Trade and Markets in Glorantha

[M Helsdon]

3 hours ago, Joerg said:

Masloi or Thinokan outriggers may use that human cargo as propellant, too - paddling keeps them fit and healthy, and exhausted.

Regardless of Hollywood epics, rowers were rarely slaves (until the Medieval period when galleys were very different from triremes or penteconters) because rowing is a specialized profession - requiring training to keep the oars all synchronized. Just one rower out of synch can disable an entire bank of oars.

Edited October 7, 2017 by M Helsdon

[hkokko]

38 minutes ago, M Helsdon said:

Regardless of Hollywood epics, rowers were rarely slaves (until the Medieval period when galleys were very different from triremes or penteconters) because rowing is a specialized profession - requiring training to keep the oars all synchronized. Just one rower out of synch can disable an entire bank of oars.

Well in Fonirt most of them would be anyway :-) - MGF... To PC:  After 15 years of rowing for the Jann you manage to make your escape. 

[M Helsdon]

4 hours ago, hkokko said:

Well in Fonirt most of them would be anyway :-) - MGF... To PC:  After 15 years of rowing for the Jann you manage to make your escape. 

A trained professional slave rower would be entirely different to a captive randomly sent to the galleys... And also be a relatively valuable commodity, almost on par with a slave soldier.

8-)

Edited October 7, 2017 by M Helsdon

[Joerg]

1 minute ago, M Helsdon said:

Regardless of Hollywood epics, rowers were rarely slaves (until the Medieval period when galleys were very different from triremes or penteconters) because rowing is a specialized profession - requiring training to keep the oars all synchronized. Just one rower out of synch can disable an entire bank of oars.

Yes. I was talking about paddling, though, which doesn't need that exact coordination as long as you don't go for high speed. I think that rowing isn't necessarily widespread in Glorantha. By the presence of triremes we know it for the West and Maniria, and the huge Kralori barges have zombie rowers rather than paddlers. All of these places had been under God Learner rule, though. As far as we know, Maslo was not conquered by God Learners.

Canoes were the signature vessel of the bronze age. The Hjortspring boat is a huge war canoe that traveled the Baltic during the late Roman Republic era. And outriggers are typically paddled, not rowed.

[M Helsdon]

37 minutes ago, Joerg said:

Canoes were the signature vessel of the bronze age. The Hjortspring boat is a huge war canoe that traveled the Baltic during the late Roman Republic era. And outriggers are typically paddled, not rowed.

Bronze Age vessels in the Mediterranean were larger, and probably closer to the Gloranthan norm for sea and ocean crossing. Paddling doesn't really help move a vessel over large distances - in our world long distance paddlers relied upon ocean currents. As a nearly enclosed sea, the Baltic isn't a good model for long-range vessels.

[Joerg]

 

The Hjortspring boat design may have been 2000 years old when the boat was sacrificed in a southern Danish bog. It isn't clear whether the crew came raiding from the east and got overcome, or whether the boat had been raiding in the eastern Baltic successfully before returning home to Denmark and being sacrificed.

Rock carvings of ships (that may have been interpreted as sleds at times) show the same double bowsprite architecture the Hjortspring boat has, and the reconstruction of the boat with contemporarily available tools produced a canoe with paddling as its only means of propulsion. The journey from Denmark to the Baltic states is at least comparable to crossing from Egypt to Crete or Cyprus.

The same ship type was used to travel the Atlantic and North Sea coasts, connecting e.g. the Lofoten with central Europe, before the clinker-built ships of the Nydam Boat, Sutton Hoo or Oseberg and Gokstad type.

The Baltic sees a lot more storms than the mediterranean, making it at least as demanding to Bronze Age ships as the enclosed Mare Nostrum.

 

True, long distance paddlers tend to ride convenient currents and use friendly winds. The Polynesians managed to cross the Pacific with a technology that the Maslo and Thinokan outriggers and those of the Sendereven represent.

[M Helsdon]

6 minutes ago, Joerg said:

 

The Hjortspring boat design may have been 2000 years old when the boat was sacrificed in a southern Danish bog. It isn't clear whether the crew came raiding from the east and got overcome, or whether the boat had been raiding in the eastern Baltic successfully before returning home to Denmark and being sacrificed.

Rock carvings of ships (that may have been interpreted as sleds at times) show the same double bowsprite architecture the Hjortspring boat has, and the reconstruction of the boat with contemporarily available tools produced a canoe with paddling as its only means of propulsion. The journey from Denmark to the Baltic states is at least comparable to crossing from Egypt to Crete or Cyprus.

Yes, I'm aware of that, but the descriptions and illustrations of Genertelan ship types tend towards either the late Bronze Age/Iron Age Mediterranean, or middle Iron Age northern Europe. The Hjortspring boat could only take a crew of around twenty, making it suitable for a small raiding party perhaps, if every rower was also a fighter, but it was too small to sail large distances without stopping almost every day for supplies. This was true for triremes as well (and the need for daily resupply and the weird logistics of every crewman going to shore to buy their own rations led to at least one defeat for the Athenian navy - an enemy watched them go ashore every day, saw they had to travel inland to buy food, and so attacked when most of the crew were too far away to stop their beached ships being attacked, with some stolen...)

You couldn't sail the Hjortspring boat across open seas for many days as it simply didn't have the storage for sufficient food and water.

[Joerg]

The Hjortspring boat offered as much personal storage space for one of its paddlers as did the Viking longships for their rowers - space for one sea-chest or sea sack and a couple of skins for beverages (water or beer). Traveling the Baltic had the additional benefit that you didn't have to carry as much water since the eastern Baltic is less than isotonic in its salt content and can supplement freshwater or beer supplies (if not completely replaces those).

Ships traveling the Atlantic or e.g. the Juteland coast had to make significant portions of the trip nonstop since there were no safe harbors on the route.

