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Esrolian Merchant Ships


Mark Mohrfield

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3 hours ago, Joerg said:

 

Lead-clad hulls in the vicinity of trolls and their sea-troll allies, who can create coinage simply by chewing a bit on the metal? Copper-sheeting sounds more likely, or possibly more exotic solutions. Why not use ham beetle chitin plating? A lot lighter, and you need a lot less lead to get these food leftovers from Shadow Plateau. The Molakka spells warding off bore-worms might be stencilled inside already, or possibly you use a bait bar magically attracting all the nearby bore worms which can be sold in port as a troll delicacy.


 

I am not so sure of this "left-over" concept with trolls, given they can eat anything. Garbage is more an open-air larder that attracts insect snacks. So bartering for beetle-shells might be more expensive, as Argan Argar's people are canny enough the realize the utility of them as dishes, storage devices, hats, coracles, etc.

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12 hours ago, Mark Mohrfield said:

Would a Kyrenia-style ship be able to navigate up rivers, or would it be necessary to transfer the cargo to river boats at Corflu?

Not easily, beyond the river mouth, unless many oarsmen were hired, or it could sail close enough to the bank to be pulled along by oxen or other animals ashore by rope. A 'tub' is reliant upon a favorable wind, and whilst its draught would allow it to sail in a navigable river a fair distance upstream, it doesn't have the propulsion to overcome the current. These ships can't tack into the wind.

Most river boats are far smaller; in ancient times the largest (in Roman times) was smaller than the Kyrenia having about two-thirds of the carrying capacity. A single horse or ox can pull about 250 times the load it can on land when hitched to a barge, a team being practical. For the Kyrenia, which was larger than the tub I detailed, you'd probably require a team of at least four or six animals (load of cargo plus vessel). Horses are unlikely to be used in this way, oxen more likely, and tame bison, and the usual limits on speed come into effect: if there isn't a good road beside the river (and this is probably the case) a team of oxen could pull the ship about four miles a day, depending upon the strength of the current. Bison and oxen could only work for five hours before becoming exhausted (you'd need multiple teams to make more speed). If the bank becomes impassable, so that there isn't firm footing for the animals, then you can only try to row or pole upstream, and this is going to be very slow work, if at all practical.

Otherwise, you'd have to rely upon magic, such as summoning an elemental to push the ship upstream, (most effectively a water elemental, less effectively an air elemental to fill the sails) for long enough to get where you are going.

The Romans used oared supply boats, smaller than the Kyrenia, with reduced cargo capacity and needing around twenty oarsmen. Being military vessels the economic limits on merchants didn't apply, and they tended to be used only in the lower reaches of a river, where it was wider and the current downstream reduced.

This is why ancient ports were mostly situated on the coast or very near the mouth of a river. Getting a substantial cargo ship upstream is very hard work.

For your trip to Pavis, sailing one of these ships very far upriver isn't going to be practical, even in the season when the river might be high enough to allow it passage. Your PCs will have to transfer to river boats.

Edited by M Helsdon
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21 hours ago, jeffjerwin said:

I am not so sure of this "left-over" concept with trolls, given they can eat anything. Garbage is more an open-air larder that attracts insect snacks. So bartering for beetle-shells might be more expensive, as Argan Argar's people are canny enough the realize the utility of them as dishes, storage devices, hats, coracles, etc.

If they use them for coracles, they will have recognized the value for boat-building, and the boat-builders will surely trade some of the less suitable material for good food, good leaden coin or material they have a harder time to obtain with human shipwrights. Like e.g. decent oars from Tastolar timber.

Sure, the price might be heftier than expected, but I think a hull sheathing of beetle carapace will still be less costly than one of lead. There might even be troll shipwrights on Diros Island off Nochet providing this service.

 

I am not quite sure how far the warmth-dependent boreworm will be spread along the coasts of Genertela. Umathela most likely has them, Jrustela quite likely, and Teshnos and further east quite likely, too. Solkathi is a branch off one of the Togaran doom currents, so it might be just warm enough. Choralinthor might cool down enough in the winter to keep the critters from becoming permanent guests.

For real world distribution, due to slight warming (nigh imperceptible to the people braving the water in what goes for summer here) and bilge water transfer, the bore-worm has just recently made its way into the Baltic Sea and is starting to damage centuries old shipwrecks, creating something of a feeding frenzy among marine archaeologists in the region. That means that vessels restricting their traffic to the Neliomi Sea probably are safe without such precautions.

Telling how it is excessive verbis

 

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Cranes were invented in Greece in the late 6th c. BCE.

 

Edit: Glorantha no doubt has many magical and impossible in our physics solutions for lifting heavy or unwieldy objects. It's the sort of practical magical knowledge that every stevedore and carpenter needs. I suspect in Esrolia the Vogarth the Strongman cult is important partly because of building and moving goods.

Edited by jeffjerwin
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Ports located on river estuaries:

On 31.3.2018 at 9:06 PM, M Helsdon said:

You'd best look at a map...of Glorantha, and of the ancient Mediterranean. Also most places these ships traded with didn't have 'ports' with quaysides, which is the reason the draught was shallow to permit the vessel close into shore.

Take a look at the Kethaelan ports, which would be the home ports for these ships. Other than Seapolis and the City of Wonders, they are located at river outlets. So is Handra, or the few sea ports of Maniria.

