would need people on the port and starboard side either pulling ropes or slacking ropes attached to the riggings.
Some sails ought to be tied up so they're not catching wind, while others are released so that they do catch wind. This all means: teamwork and communication from everybody on board. Communication especially, because a group of people who have different words for left and right probably have some arcane language for everything else.
to-do: Which one is starboard?? Why can I never remember???
conjecture: the rigmaster or the captain would be shouting the directions anyway.
I used to think that "set the courses" meant that you steer the ship in one direction or another, and it's all done from the helm, but "course" (as it turns out) refers to the lowest sail on a mast, so you tie it up or let it loose depending on the wind.
In a full-rigged ship, each sail would have a name: first name of each sail takes after the mast, ("fore" at the front of the ship, "main" in the middle of the ship, and "mizzen" at the back part of the ship) then the actual sails named from top to bottom: "royal", "topgallant", "topsail" (could have upper and lower topsails), and as mentioned the "course".
The main mast's course is called the mainsail because, I'm guessing, "main course" might get confusing if people are eating, and the mizzen mast course is called the crossjack which is rarely used unless you can guarantee that the wind is going to constantly be blowing the way you want.
More sails mean that more wind gets caught, meaning that the vessel goes faster. Add to that some jibs and staysails that aren't square-rigged on the actual masts, but put in as extra wind-catchers.
That said, Viking ships still could go pretty fast, with fewer sails, probably because of the shape of their boats and the strength/unity of the rowers.
But I'm sticking to the galleon-like ships. With sails called gaffs, that I couldn't place on what I learned about courses. Perhaps my source
was too modern?
to-do: sort out the following vocabulary
to-do: get the crew positions sorted
conjecture: In addition to the assistants listed, there would be a night shift and a day shift for the crew
conjecture: However, everybody would be expected to work to the job rather than to the clock, and nobody on a functioning crew would say, "That's not my problem" or "That's not in my job description"; "I don't know how to do the thing as well as ___ who usually does the thing" maybe. Ergo, when there is a risk of pirates, then even the one at the helm (does there need to be someone there all the time?) would know how to swing a cutlass. Also, cutlasses were better for sailors than longswords because the cutlasses wouldn't get tangled up in the riggings as often…but does that mean that everybody either wears or handles a cutlass in addition to a pistol and swashbuckle?
note: Apparently, during the Age of Sail or the Golden Era of Piracy, most people didn't know how to swim. My characters are Selkies and Undines. They both know how to swim and the latter doesn't drown.
edited 14th Apr '15 1:11:58 AM by Faemonic