 

The ship illustrations cry Late Iron Age or even Roman Age to me, with a dose of late medieval mixed in. (And that's without the paddle-wheel floating castles of the dwarves.) None of the Minoan fresco ships have a Gloranthan counterpart (the Kareeshtan Warsails have way too much rigging for that).

[M Helsdon]

15 hours ago, Joerg said:

The Hjortspring boat offered as much personal storage space for one of its paddlers as did the Viking longships for their rowers - space for one sea-chest or sea sack and a couple of skins for beverages (water or beer). Traveling the Baltic had the additional benefit that you didn't have to carry as much water since the eastern Baltic is less than isotonic in its salt content and can supplement freshwater or beer supplies (if not completely replaces those).

Thus the Baltic is not a suitable model for sea going or ocean going vessels. The Hjortspring boat wasn't very seaworthy.

[Joerg]

 

On 8.10.2017 at 4:40 PM, M Helsdon said:

On 8.10.2017 at 12:39 AM, Joerg said:

Traveling the Baltic had the additional benefit that you didn't have to carry as much water since the eastern Baltic is less than isotonic in its salt content and can supplement freshwater or beer supplies (if not completely replaces those).

Thus the Baltic is not a suitable model for sea going or ocean going vessels.

I don't see the major difference between carrying enough water for 5 days or for 10 days. The seagoing ships in the Mediterranean were desperate for freshwater springs, as per the legend of St: Andrew on Cyprus.

I live on the Baltic Sea, and I have experienced it at its worst, taking boat trips 2 or 3 nautical miles from the beach only made possible by an outboarder suitable for water-skiing - 2 meter waves in rapid succession (maybe 3 to 4 meters apart), with foam on the top, and 10 beaufort. Few Gloranthan ships are built to withstand such conditions at anything but keeping the keel in the wind.

Nobody in their right mind would start a trip with an ancient ship under such conditions, but a ship caught out at sea, with the crew struggling to avoid breakers and bailing like crazy will be able to ride out such a storm, if only barely. Further out on the sea the valleys between the waves will get wider, to the point where a paddled ship can ride the waves for certain distances.

I would judge the situation above to be at least 7 to 9 beaufort. That trip looks more like a proof of concept than everyday travel to me, but it shows that the boat was built to deal with wave action. A trireme with a ram might struggle more in such conditions.

Historically, all Baltic Sea states built ships that worked ok on the North Sea and the Atlantic. That should be seen as an indication that the Baltic was as difficult as the North Sea. Don't get fooled  by the Beowulf epic that has him crossing a branch of that sea swimming for three days, such a feat is on par with standing on the back of a flying dragon while slaying it.

On 8.10.2017 at 4:40 PM, M Helsdon said:

The Hjortspring boat wasn't very seaworthy.

What is your source for that? The reconstruction in the pics above doesn't give the impression that it was particularly unfit for wave action. Sure. you will have to avoid running in parallel of the waves, but that goes for any craft below a dwarf floating castle or a Waertagi Cityship.

Polynesian (and presumably East Isles and Maslo) outrigger craft have lower freeboard than the nordic ships of the Hjortspring type. As double-hull or 1.5 hull vessels they may have slightly less draft than a Hjortspring-type canoe. Those silly-looking protruding beams apparently work fine breaking waves that might flood the boat if diving in too deep, as per the second image.

 

 

[Yelm's Light]

Outriggers are inherently more stable than what is effectively a single-hulled canoe.  Even the Kon-Tiki, which was more of a raft but still sported a triple keel and is three times as wide as the Hjortspring boat, would be more survivable in violent sea conditions.

[M Helsdon]

8 hours ago, Joerg said:

I live on the Baltic Sea, and I have experienced it at its worst, taking boat trips 2 or 3 nautical miles from the beach only made possible by an outboarder suitable for water-skiing - 2 meter waves in rapid succession (maybe 3 to 4 meters apart), with foam on the top, and 10 beaufort. Few Gloranthan ships are built to withstand such conditions at anything but keeping the keel in the wind.

I seriously doubt that any terrestrial body of water is a good model for Gloranthan seas and oceans.

8 hours ago, Joerg said:

I would judge the situation above to be at least 7 to 9 beaufort. That trip looks more like a proof of concept than everyday travel to me, but it shows that the boat was built to deal with wave action. A trireme with a ram might struggle more in such conditions.

A trireme is a design best suited for inland seas and coastal waters, and then in only a few seasons. No one is going to circumnavigate the Homeward Ocean in a trireme. Unless they are either very lucky or magically very powerful. Even then, it wouldn't be possible to feed a 270+ crew for days or weeks, unless they ate each other (possible, perhaps on a Vadeli vessel...)

8 hours ago, Joerg said:

Historically, all Baltic Sea states built ships that worked ok on the North Sea and the Atlantic. That should be seen as an indication that the Baltic was as difficult as the North Sea. Don't get fooled  by the Beowulf epic that has him crossing a branch of that sea swimming for three days, such a feat is on par with standing on the back of a flying dragon while slaying it.

In the North Sea up into the medieval times, the majority of shipping was effectively coastal. The crossings directly to the Shetlands, Faroes and Iceland were vastly more hazardous, and reliant upon sails, not rowers. In fact travel times were often very long, for the distance travelled, and the sagas and historical accounts are full of journeys in the Atlantic that either took many weeks, or failed to find their destination and had to head home. The ships were only able to do these journeys by not being 'fully crewed' with oarsmen, because of the limited carrying capacity.

Viking navigation, for example, was no more accurate than that of their competitors. The sagas are full of poor navigation and shipwreck. Apparently Iceland was discovered by accident by a ship attempting to sail to the Faroes. In fact, all the discoveries beyond the British Isles were mistakes, and it can be assumed that for all those accidental explorers, dozens of ships, probably more, vanished without making landfall.