Both major Esrolian ports are situated on the major river mouths - which makes sense as transshipping point. All Heortland ports are situated on river mouths, and some of the cities further upriver are documented as having been attacked by Jrusteli-designed fire barges, which means that smaller trade ships would be able to get there, too.

River estuaries use tidal current to allow ships to enter, which admittedly is rather weak in Glorantha (despite the use of tidal waves by the Waertagi). River esturaries also offer (often the only) sheltered anchorages or beaching sites with reduced wave action in the absence of rugged coastlines provided by rocky promontories.

With the Gloranthan Annilla tides happening only twice a week, I wonder whether in-rushing tidal currents may be a natural phenomenon on the Gloranthan coasts independent of passive water movement, echoes or ancestors of Worcha. If so, what makes them roll in somewhat periodically?

 

7 hours ago, Mark Mohrfield said:

Some more questions:

How was cargo loaded and unloaded on ancient ships? Were cranes used, or was it all simply moved by people lifting it? How long would it take to load and unload?

Wikipedia tells us about standardized sizes for wine amphora with about 39 litres, or the Roman use of the Amphora as a volume unit of a cubic foot (about 29 litres). This means that a wine amphora will weigh about 60 kg, which is within the carrying capacity of a single dock worker.

The pointed bottoms of these containers suggest that they could be rammed into loose sand to stand somewhat reliably. For transport in ships they may have been protected by straw or reed from direct contact to reduce stress, or they may have been sturdy enough to survive some shock in direct contact if stowed like in this reconstruction image:

250px-Amphorae_stacking.jpg

If someone had to provide straw and rope to bind the amphorae together, you need another packing master on board.

It is possible that loading used a bucket-chain method, meaning that each dock worker would just pass on an amphora over a short distance.

 

Quote

How many common river boats would it take to carry the cargo of one these ships?

That would depend on the type and size of river boat used. Maybe the Venetian gondola is a good measure for a lighter boat operable by a single rower in tolerable currents, in that case I would guess at maybe twenty wine amphorae of 60 kg as a boat load.

Other standard containers would include baskets (which may have been used as a more permanent shock protection for amphorae, too), animal skins (again possibly protected from mechanical stress by baskets), or barrels. 

Barrels are documented (by Romans) as an established technology for La Tene Celts. A well-made barrel has the advantage that it can be rolled. Barrel hoops would be made from bast fibre, the prehistoric and ancient nylon equivalent in tensile strength and weight. Any culture that uses planks for boat building, possibly sewn with bast rather than using nails, will get the idea to produce little boats as containers, and to enclose them. But then the technology to make a coracle will also provide a container if you put the supportive framework on the outside rather than the inside of the leather skin, and may quite likely have been there before the water vessel. (I wonder whether there ever was a naval design using pottery for lift. The dwarf "opus caementicium" floating castles are just a variation on this principle.)

The "barrel of Diogenes" was in all likelihood a ceramic pithos storage vase. This is a fine example how tradition will replace unfamiliar technological terms with familiar ones.

 

Constructing a permanent quaye is often thwarted by tidal variations. I wonder whether ports without a permanent quaye would use pontoons or rafts instead. Such constructions may have left little more archaeological evidence than underwater post holes, which aren't as easy to detect as post holes on dry land.

Telling how it is excessive verbis

 

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8 hours ago, Mark Mohrfield said:

Some more questions:

How was cargo loaded and unloaded on ancient ships? Were cranes used, or was it all simply moved by people lifting it? How long would it take to load and unload?

How many common river boats would it take to carry the cargo of one these ships?

Cargo was mostly loaded and unloaded by hand. Cranes were used by the Romans and Greeks (mostly human powered) but I wouldn't expect to find them in Glorantha except perhaps are the biggest and richest port cities, if at all.

As previously noted, cargo was transported in bales, amphorae or barrels, all no larger than one or two men could lift, and these would be the basic 'unit' of cargo.  Ancient units were of a size that they could be carried by a ship, boat, cart, or donkey or mule.

As a volume, one amphora is equivalent 26 litres and a full amphora (containing olive oil, or wine) weighs around 50 kg/110 lbs, around half of which is the material of the container. Grain was transported in sacks weighing 31.5 kg/70 lbs.

Size of the boat? Depends upon the river, and to a lesser degree the cargo. Obviously every river boat going upstream has to be poled or rowed, or, if practical, hitched for towing, by animals or people. This is when the portage of goods becomes more expensive, and why river boats were often used to move goods downstream, returning upstream empty or lightly loaded. So the size of the river boats depends upon the width and depth of the river, and then how many oars and/or poles are used. So a river boat might carry only a few 'units' or cargo or several.

A small barge might carry a cargo of 19,800 lbs.; a very large barge up to 74,800 lbs., about the same as a modest sea-going vessel, but the usual problems of propulsion against the current applies. A smaller one-oarsman boat might carry 300 kgs/660 lbs.

Edited by M Helsdon
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1 hour ago, Joerg said:

Take a look at the Kethaelan ports, which would be the home ports for these ships. Other than Seapolis and the City of Wonders, they are located at river outlets. So is Handra, or the few sea ports of Maniria.

Both major Esrolian ports are situated on the major river mouths - which makes sense as transshipping point. All Heortland ports are situated on river mouths, and some of the cities further upriver are documented as having been attacked by Jrusteli-designed fire barges, which means that smaller trade ships would be able to get there, too.