No doubt, Gloranthan mariners have magical devices at least as good as some of those in the sagas to aid navigation, but the fact stands that an open decked ship or boat was a risky venture over open seas. The Vikings did it by island hopping, with the islands no more than 250 miles apart, but that hopping was a hit-or-miss affair. Often people set foot on land to find out where they were, and discovered themselves at the mercy of the locals - including other Vikings.

So there's a major difference between coastal vessels and practical sea-going vessels. Neither a trireme nor the Hjortspring boat match the necessary criteria.

8 hours ago, Joerg said:

What is your source for that? The reconstruction in the pics above doesn't give the impression that it was particularly unfit for wave action. Sure. you will have to avoid running in parallel of the waves, but that goes for any craft below a dwarf floating castle or a Waertagi Cityship.

Simple: logistics. Not wave action.

A vessel has to carry sufficient water and provisions. That isn't practical with a full set of oars and rowers, for more than a few days.

8 hours ago, Joerg said:

Polynesian (and presumably East Isles and Maslo) outrigger craft have lower freeboard than the nordic ships of the Hjortspring type. As double-hull or 1.5 hull vessels they may have slightly less draft than a Hjortspring-type canoe. Those silly-looking protruding beams apparently work fine breaking waves that might flood the boat if diving in too deep, as per the second image.

Polynesian expansion relied heavily on ocean currents and seasonal winds. Several Polynesian colonies became effectively isolated because they lacked the ability to sail counter to currents unless there were useful winds, and even then the journey was impractical because their vessels couldn't carry enough food and water for the crew to survive the trip.

Edited October 12, 2017 by M Helsdon

[Mark Mohrfield]

What sort of trade ship could make it from Nochet to Pavis? I've an idea for a campaign.

[Psullie]

30 minutes ago, Mark Mohrfield said:

What sort of trade ship could make it from Nochet to Pavis? I've an idea for a campaign.

an airborne one!

the Zola Fel would require a very different vessel from one that hugs the coast. You'd need two ships, one for the Rozgali part of the route, the trade off at Corflu for a river barge.

the Pacific is a much calmer body of water than the Atlantic hence the koa-koa were able to island hop. Another reason why ancient vessels hugged the coasts was the unpredictability of the weather, if you see a storm coming you might make it to a safe harbour or cove rather than risk being swamped at sea.

navigation loses were significant up until longitude and reliable clocks! Glorantha doesn't have that equivalent 

[Joerg]

1 hour ago, M Helsdon said:

I seriously doubt that any terrestrial body of water is a good model for Gloranthan seas and oceans.

And yet we get the ships from the mediterranean as archetypes for Gloranthan vessels.

The seas and oceans have much in common with those of our world - they have waves, currents, winds, they provide buoyancy and danger.

 

 

1 hour ago, M Helsdon said:

A trireme is a design best suited for inland seas and coastal waters, and then in only a few seasons. No one is going to circumnavigate the Homeward Ocean in a trireme.

But Harrek leads a fleet of proto-triremes aka Wolf Pirate boats on his circumnavigation.

 

1 hour ago, M Helsdon said:

Unless they are either very lucky or magically very powerful. Even then, it wouldn't be possible to feed a 270+ crew for days or weeks, unless they ate each other (possible, perhaps on a Vadeli vessel...)

That's why fleet actions like the detachment of a squadron of triremes from Seapolis, the City of Wonders or Nochet over to Dosakayo takes a couple of freight ships along carrying the provisions. But I think you over-estimate the amount of food and water you have to carry for the single oarsman. Three litres of preserved water (e.g. with vinegar or wine, or taken from a special source that makes it immune to fouling in the container) and a pound of groat from whole grain provide enough basic sustenance, some dried fruit and maybe a sliver of meat might add the daily ration up to 1.5 pounds solids.

Water containers will add to the ballast of a ship. A 270 crew will use up a cubic metre of water, maybe 1.5, per day. That's about 20 to 30 standard amphorae or kegs, so assuming that a warship gets equipped for 10 days, 1 amphora or keg per crew member must be stored in the hull or on the deck (the deck needs to be cleared for combat action, but that's a different problem, and empty kegs can be lashed together and reclaimed after a victorious battle). 15 pounds of solid food will easily fit into a saillor's chest or sack, and can be hung from hooks in the crew area. The crew will use rainfall to refill emptied containers, stretching the water supply, and probably catch fish to stretch the preserved food.

Not that impossible for days, up to maybe 10 or 14. But under normal sailing conditions (i.e. using the seasonal winds and currents allowing such a journey) that's enough to hop to the next island, like e.g. Jrustela, Kumanku, or Teleos, or after one such intermediary stop the next continent.

Then there is fishing. Thor Heyerdahl relied on fishing for his longer overseas trips, and especially with the Ra found that a slow-moving ship could act like a reef, attracting shoals of edible fish, and possibly sea birds.

 

1 hour ago, M Helsdon said:

In the North Sea up into the medieval times, the majority of shipping was effectively coastal. The crossings directly to the Shetlands, Faroes and Iceland were vastly more hazardous, and reliant upon sails, not rowers.

The situation was the same in the mediterranean. The hazards of sailing to the outer islands were greater when the conditions for navigation were bad, and the longer you stay on sea, the greater the chance that a storm or similar calamity bears down on your ship.

On the other hand, specifically the North Sea coast west of Juteland was an area you wanted to avoid - keeping just within sight of the highest elevations was vastly safer than risking the ever shifting sand banks and exposure to the breakers of the surge that would shatter any hull immobilized by such contact.

 

1 hour ago, M Helsdon said:

In fact travel times were often very long, for the distance travelled, and the sagas and historical accounts are full of journeys in the Atlantic that either took many weeks, or failed to find their destination and had to head home. The ships were only able to do these journeys by not being 'fully crewed' with oarsmen, because of the limited carrying capacity.