Kindly recall that the Atlas only shows the larger settlements. The majority of ports are much smaller, thus requiring the use of ships able to come very close to shore. Heortland is a plateau fronted by a forbidding coastline of marsh and cliffs, and the number of places for ports along the coast is restricted.

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5 hours ago, M Helsdon said:

Kindly recall that the Atlas only shows the larger settlements. The majority of ports are much smaller, thus requiring the use of ships able to come very close to shore. Heortland is a plateau fronted by a forbidding coastline of marsh and cliffs, and the number of places for ports along the coast is restricted.

Obviously your idea of a "port" is my idea of a fishing hamlet that doesn't regularly see any sizeable ship, except for slavers and similar raiders. Such decentralized places use boats for trading, or overland routes.

If you look at the population numbers for Heortland, you will notice the rather small population for the County of the Isles. I would be astonished if the bayward coast beneath the cliffs had half as many inhabitants. Life below a cliff brings an additional risk of rock slides and nowhere to run in case of storm floods - even the islands offer better protection. Most of the fisherfolk population stick to the wider lowlands around the estuaries where their farming and gardening on the side has better conditions, too.

You also over-dramatize the beaching of a keeled boat. So what if it tilts by a few degrees, the sailors are used to worse angles when fighting waves. Cargo can be secured without any additional problems.

These small hamlets don't have any cargo that would require a grain barge sized ship to drop anchor. If they still are the destination for such a ship, these hamlets have boats that go out to meet the ship, take on the cargo, and that's it. If the crew wants to make landfall anyway, they probably make use of these boats, too.

 

I have been a coast dweller for all of my life. I have some hands on experience with coastal fishing from boats, using boats on coasts (or avoiding to do so on other coasts), and I have taken a special interest in the separate fisherman communities next to cities which rarely allow strangers into their ranks.

Fish and other seafood is hard to conserve if you don't live in very cold conditions (where air-drying of cod is an option - I lived there for a while, too, and took an interest in their ways of life in old times).

Admittedly, my experiences of the Mediterranean are limited. But there isn't any sea approaching the Mediterranean in Glorantha. The Homeward Ocean is an ocean, with conditions like the Atlantic coast. The marshlands south of Prax are in all likelihood saltwort-bedecked mudflats of rather treacherous footing, with tidal pools and channels where rocks or rocky outcrops create some places that traps water. Occasional beach ridges (where sediment from against the dominant current are deposited) will protect genuine marshland with brackish water, a few possibly stable enough to be the home for a small adult newtling population. Some such places might even have sand dunes.

Even without rocks sticking up now and then, such coasts are extremely treacherous, and sailors avoid landfall unless they have an estuary or other bay offering some protection from the wave action. Flat bottom or not, if a storm drives a ship on a sandbar while there are significant waves, the hull will be shattered - even modern steel hulls.

A little bit of statistics here. The Jutland coast between Römö and Skagen saw 3608 registered beachings in the years between 1850 and 1925, with 2111 of these total losses. That's almost one ship per week, on average. There is a good reason why people sought alternative routes across the peninsula, even if that meant multiple cases of transshipping and even some overland transport, or building canals. Actual ships rarely were moved overland before there were artificial waterways. A few instances are documented, however.

Drag i Tysfjord, the place where I lived in Norway, had a similar history. It used to be a coastal Finn (i.e. Sami) settlement that traded with and paid tribute to the Halogalander (Viking) chiefs (self-styled kings) of Steigen or Skrova. Both of these accessed Drag not from the Tysfjord, but entered the southern neighbor fjord Innhavet and used boats to travel on two lakes that covered most of the distance to Drag.

The (very small) city of Garding on Eiderstedt had a "sea harbor" that was served by poled barges that transshipped from a side inlet into the Eider river through enhanced ditches, some of which may have started out as natural drainage routes while the last part definitely was dug by manpower. The distance to the transshipment point was about 10 land miles. Overland transport was not an option as there were no useful roads, even the great cattle herd trecks to Flanders had to start across trackless land before joining the Ochsenweg south, as cattle didn't really take well to sea travel, and were perfectly capable of walking the distance.

One of the scenarios in the German HeroQuest scenario collection touches this region.

So, in conclusion - there were no settlements anywhere near the outer coast in this region, although some farming hamlets without any useful access to the sea would come within two miles or so. Fisherfolk who also doubled as whalers, seal hunters or merchant navy hands lived on inlets or sheltered bays. (For given values of sheltered, as the great changes wrought to that coast by the Mandrenkes showed.) In Norway, some isolated steads would be accessible only by boat or small ship, but for trading they would load their own boats and sail or row to the nearest port where merchant ships would deign to make landfall, or where local merchants had pooled to construct and operate a merchant vessel of their own.

And that for a region where most of the grain was imported (even though people would sow it for yields that varied between 80% and 120% of the seed amount rather than losing even more of it to vermin and rot). These people were dependent on overseas trade for their health if not bare minimal survival, and they did not expect merchant vessels to drop by.

 

So basically, I find your definition of port ludicrous. A settlement of less than 500 people wouldn't be called a port. It might sport a harbour or useful anchorage, but that's a different proposal and has nothing to do with loading or offloading significant amounts of goods on the beach.

Telling how it is excessive verbis

 

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6 hours ago, Joerg said:

Obviously your idea of a "port" is my idea of a fishing hamlet that doesn't regularly see any sizeable ship, except for slavers and similar raiders. Such decentralized places use boats for trading, or overland routes.