And yet Iceland was initially settled by Irish monks setting off in saucer boats maybe 1.5 meters across, with just minimal personal provender, when the first Vikings arrived. The voyage of St. Brennan is as full of navigational mishaps as is the Odyssey, but it boils down to tall tales of various sailors in similar boats returning to their homelands.

Pretty much every summer the chieftains of Iceland gathered men for raiding expeditions to Scotland and Ireland in their dragon ships rather than in knarrs for trading. Knarrs might accompany such expeditions to provide provisions and cargo capacity for the plunder, but they sure didn't go raiding in under-crewed and less maneuverable trading ships.

 

1 hour ago, M Helsdon said:

Viking navigation, for example, was no more accurate than that of their competitors. The sagas are full of poor navigation and shipwreck. Apparently Iceland was discovered by accident by a ship attempting to sail to the Faroes. In fact, all the discoveries beyond the British Isles were mistakes, and it can be assumed that for all those accidental explorers, dozens of ships, probably more, vanished without making landfall.

Whalers and seal hunters were foremost in such expeditions, and they used "bird navigation" pretty much like Noah did.

The life expectance of fishermen was dramatically low. Surviving your thirtieth birthday made you an elder in the fisherman community. Crews failing to return was a regularly occurring fact of life, and applied even to coastal fishing or island hopping (including priests called to serve at distant steads).

 

1 hour ago, M Helsdon said:

No doubt, Gloranthan mariners have magical devices at least as good as some of those in the sagas to aid navigation, but the fact stands that an open decked ship or boat was a risky venture over open seas. The Vikings did it by island hopping, with the islands no more than 250 miles apart, but that hopping was a hit-or-miss affair. Often people set foot on land to find out where they were, and discovered themselves at the mercy of the locals - including other Vikings.

No difference from Gloranthan sailing, then. The longest leg across open seas without landfall is from Seshnela to Jrustela, maybe 10 times the diameter of the Mirrorsea Bay.

The main difference lies in the animated nature of the seas, like the Doom Currents, and its intelligent and more often than not hostile population.

1 hour ago, M Helsdon said:

So there's a major difference between coastal vessels and practical sea-going vessels. Neither a trireme nor the Hjortspring boat match the necessary criteria.

Still, war ships were sent out to project power all the time - the Greeks sent triremes to Sicily, for instance. Spartan ships established colonies to rival Carthage in modern Lybia. These ships carried soldiers and laborers, and their gear.

1 hour ago, M Helsdon said:

Simple: logistics. Not wave action.

And yet Captain Bligh managed to sail the long boat of the Bounty to the safety of a British colony several weeks from where he was pushed off his ship. Shackleton rowed all the way from Elephant Island off the Antarctic continent to the whaling outpost on South Georgia. According to your logistical argument these were impossible nautical feats.

 

1 hour ago, M Helsdon said:

A vessel has to carry sufficient water and provisions. That isn't practical with a full set of oars and rowers, for more than a few days.

If it becomes necessary, it will be done.

 

1 hour ago, M Helsdon said:

Polynesian expansion relied heavily on ocean currents and seasonal winds. Several Polynesian colonies became effectively isolated because they lacked the ability to sail counter to currents unless there were useful winds, and even then the journey was impractical because their vessels couldn't carry enough food and water for the crew to survive the trip.

According to that theory, there is no way that the southeast Asian chickens found their way to South America, or the spuds from South America to Rapa Nui. The Polynesians managed to get them across. The journeys may have been hard and hazardous, but sailors always were quite fatalistic, and gamblers to boot. That's how harbor districts like the Reeperbahn in Hamburg became such dens of iniquity.

Sea voyages often were a prolonged fast, especially for passengers and cargo. If you undertook a long trip overseas, you expected to arrive with less blubber on your hips, and not necessarily unscathed. One more reason to feast like crazy when making landfall in a non-hostile port, or after a successful raid, wastefully slaughtering some of the raided beasts you would somehow carry on your boat back home, or at least back somewhere where you could trade them for more compact treasure.

 

 

[M Helsdon]

1 hour ago, Joerg said:

And yet we get the ships from the mediterranean as archetypes for Gloranthan vessels.

Only coastal ones.

1 hour ago, Joerg said:

But Harrek leads a fleet of proto-triremes aka Wolf Pirate boats on his circumnavigation.

No, he leads a fleet mostly of clinker-built penteconters. Seriously different in construction and crew to a Trireme.

1 hour ago, Joerg said:

That's why fleet actions like the detachment of a squadron of triremes from Seapolis, the City of Wonders or Nochet over to Dosakayo takes a couple of freight ships along carrying the provisions. But I think you over-estimate the amount of food and water you have to carry for the single oarsman. Three litres of preserved water (e.g. with vinegar or wine, or taken from a special source that makes it immune to fouling in the container) and a pound of groat from whole grain provide enough basic sustenance, some dried fruit and maybe a sliver of meat might add the daily ration up to 1.5 pounds solids.

In the ancient world it was notoriously difficult to keep warships supplied by cargo vessels - different sailing characteristics, which meant that the first storm would scatter the fleet. But yes, having supply ships is the only way to support warships, unless they anchor or beach every night.

You are seriously underestimating the water and food requirements. When multiplied by days and weeks, it becomes a substantial quantity.

1 hour ago, Joerg said:

Water containers will add to the ballast of a ship. A 270 crew will use up a cubic metre of water, maybe 1.5, per day. That's about 20 to 30 standard amphorae or kegs, so assuming that a warship gets equipped for 10 days, 1 amphora or keg per crew member must be stored in the hull or on the deck (the deck needs to be cleared for combat action, but that's a different problem, and empty kegs can be lashed together and reclaimed after a victorious battle). 15 pounds of solid food will easily fit into a saillor's chest or sack, and can be hung from hooks in the crew area. The crew will use rainfall to refill emptied containers, stretching the water supply, and probably catch fish to stretch the preserved food.