Obviously, you are unaware of the history of the flat-bottomed ships which are the basis of the Esrolian 'tubs'. Very few actual ports as you classify them existed in the ancient world; instead most were safe anchorages where a merchant ship could come to shore and load and unload. Transporting goods from such 'harbors' was vastly more efficient than moving goods by land, by a factor of ten times the speed and roughly the same reduction in cost. This was the case in Bronze Age Europe (Mediterranean and in the north) and true in many places for much of the Iron Age. Goods moved by sea were often bulk cargos of, for example, trade metals, and prestige items such as wine, spices, aromatics, olive oil, textiles, honey, wool, resins (including of the poppy), certain minerals, dyes, precious animal skins, hides, sometimes wood (because even if wood is available near by it may not be the right sort - for instance the making of spear, arrows, ships, often requires specific types of wood, and barrels are also best made from certain types which do not grow everywhere), some manufactured high status items such as weapons, metal ware, ceramics. In Glorantha, trade metals such as copper, tin and iron are significant trade items.

6 hours ago, Joerg said:

And that for a region where most of the grain was imported (even though people would sow it for yields that varied between 80% and 120% of the seed amount rather than losing even more of it to vermin and rot). These people were dependent on overseas trade for their health if not bare minimal survival, and they did not expect merchant vessels to drop by.

In the ancient world grain was only transported in bulk between Egypt and Rome, and that was a major exception.

6 hours ago, Joerg said:

So basically, I find your definition of port ludicrous. A settlement of less than 500 people wouldn't be called a port. It might sport a harbour or useful anchorage, but that's a different proposal and has nothing to do with loading or offloading significant amounts of goods on the beach.

You might try reading a little on the subject, as you seem unaware of the realities of trade in the Bronze and pre-Roman Iron Age.

Edited by M Helsdon
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46 minutes ago, M Helsdon said:

Obviously, you are unaware of the history of the flat-bottomed ships which are the basis of the Esrolian 'tubs'. Very few actual ports as you classify them existed in the ancient world; instead most were safe anchorages where a merchant ship could come to shore and load and unload.

A ship the size of a Hanseatic Cog would not stop for a delivery for a hamlet of 60 souls unless enough people form the crew hail from there.

Viking merchants did use piers where present, but their keeled craft would beach on sandy beaches next to significant settlements or markets where available or stay out of the flats (depending on the coast they found). They wouldn't make the tour to each and every single stead on an island like Hinnöya in the Vesteralen (sorry about the wrong umlauts), leaving that to locals with smaller boats that could be pulled up even at rocky shores.

Tubs the size of the grain ship would stop for full-sized colony cities that had something to offer. They wouldn't stop for five amphorae of olive harvest at some small isolated beach. That's what boats are for. Or donkey backs, or carts.

 

In Greece, the portion of the local harvest set aside for trade (or rent/taxation) would be transported to the polis, which is where the trade ship would stop. The local potentates (or democratic councils acting as such) wouldn't have it any other way. Your idea of the Tramp Steamer making stop after stop at individual island hamlets isn't how such harvests are collected. Small vessels similar in capacity to river boats would be sent to central market places where the big ships would visit. A few smaller "ports" nearby might be used for tarriff evasion, but usually by smaller vessels and not by the "big liners".

Ships would make regular stops at freshwater sources regardless whether there were habitations there or not, for instance, but calling such places ports is like calling highway parking lots or fuel stations in the wilderness cities. So yes, there is a call for being able to approach a more or less featureless coast that provides a know resource, like freshwater. But no, that's not a port.

 

46 minutes ago, M Helsdon said:

Transporting goods from such 'harbors'

Now that's a different term than port. Harbor, anchorage, wind shadow - places where you would re-provision, sit out bad weather, or hide from pirates are a necessity.

46 minutes ago, M Helsdon said:

was vastly more efficient than moving goods by land, by a factor of ten times the speed and roughly the same reduction in cost.

And if you do it on a boat operated by two people, with enough cargo space for the entire production of that place, and some to add, that's what you do rather than send a ship that requires almost a dozen crew plus "dock handlers" to beach and unbeach.

Using existing waterways is always the cheapest form of transportation, and in the absence of other infrastructure usually the fastest way, too, unless two otherwise distant bodies of water are separated by only a rather short stretch of overland journey.

46 minutes ago, M Helsdon said:

This was the case in Bronze Age Europe (Medierranean and in the north) and true in many places for much of the Iron Age. Goods moved by sea were often bulk cargos of, for example, trade metals, and prestige items such as wine, spices, aromatics, olive oil, textiles, honey, wool, resins (including of the poppy), certain minerals, dyes, precious animal skins, hides, sometimes wood (because even if wood is available near by it may not be the right sort - for instance the making of spear, arrows, ships, often requires specific types of wood, and barrels are also best made from certain types which do not grow everywhere), some manufactured high status items such as weapons, metal ware, ceramics. In Glorantha, trade metals such as copper, tin and iron are significant trade items.

There is only one caveat here. In order to require the capacity for bulk transportation, you need goods in bulk amounts. You don't stop the ocean-going ship for each barrel or amphora of local produce, but you let smaller boats do that, and collect from central places, which are usually controlled by the local authority and taxed and tarrifed accordingly (or, in less modern words, you had to gift the local ruler to get his blessing for trading with his subjects). That's the function of the proto-urban centers that spring up in the late Bronze Age, sometimes from local concentration, sometimes from foreigners establishing a colony polis in previously uncharted land.