You are seriously overestimating the carrying capability of an ancient warship. As for rainfall or fish - you are surely being facetious. In rain, the crew will be bailing water overboard, and if a ship slows to fish it won't get very far.

1 hour ago, Joerg said:

Then there is fishing. Thor Heyerdahl relied on fishing for his longer overseas trips, and especially with the Ra found that a slow-moving ship could act like a reef, attracting shoals of edible fish, and possibly sea birds.

And how many crew were on his boats? Six on one, eleven on another: not a fighting crew. His stunts had little value, but his vessels were indeed slow.

1 hour ago, Joerg said:

The situation was the same in the mediterranean. The hazards of sailing to the outer islands were greater when the conditions for navigation were bad, and the longer you stay on sea, the greater the chance that a storm or similar calamity bears down on your ship.

Indeed. Coastal sailing.

1 hour ago, Joerg said:

On the other hand, specifically the North Sea coast west of Juteland was an area you wanted to avoid - keeping just within sight of the highest elevations was vastly safer than risking the ever shifting sand banks and exposure to the breakers of the surge that would shatter any hull immobilized by such contact.

Still coastal sailing.

1 hour ago, Joerg said:

And yet Iceland was initially settled by Irish monks setting off in saucer boats maybe 1.5 meters across, with just minimal personal provender, when the first Vikings arrived. The voyage of St. Brennan is as full of navigational mishaps as is the Odyssey, but it boils down to tall tales of various sailors in similar boats returning to their homelands.

They were lucky. They got there by accident, not intent. There was a tradition of setting off in these boats and assuming that divine providence would protect them. A few turned up in various places, apparently; the majority would have drowned.

1 hour ago, Joerg said:

Pretty much every summer the chieftains of Iceland gathered men for raiding expeditions to Scotland and Ireland in their dragon ships rather than in knarrs for trading. Knarrs might accompany such expeditions to provide provisions and cargo capacity for the plunder, but they sure didn't go raiding in under-crewed and less maneuverable trading ships.

Even 'dragon ships' weren't rowed the five hundred or more miles to Scotland or Ireland, but sailed by island hopping, and then frequently stopping to take on supplies.

1 hour ago, Joerg said:

Whalers and seal hunters were foremost in such expeditions, and they used "bird navigation" pretty much like Noah did.

Um, Noah is a garbled version of a Sumerian flood, probably around 2900BC when there was a major river flood in southern Iraq. 'Bird navigation' is decidedly suspect. There are many claims of bird (and cloud) navigation, but it can only work very very close to shore.

1 hour ago, Joerg said:

The life expectance of fishermen was dramatically low. Surviving your thirtieth birthday made you an elder in the fisherman community. Crews failing to return was a regularly occurring fact of life, and applied even to coastal fishing or island hopping (including priests called to serve at distant steads).

Life expectancy is most ancient communities was very low. I see you appear to be agreeing with me...

1 hour ago, Joerg said:

No difference from Gloranthan sailing, then. The longest leg across open seas without landfall is from Seshnela to Jrustela, maybe 10 times the diameter of the Mirrorsea Bay.

Um, no. Look at an atlas. '10 times the diameter of Mirrorsea Bay will get you just about to the New Vadeli Islands.

1 hour ago, Joerg said:

Still, war ships were sent out to project power all the time - the Greeks sent triremes to Sicily, for instance. Spartan ships established colonies to rival Carthage in modern Lybia. These ships carried soldiers and laborers, and their gear.

The Athenian war fleet sailed to Sicily, not all in one go, but stopping each night, usually beaching the ships. The Spartans had no war fleet after the Battle of Cnidus but hired merchant ships. If it happened, Dorieus' earlier attempt at setting up a colony lasted barely three years - it was very tiny.

1 hour ago, Joerg said:

And yet Captain Bligh managed to sail the long boat of the Bounty to the safety of a British colony several weeks from where he was pushed off his ship. Shackleton rowed all the way from Elephant Island off the Antarctic continent to the whaling outpost on South Georgia. According to your logistical argument these were impossible nautical feats.

Both men had instruments. Shackleton also had charts. Both groups sailed with supplies; Bligh's crew were on starvation rations towards the end. Both groups sailed; they did not row the distance. Shackleton also left most of his crew behind (three died waiting for rescue).

1 hour ago, Joerg said:

According to that theory, there is no way that the southeast Asian chickens found their way to South America, or the spuds from South America to Rapa Nui. The Polynesians managed to get them across.

Sweet potatoes in Polynesia date to around 700AD, at the earliest, but, like the bottle gourd possibly crossed the Pacific by marine currents; the chickens of South America are so distantly related to those in Polynesia, that they did not originate by Polynesians reaching South America. So the story that there was trade back and forwards is suspect. Everywhere the Polynesians went, they took the Pacific Rat with them; there are no Pacific Rats in South America.

There's always the chance of one boat by accident crossing great distances, but that doesn't denote any significant trade. So the sweet potato may have been transported by humans, but the genetic diversity of the plant in Polynesia and Micronesia demonstrates a very low number transferred, apparent despite subsequent reintroductions by Europeans.

Most small vessels, on an unexpected long-distance voyage, would end in tragedy.

Edited October 12, 2017 by M Helsdon

[Mark Mohrfield]

7 hours ago, Psullie said:

an airborne one!

the Zola Fel would require a very different vessel from one that hugs the coast. You'd need two ships, one for the Rozgali part of the route, the trade off at Corflu for a river barge.

That contradicts a post in an earlier thread where it was suggested that a shallow draft ship would be able to do both.

What sort of ships would be suitable for the different environments?

[Jon Hunter]

5 hours ago, Mark Mohrfield said:

That contradicts a post in an earlier thread where it was suggested that a shallow draft ship would be able to do both.

What sort of ships would be suitable for the different environments?

Historically some could, viking long ships were able to do both quite well.

I think certain sea going vessels can deal with rivers, but will struggle with small shallow rivers.

What you really don't want to do is take a river going vessel onto the open sea. 

I'm sure there are vessels that can do both, but not optimal for either they will not as safe on the open sea or as manoeuvrable and easy to navigate on rivers.

Variables will be the depth and current of rivers, the natures of the seas is question, seasons, technology, tradition and the effects of magic.

Glorantha is  primarily a game world, maybe one or two players might appreciate the extra bit of detail that a change of boat between the river and sea portion of there voyage, but most won't even notice you worried about it. 

Edited October 13, 2017 by Jon Hunter

[Joerg]

Your definition of non-coastal sailing - staying afloat for months outside of the sight of land - is unknown in anything but the modern age of our world, pioneered by portuguese, and even they used island and port hopping wherever possible. So, when I am talking about sailing the high seas, it is in that context - vessels leaving the sight of land to cut across to a known or at least assumed destination.

Apart from the Dark Season Risk Run which uses a slingshot course tangential to Magasta's Pool, all Gloranthan sailing showed in the Missing Lands maps (pp.96-100) are island hopping, with an average speed of about five to six knots. There is no route taking longer than 12 days of regular sailing.

 

Kethaelan triremes with a crew of 170 are basically a somewhat widened and elongated penteconter hull (like the Wolf Pirate ships) built up with added space for the second and third banks of rowers on top of the  bottom fifty, and usually a planked deck above the rowers. A smaller penteconter patrol craft is described in Men of the Sea. It has about the same freeboard as a regular penteconter (counted to the lowest openings to the oars). Typically, on a cruise only the lower deck will be crewed, and keep a steady speed rowing in shifts. Having the full complement of rowers at the oars happens only in combat situations, parades or races.

 

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No, he leads a fleet mostly of clinker-built penteconters. Seriously different in construction and crew to a Trireme.

Apart from purely coastal patrols, triremes usually carry a mast and sail. The wolf pirate ships are a monoreme design with a ramming bow suitable for shearing maneuvers (attacking enemy vessels* oars) and for locking the ship to their prey. The animated figureheads help in this.

The crew to cargo capacity ratio of a wolf pirate ship is hardly better than that of a trireme. The trireme has a much wider deck, and some more space between the rowers especially on the upper banks.

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In the ancient world it was notoriously difficult to keep warships supplied by cargo vessels - different sailing characteristics, which meant that the first storm would scatter the fleet. But yes, having supply ships is the only way to support warships, unless they anchor or beach every night.

Yes, storms have a tendency to scatter fleets, seriously reducing sight and communication. But fleets were rarely uniform, mixing triremes with pentaremes and biremes, for different tactical purposes. If you look at the naval war between the Persians and the Greeks with Marathon and Salamis, you see coastal sailing and very mixed fleets on the side of the Persians, and apart from scout crafts, no serious attempt to attack the approaching fleet by the Athenians prior to Salamis.

The Spanish Armada was a transport fleet full of land forces rather than a fleet of invincible fighting vessels. Crew/passenger to cargo space were ,similarly unfavourable as with galleys, which limited their operations to coastal operations. The only fleet larger than that, the treasure fleet of Zheng He, followed the coasts as well, establishing contact with the coastal natives imposing trade and tribute on them.

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You are seriously underestimating the water and food requirements. When multiplied by days and weeks, it becomes a substantial quantity.

Apart from the the Waertagi and possibly the Sendereven, there is no sailing culture staying on the seas for three weeks or more, not even the Vadeli or the dwarf castles. Logistics, especially fresh water (although controling a water elemental might reduce the water requirement significantly) require landfall.

Both Waertagi and Sendereven live off the bounty of the seas when at high seas.

Nobody expects to be out at sea for more than a fortnight. Most journeys take less than a week - if conditions make a trip take much longer, only a very desperate ship will attempt it, and with short rations and water.

 

 

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You are seriously overestimating the carrying capability of an ancient warship.

Obviously, a pirate craft needs to have enough cargo space for the booty it wants to make from its opponent unless the objective is to capture the entire vessel. Far from all ships will carry significant amounts of high value low volume goods.

We are talking about ramming combat here, so the target ship is rather likely not to survive the encounter.

Coastal raiders need to provide cargo space for whatever they will extract from the raidees, too, whether captives or other stuff that either sells or is in demand back home.

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As for rainfall or fish - you are surely being facetious. In rain, the crew will be bailing water overboard, and if a ship slows to fish it won't get very far.

The usual way to deal with rain - whether to capture it or to avoid it flooding the bilge - is to use canvas to redirect it, either into empty containers or overboard. Unless you are in a torrential rain, bailing against that doesn't need that much manpower.

Six knots is considered a good travel speed, Line fishing and thrown nets can be used at this speed. Given that most of the time at least one third of the crew of a trireme is off rowing duty, you have the manpower to haul in some fish for a better supper. Spearing some of the fish with a trident will be another way to get the slippery little things onto deck. Some ships may have cormorants for fishing.

Anything above six knots is a forced march or special effort, possible for individual vessels with a dedicated crew, but impossible for fleets needing to coordinate. The difficulty of keeping a fleet cohesive is what enabled the victory of the Danish-Swedish alliance over Olaf Tryggvason, they overwhelmed selected Norwegian ships with overwhelming odds.

 

Fleet units or mercenary warships may be detached for escort duty. In that role they are expected to scout ahead and around, alerting the convoy to hostiles. In order to do so, these escorts need to regroup with their convoy regularly to exchange information for provisions. But then, a convoy is slower than the individual vessels that make it up by necessity.