 

46 minutes ago, M Helsdon said:

In the ancient world grain was only transported in bulk between Egypt and Rome, and that was a major exception.

Timber was another major bulk cargo, while marble and similarly sought after stone probably was more of a rare luxury transport. Rome was dependent on outside imports, having outgrown the food producing capacity of the neighborhood with a few days of transportation. Athens with its tribute payments from the Attic League members may have been in a similar position, but apparently managed to survive a long siege (without a functioning sea blockade) for years without any access to production in its direct neighborhood, too.

 

46 minutes ago, M Helsdon said:

You might try reading a little on the subject, as you seem unaware of the realities of trade in the Bronze and pre-Roman Iron Age.

Thank you very much for that authoritative suggestion. May I suggest some advanced reading on the formation of proto-urban structures north of the Alps for your delectation?

 

What's the social and economic unit in Maniria? The clan, of about 500 people. That unit will have a communal place where the harvest (surplus) is gathered, and where the clan authorities or their deputies will make deals with outside merchants interested in bulk. A small time peddlar who has maybe a donkey  but more likely just the basket he bears on his back might be allowed to do his minuscule business directly (after declaring his business to the clan council or their deputies), but a major trader cannot just visit all the outlying steads, bid for the local harvest, and leave the clan center's storages empty for that year.

 

Germanic social units may have been smaller if you go by the term "hundreds", though I doubt that. For individual farmsteads or fisherman's steads acting as their own economic unit you need some form of isolation, and even then trade was centralized by the chiefs or kings of that outback region, like the Steigen or Skrova kings on the Vestfjord. No bulk trader ever approached the inner Tysfjord. Delegations of the local kings went there to collect tribute and trade, then dealt with the traders interested in bulk.

 

If I look at the settlement structure on Crete, for instance, I don't see evidence for such isolated beach sites. The "palaces" are the local centers of commerce, and any trader would visit those for trade goods, leaving isolated shepherd places maybe as a place where to refresh the water containers, but never to take on significant amounts of export goods. A spot to disembark a hunting or water party is not a port in anybody's vocabulary.

North of the Celtic language region, trade was conducted in the Viks - harbor places where the local goods would be accumulated through local transport. In the Danubian region, the Fürstensitz had the same function. On the Mediterranean, the colonies, whether Greek or Punic. Of the Etruscan cities, there were only three or four port sites. Those had quite significant industrial activity, as the thousands of tons of iron slag testified that were put into recycling in the 19th and 20th century, at times up to five meters high. But those goods were collected in those three of four spots, and overseas traders went there, not to the individual smelter. That's what a port means.

Everywhere where overseas merchants went, they sought out centers created by the locals, Where the locals didn't provide such centers, they created them - which is why the Vikings are responsible for most of the coastal cities of Ireland.

And you find exactly this reflected in the activities of Sartar when he instituted his cities or the three trade posts in the Grazelands.

 

The issue of Gloranthan sea ports is one of a 600 year interdict, the Closing. Places like Kethaela with their inland sea or the Quinpolic islands kept at least local trade, but similar places like the Mournsea stopped all naval activities except fishing. Ramalia has demonized everything approaching from the sea and doesn't even allow fishing. If anything, this has created a greater reliance on smaller vessels collecting local goods and transporting them to the cities. There is no place or rather function for grain-barge sized ships on the coast of Heortland except in the places that are shown in the Guide. They even show Sklar, a glorified fisherman's hamlet that might be of interest for smugglers, but never for bulk traders. And places like Jansholm or Durengard may be approachable for smaller vessels, but not for those grain tubs - those will use the transshipping places on the flats in the estuaries.

On the Esrolian side, you might have a point about not all places that might warrant a port being shown on the map. However, tell me this: Where can you load grain? Only in Nochet or Rhigos. Places like Pedastal don't have that privilege, and it takes a Lunar forward base there to change that.

The Rightarm Isles funnel their foreign trade through Seapolis, where their Ludoch overlords can observe the transactions. Other places might have facilities or amenities, but no wares to speak of. Stopping for longer than it takes to take on fresh water and food or to spend the night will most like put the locals into deep trouble with their authorities.

 

You are correct that a vessel like the grain barge may be too small to have more of a dinghy than a tug or watering skiff. But you overlook that people on the coast will have boats of their own. A popular anchorage off the Tangle below the Shadow Plateau will in all likelihood see local hagglers making a decent profit out of bringing fresh goods to the anchored ships, creating a bit of the Sansibar atmosphere where friendly locals in colorful boats greet the sailors on their big overseas ships. Even if those locals are amhibian or beaked rather than exotic human. But those places are just provisioning stops. If any transshipment occurs, it is directly from big vessel to local small vessel. Where you don't have tides twice a day (like everywhere on Glorantha), you avoid beaching your vessel, unless you are fine waiting out the next two to five days without being able to leave. Getting stuck that way in Nochet is fine, your crew will probably need that time. Getting stuck ike that in a shithole like Sklar might mean that you need to hire new crew in the next decent port. And a stop to take on fresh water for the next two or three days had better not last that long, or the entire point of making that stop would be sort of moot.