I don't think that there are heavily protected overseas convoys. Raider fleets will be mostly individual units following a leader to a pre-ordained meeting point and may display little if any convoy discipline.

 

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They were lucky. They got there by accident, not intent. There was a tradition of setting off in these boats and assuming that divine providence would protect them. A few turned up in various places, apparently; the majority would have drowned.

And some made it back, and told of the land out there, and how to get there. Ireland itself was colonized by boats, and accoding to their own legends, by oxhide vessels.

Discoveries are made by a combination of luck (or bad luck) and intent, following coasts and animal migration patterns.

The Polynesians perfected this  retracking of animal migration routes so much that they could break off the pursuit one year and take it up again the next year, until they found wherever those birds were going.

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Even 'dragon ships' weren't rowed the five hundred or more miles to Scotland or Ireland, but sailed by island hopping, and then frequently stopping to take on supplies.

According to the Sagas, the trip to Norway usually was made nonstop, and while the Orkneys were welcome stepping points for raiding Scotland, I haven't seen much mention of making stops at the Faeroys or Shetlands. But any sensible leader would give his crew some rest before storming an enemy place, whether on an outlying island or in a hidden bay.

Using sails, island hopping, taking on supplies etc. goes for the majority of the triremes and biremes used in the ancient world as much as for their cargo ships.

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Um, Noah is a garbled version of a Sumerian flood, probably around 2900BC when there was a major river flood in southern Iraq.

There are elements of more catastrophic deluges mixed into that riverine scenario (that reflects the recent floods in Pakistan), leading to the permanent loss of coastal lands e.g. in the Persian Golf, the tidal waves devastating Doggerland (in addition to the lands sinking as the melted ice shield stopped seesawing them up), or the inundation of much of the Black Sea basin. The "navigation by birds" in the bible could be a confused account of following seabirds to their roosts.

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'Bird navigation' is decidedly suspect. There are many claims of bird (and cloud) navigation, but it can only work very very close to shore.

Or over many years if your navigator can return to a spot somewhere out in the open water (as the Polynesians allegedly could), to take up their pursuit on annual migrations. Whales and pinnipeds have migration patterns, too.

 

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Life expectancy is most ancient communities was very low. I see you appear to be agreeing with me...

Fishermen are expected to die healthy and young, unlike your average farmer or hunter who (while still dying young) usually fades out after a term of sickness or suffering from the results of an injury. Your average mercenary had a higher life expectancy even in times of war.

 

There has to be one exception to this - Vadeli fisherfolk and sailors. To a Vadeli "YOLO" is an existential angst. They are likely to be the most risk-averse sailors on Glorantha, and they manage their risk by heavy duty application of sorcery. Vadeli ships have been reported to emerge unscathed out of breakers that would have destroyed any other vessel, or to resurface after being drowned by breakers or maelstroms.

Regardless of their color codes, Vadeli are known to be accomplished sorcerers. It is quite likely that they know and use resurrection spells to bring back drowned but recovered sailors, but it is also possible that an individual Vadeli may inhabit more than one body at a single time, possibly grieving about a body-loss that doesn't spell the death of the individual. (How the West Was One suggested this.)

 

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Um, no. Look at an atlas. '10 times the diameter of Mirrorsea Bay will get you just about to the New Vadeli Islands.

The distance between Manday and Jrustela is less than 1000 land miles (the map on Guide p.469 showing the trade routes has no scale, so I used the map in Men of the Sea instead). The distance from Nochet to the City of Wonders is about 70 land miles (Guide p.245), and that's about half the diameter of the bay.

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Both men had instruments. Shackleton also had charts. Both groups sailed with supplies; Bligh's crew were on starvation rations towards the end. Both groups sailed; they did not row the distance. Shackleton also left most of his crew behind (three died waiting for rescue).

Gloranthan sailors have additional means of getting information about their location - sea spirits, merfolk or intelligent sea critters, either friendly or coerced.

Measurements of sea floor depth and composition or currents in lower layers may help, too - although the seas were open to sailors other than the Waertagi for only about 200 years before the Closing struck (less in Fronela, more in Maslo or the East Isles), sailors would have charted the route. Some of it will have been written down or "hidden" in work songs.

Magical direction finders to places on the surface world will enable triangulation on maps, and unlike the classic world Gloranthans have a much better concept of viewing their world from high above and putting that view into maps. Triangulation of the stars will give little more than the cardinal directions, but those too help for triangulating to another known place.

But things could be harder than on earth, too. We know that the shards of the world were caught up in the web of Arachne Solara, holding them together, but we also know about the bottomless chasms that resulted from the Sundering of the World (and the Spike), Are the shards fixed in their distance to one another, or could there be some oscillation there, caused by ebbing and flowing of the Doom Currents?

Gloranthan weather forecasts are better than anything the classical world had to offer. Weather affecting magics are slow in the build-up and offer some reaction time. Tidal predictions may be less accurate, and shifting (at times sapient) currents can be game changers. 

 

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Most small vessels, on an unexpected long-distance voyage, would end in tragedy.

Any vessel on an unexpected long-distance voyage without the means to take on provisions will end in tragedy. It would be rare for a Gloranthan vessel to have supplies for more than two weeks on board, and possibly less water than that if rainfalls are to be expected (or called down).

 

As long as the Closing remains in place, any failed voyage will be blamed to a flawed Opening of the seas for that journey. Sudden displacements of ships or lucky survival of unpredicted tidal surges, freak storms or involuntarily crossing into the hero planes and dropping it out elsewhere may put a ship into the unknown, but that usually requires agency of some powers, usually to test the vessel, crew, or some hero on board. Ordinary malice of the universe or enemy magic will rather result in the destruction of the vessel.

 

 

[Joerg]

13 hours ago, Mark Mohrfield said:

What sort of trade ship could make it from Nochet to Pavis? I've an idea for a campaign.

A courier or smuggler vessel, with limited bulk transport capacity but speed and fairly flat bottom.

All of the travel can be done in coastal waters, with the Leftarm archipelago the biggest navigational challenge. Intermediate stops could be some other port on the Mirrorsea Bay (Rhigos, Karse, Seapolis, Vizel), then Refuge, then Corflu. The leg from Refuge to Corflu might be the most challenging - you could try to avoid the Closing by remaining close to the sandbank- and insect-ridden shore, or you could take the "high sea" option and Open the seas on your departure from Refuge to avoid those coastal threats, exchanging them for the looming threats of the Closing.

The travel upriver might require some river or tidal magic to help you over shallows. The Cradle scenario has the river helping the considerable draft of the Cradle across any obstruction, so there is a navigable route for most of the river journey. There should be one or two places where random shifts in the river bed may require the crew to disembark and to pull the vessel over flat obstacles - the players can do this Viking style, on tree trunk logs (if they have brought some, or otherwise gathered from driftwood from the last violent river flooding - wood is scarce and valuable in Prax, but few Praxians will brave the water to get at them. Riverfolk might harvest them and sell them to either Pavis city, Corflu, or Praxian nomads).

Taking on a cultist or godtalker of Zola Fel as a pilot is a good idea and may help to avoid or overcome such difficulties.

The best time to make this journey would be Sea Season, when melt-off and runoff from the Rockwoods will swell the Zola Fel. This will also be the time when driftwood may run down the river, though, creating an iceberg-like hazard in addition to sharp or flat portions of the river bed.

It is likely that the ship needs to be towed by boats, e.g. when the channels get too narrow to employ oars directly from the ship. The Zola Fel has no hauling road for most of its length, although Sun County might have some. If the Cradle attackers at Corflu managed to bring hundreds of oxen to Harpoon, a sufficiently affluent and well-regarded and well-connected captain should be able to recruit a hauling team for a smaller vessel.

Overall, the crew will see why most cargo traffic transships to smaller river craft.

The arrival of a vessel this big will cause major excitement in Pavis and the Big Rubble, and probably further downriver as well.

 

Do you have a reason why you want a single ship to make the whole trip? Do you want to depart via the Puzzle Canal, or follow the Cradles' course to Magasta's Pool?

[David Scott]

14 hours ago, M Helsdon said:

 

16 hours ago, Joerg said:

Water containers will add to the ballast of a ship. A 270 crew will use up a cubic metre of water, maybe 1.5, per day. That's about 20 to 30 standard amphorae or kegs, so assuming that a warship gets equipped for 10 days, 1 amphora or keg per crew member must be stored in the hull or on the deck (the deck needs to be cleared for combat action, but that's a different problem, and empty kegs can be lashed together and reclaimed after a victorious battle). 15 pounds of solid food will easily fit into a saillor's chest or sack, and can be hung from hooks in the crew area. The crew will use rainfall to refill emptied containers, stretching the water supply, and probably catch fish to stretch the preserved food.

You are seriously overestimating the carrying capability of an ancient warship. As for rainfall or fish - you are surely being facetious. In rain, the crew will be bailing water overboard, and if a ship slows to fish it won't get very far.

May I suggest this excellent document -

https://www.jstor.org/stable/25165176

registration required but it’s free and unlocks a valuable resource:

Vessel Volumetrics and the Myth of the Cyclopean Bronze Age Ship

Christopher M. Monroe

Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient

Vol. 50, No. 1 (2007), pp. 1-18

Published by: Brill

Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25165176

Page Count: 18

 

20 tons being the maximum cargo of these ships. I’d scale it all down...

[M Helsdon]

5 hours ago, David Scott said:

20 tons being the maximum cargo of these ships. I’d scale it all down...

Interesting article. Warships had a much lower cargo capacity.

For anyone interested in the topic, good introductory books are:

Ships and Seafaring in Ancient Times - Lionel Casson

The Ship - Bjorn Landstrom

Unfortunately Landstrom's reconstructions of the rowing organization of biremes and triremes is out-of-date, (the copy I have is dated 1961 so that's not surprising, as there was a major 'reenactment' with the Olympias being rowed by an international crew in the 80s) but his artwork is superb.

[Mark Mohrfield]

On 10/13/2017 at 6:48 AM, Joerg said:

 

Do you have a reason why you want a single ship to make the whole trip?

I'm just trying to figure out what the most logical means of getting there would be. Jon Hunter had a good point above about whether players would care, though. I suppose "the boat works by magic" is an option.

Edited October 16, 2017 by Mark Mohrfield

[g33k]

3 hours ago, Mark Mohrfield said:

I'm just trying to figure out what the most logical means of getting there would be. Jon Hunter had a good above about whether players would care, though. I suppose "the boat works by magic" is an option.

AFAIK, the main forces that anciently sent ocean-going vessels upriver (any substantial distance) were the Vikings; those were some pretty devoted shipsmen, as they were known to go upriver from the Baltic and then portage until they could go downstream to the Black ...

But the overwheming majority of cargo & passenger shipping would transship from a relatively-deep ocean vessel to a relatively-flatbottom river vessel.

Note that smaller ships can have shallow-ish absolute drafts even with deep keels "relative" to the ship...

Maybe a removable keel is possible?

[Jon Hunter]

3 hours ago, g33k said:

Note that smaller ships can have shallow-ish absolute drafts even with deep keels "relative" to the ship...

Maybe a removable keel is possible?

I was thinking of a mid draft boat, something designed to operate on either, but excellent at neither.

Also depends on your river, the thames always took deep water vessels as far as London, though galleys couldn't traverse the delta at the nile without significant help.