 

In many ways, the Baltic Sea with its absence of tides except for level changes caused by constant strong wind models the Gloranthan seas better than the Mediterranean. Beaching in Glorantha means you better do that at the highest tide, or the continuouos rise in water level will carry off your vessel in the middle of unloading. Beaching at the highest tide means a wait of at least two days until the water gets high enough to leave the beach again.

So, where is the benefit of a flat-bottomed ship able to beach? If you need water, you set off the skiff with enough containers and maybe three of your crew while the rest of the crew holds position with the help of anchor and occasional poling or rowing, or you take the friendly locals up on their offer to do the water run for you for a small payment. If you want to load significant amounts of cargo, you better find a decent port with better amenities or at least enough manpower to put water under your non-keel again. Everything else, a smaller vessel gets alongside your ship, and you heave stuff over the railing.

Telling how it is excessive verbis

 

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1 hour ago, Joerg said:

A ship the size of a Hanseatic Cog would not stop for a delivery for a hamlet of 60 souls unless enough people form the crew hail from there.

Curious. The Hanseatic Cog did not exist in the Bronze Age, or the early Iron Age.

1 hour ago, Joerg said:

Viking merchants did use piers where present, but their keeled craft would beach on sandy beaches next to significant settlements or markets where available or stay out of the flats (depending on the coast they found).

No Viking knorrs or longships in the Bronze Age, or early Iron Age...

1 hour ago, Joerg said:

Tubs the size of the grain ship would stop for full-sized colony cities that had something to offer. They wouldn't stop for five amphorae of olive harvest at some small isolated beach. That's what boats are for. Or donkey backs, or carts.

What grain ship? Are you referring to the Roman grain ships? If so, there were none in the Bronze Age or early Iron Age.

1 hour ago, Joerg said:

In Greece, the portion of the local harvest set aside for trade (or rent/taxation) would be transported to the polis, which is where the trade ship would stop. The local potentates (or democratic councils acting as such) wouldn't have it any other way. Your idea of the Tramp Steamer making stop after stop at individual island hamlets isn't how such harvests are collected. Small vessels similar in capacity to river boats would be sent to central market places where the big ships would visit. A few smaller "ports" nearby might be used for tarriff evasion, but usually by smaller vessels and not by the "big liners".

Large quantities of grain were not moved by merchant ship, until Roman times. From the evidence of Bronze Age and early Iron Age wrecks, some grain was transported, but not in enormous quantities.

1 hour ago, Joerg said:

Ships would make regular stops at freshwater sources regardless whether there were habitations there or not, for instance, but calling such places ports is like calling highway parking lots or fuel stations in the wilderness cities. So yes, there is a call for being able to approach a more or less featureless coast that provides a know resource, like freshwater. But no, that's not a port.

Captains of the period needed to know of safe shelters every ten miles or so. Merchant ships tended to load fresh water wherever available and wherever they traded.

1 hour ago, Joerg said:

There is only one caveat here. In order to require the capacity for bulk transportation, you need goods in bulk amounts. You don't stop the ocean-going ship for each barrel or amphora of local produce, but you let smaller boats do that, and collect from central places, which are usually controlled by the local authority and taxed and tarrifed accordingly (or, in less modern words, you had to gift the local ruler to get his blessing for trading with his subjects). That's the function of the proto-urban centers that spring up in the late Bronze Age, sometimes from local concentration, sometimes from foreigners establishing a colony polis in previously uncharted land.

You seem to have lost sight of the fact this thread is about the same merchant ships used by the Phoenicians and Greeks, and in Glorantha by Esolia.

1 hour ago, Joerg said:

Timber was another major bulk cargo, while marble and similarly sought after stone probably was more of a rare luxury transport. Rome was dependent on outside imports, having outgrown the food producing capacity of the neighborhood with a few days of transportation. Athens with its tribute payments from the Attic League members may have been in a similar position, but apparently managed to survive a long siege (without a functioning sea blockade) for years without any access to production in its direct neighborhood, too.

I've listed timber; marble however was not transported in large quantities in the Bronze Age or early Iron Age.

1 hour ago, Joerg said:

Thank you very much for that authoritative suggestion. May I suggest some advanced reading on the formation of proto-urban structures north of the Alps for your delectation?

Fascinating, no doubt, but irrelevant here.

1 hour ago, Joerg said:

What's the social and economic unit in Maniria? The clan, of about 500 people. That unit will have a communal place where the harvest (surplus) is gathered, and where the clan authorities or their deputies will make deals with outside merchants interested in bulk. A small time peddlar who has maybe a donkey  but more likely just the basket he bears on his back might be allowed to do his minuscule business directly (after declaring his business to the clan council or their deputies), but a major trader cannot just visit all the outlying steads, bid for the local harvest, and leave the clan center's storages empty for that year.

Actually, in Maniria as in the rest of Glorantha, and in our Bronze Age and early Iron Age, long distance trade caters to expensive necessities, such as metals, and expensive prestige items for the elite. This is detailed in the Guide, pages 469-470. There is no major trade in foodstuffs, save prestige items such as spices.

Even short distance trade in foodstuffs is limited; there are major risks in transporting grains by sea, as in bulk it can settle, affecting the stability of the ship, and there's a danger of dust explosions. Even if transported in sacks it can shift, and if it gets wet can swell, endangering the integrity of the vessel, as the increasing volume can push at the hull, causing it to split.

1 hour ago, Joerg said:

If I look at the settlement structure on Crete, for instance, I don't see evidence for such isolated beach sites. The "palaces" are the local centers of commerce, and any trader would visit those for trade goods, leaving isolated shepherd places maybe as a place where to refresh the water containers, but never to take on significant amounts of export goods. A spot to disembark a hunting or water party is not a port in anybody's vocabulary.

There were numerous harbors in Bronze Age Crete. They are where traders would trade, not the palaces. For example, the Minoan center of Palekastro was close to the sheltered beach/harbor of Chiona.

1 hour ago, Joerg said:

And you find exactly this reflected in the activities of Sartar when he instituted his cities or the three trade posts in the Grazelands.

Many miles from any coastline...

1 hour ago, Joerg said:

The issue of Gloranthan sea ports is one of a 600 year interdict, the Closing. Places like Kethaela with their inland sea or the Quinpolic islands kept at least local trade, but similar places like the Mournsea stopped all naval activities except fishing. Ramalia has demonized everything approaching from the sea and doesn't even allow fishing. If anything, this has created a greater reliance on smaller vessels collecting local goods and transporting them to the cities. There is no place or rather function for grain-barge sized ships on the coast of Heortland except in the places that are shown in the Guide. They even show Sklar, a glorified fisherman's hamlet that might be of interest for smugglers, but never for bulk traders. And places like Jansholm or Durengard may be approachable for smaller vessels, but not for those grain tubs - those will use the transshipping places on the flats in the estuaries.

Firstly, there are no massive Roman giant grain-barge sized ships carrying grain at sea in Glorantha. Secondly, the use of small vessels is part of the Bronze Age/Early Iron Age feel of Glorantha. There are no human bulk traders.

1 hour ago, Joerg said:

The Rightarm Isles funnel their foreign trade through Seapolis, where their Ludoch overlords can observe the transactions. Other places might have facilities or amenities, but no wares to speak of. Stopping for longer than it takes to take on fresh water and food or to spend the night will most like put the locals into deep trouble with their authorities.

Where, precisely, is this stated?

The reality is that seafarers need safe stopping (and potential trading places) every ten miles or so along a coastline, in the event of bad weather. These square-sailed ships must either shelter (near shore) or run (on the open seas).

1 hour ago, Joerg said:

You are correct that a vessel like the grain barge may be too small to have more of a dinghy than a tug or watering skiff. But you overlook that people on the coast will have boats of their own. A popular anchorage off the Tangle below the Shadow Plateau will in all likelihood see local hagglers making a decent profit out of bringing fresh goods to the anchored ships, creating a bit of the Sansibar atmosphere where friendly locals in colorful boats greet the sailors on their big overseas ships. Even if those locals are amhibian or beaked rather than exotic human. But those places are just provisioning stops. If any transshipment occurs, it is directly from big vessel to local small vessel. Where you don't have tides twice a day (like everywhere on Glorantha), you avoid beaching your vessel, unless you are fine waiting out the next two to five days without being able to leave. Getting stuck that way in Nochet is fine, your crew will probably need that time. Getting stuck ike that in a shithole like Sklar might mean that you need to hire new crew in the next decent port. And a stop to take on fresh water for the next two or three days had better not last that long, or the entire point of making that stop would be sort of moot.

Grain barges are large (and there probably aren't any in Glorantha, save on rivers, and in our ancient history, the largest barges weren't larger than these small trade ships).

None of the human ships of Genertela are very large.

1 hour ago, Joerg said:

In many ways, the Baltic Sea with its absence of tides except for level changes caused by constant strong wind models the Gloranthan seas better than the Mediterranean. Beaching in Glorantha means you better do that at the highest tide, or the continuouos rise in water level will carry off your vessel in the middle of unloading. Beaching at the highest tide means a wait of at least two days until the water gets high enough to leave the beach again.

Except the Mediterranean is the model for most Genertelan ships - even a Wolf Pirate penteconter is more like a Hemiolia than a longship or any other Baltic vessel (other than probably in construction). Glorantha has tides, albeit fairly slow ones.

1 hour ago, Joerg said:

So, where is the benefit of a flat-bottomed ship able to beach? If you need water, you set off the skiff with enough containers and maybe three of your crew while the rest of the crew holds position with the help of anchor and occasional poling or rowing, or you take the friendly locals up on their offer to do the water run for you for a small payment. If you want to load significant amounts of cargo, you better find a decent port with better amenities or at least enough manpower to put water under your non-keel again. Everything else, a smaller vessel gets alongside your ship, and you heave stuff over the railing.

Getting in close enough to shore to load and unload without harbor facilities. Most of these vessels are too small to carry skiffs or lighters. You are fixating on ships carrying significant amounts of cargo, when in the actual Bronze and early Iron Age, most merchant ships were small. Same goes for human ships along the southern coasts of Genertela. There are no large ships, no anachronistic xebecs or cogs.

You need to read about actual sites. Examples are Mount Batten, St. Michaels Mount, Burgh Island, Hengistbury Head, and the Erme esturary. Hengistbury Head, for example, despite being a wide beach with a headland, was a major port in the Bronze Age and in the Iron Age for the tin trade and for importing wine from the Continent even before the Romans arrived to do a hostile takeover. Yes, a major trade port with no quayside.

YGWV, but it doesn't define the realities of Bronze and Early Iron Age trade, or the trade patterns detailed in the Guide.

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14 hours ago, Mark Mohrfield said:

There seems to be consensus that the cargo would be unloaded/unloaded manually. Any idea how long that would take? 

It depends upon the amount of cargo, what it was, and how many people were involved. If you take a fairly standard merchant tub, carrying 74,800 lbs.  of cargo and assume 'standard' cargo types:

 

Logistics: Cargo

Ship and barge cargo is transported in bales, sacks, and amphorae all no larger than one or two men can lift, and barrels which can be rolled by two men. These are the basic 'units' of cargo. Amphorae and barrels come in a variety of sizes.

Bales, sacks and amphorae are of a size that they can be carried by a ship, boat, cart, donkey or mule.

By volume, a standard cargo amphora holds around 6 gallons and a full amphora (containing olive oil, or wine) weighs around 110 lbs., around half of which is the material of the container. The additional weight of an amphora makes it unsuitable for transporting water and cheap wine over land (an empty amphora weighs 50 to 60 lbs.). Instead, leather water skins or bottles are used.

A standard barrel holds approximately 38 gallons, weighing about 317 lbs. Wooden barrels bound together with metal hoops are stronger than fired clay, weigh far less and can be turned on their side and rolled. Barrels cannot be easily transported on pack animals but can be loaded onto carts and wagons.

Bales and sacks weigh around 70 lbs.

 

If you decide how many of the crew and how many shore-side helpers there are, you can roughly calculate the load/unload time. 

 

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36 minutes ago, M Helsdon said:

It depends upon the amount of cargo, what it was, and how many people were involved. If you take a fairly standard merchant tub, carrying 74,800 lbs.  of cargo and assume 'standard' cargo types:

 

Logistics: Cargo

Ship and barge cargo is transported in bales, sacks, and amphorae all no larger than one or two men can lift, and barrels which can be rolled by two men. These are the basic 'units' of cargo. Amphorae and barrels come in a variety of sizes.

Bales, sacks and amphorae are of a size that they can be carried by a ship, boat, cart, donkey or mule.

By volume, a standard cargo amphora holds around 6 gallons and a full amphora (containing olive oil, or wine) weighs around 110 lbs., around half of which is the material of the container. The additional weight of an amphora makes it unsuitable for transporting water and cheap wine over land (an empty amphora weighs 50 to 60 lbs.). Instead, leather water skins or bottles are used.

A standard barrel holds approximately 38 gallons, weighing about 317 lbs. Wooden barrels bound together with metal hoops are stronger than fired clay, weigh far less and can be turned on their side and rolled. Barrels cannot be easily transported on pack animals but can be loaded onto carts and wagons.

Bales and sacks weigh around 70 lbs.

 

If you decide how many of the crew and how many shore-side helpers there are, you can roughly calculate the load/unload time. 

 

Why the metal hoops for the barrels? I thought there was an agreement that those would be unlikely for the amount of metal available in Glorantha.

I miss baskets on your list of packaging items, both in hard (stackable) and soft varieties. Also common are strong boxes for valuable cargo (the Argan Argar cult provides a spell for those, too).

Having worked with consignments put together by specialist packers, the dimensions of cargo items are an issue, too. Especially if you propose fully decked vessels.

Density of cargo items are a big deal when loading a ship, too. Metal ingots, millstone raws and similar heavy stuff doubles as ballast near the keel line (provided the vessel has such). Light but voluminous stuff goes on top. This may require some additional work if you are unloading only part of your cargo at a given stop.

 

Some of the perhaps weirdest cargo to package are shipbuilding timbers that have natural (or artificially enforced) shapes suitable for ribbing.

 

I reckognize that you wrote this for personal use, but the rare occasions when I see terms like "gallon", I draw a blank just as much as when I see biblical measurements like shekels or Greek distances given in stadia.

Telling how it is excessive verbis

 

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1 hour ago, Joerg said:

I reckognize that you wrote this for personal use, but the rare occasions when I see terms like "gallon", I draw a blank just as much as when I see biblical measurements like shekels or Greek distances given in stadia.

Gallons are used as units in the Guide to Glorantha.

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4 hours ago, Joerg said:

Why the metal hoops for the barrels? I thought there was an agreement that those would be unlikely for the amount of metal available in Glorantha.

Where?

4 hours ago, Joerg said:

I miss baskets on your list of packaging items, both in hard (stackable) and soft varieties. Also common are strong boxes for valuable cargo (the Argan Argar cult provides a spell for those, too).

Pretty much covered by bales.

4 hours ago, Joerg said:

Having worked with consignments put together by specialist packers, the dimensions of cargo items are an issue, too. Especially if you propose fully decked vessels.

This would be too much micro-management and detail for the topic.

4 hours ago, Joerg said:

I reckognize that you wrote this for personal use, but the rare occasions when I see terms like "gallon", I draw a blank just as much as when I see biblical measurements like shekels or Greek distances given in stadia.

US measurements are used in most modern Glorantha books. I carefully translate everything from metric... to inches, feet, yards, pounds.

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Gloranthan cultures aren't Mediterranean cultures. And your examples are middle Iron Age examples, not Bronze Age. Thus, your Kyrenia-type ship is irrelevant. 

The ship you describe is the size of a hanseatic cog, regardless of its underwater construction. The crew size and the crew duties are largely the same. And I have been on a rebuild of the Hanseatic cog found at Bremen, but I have not been on any reconstruction of Bronze Age ships, so I use that for a frame of reference. That Cog was about the size of the Gokstad ship, whch I have at least walked around, as I have done for the Kyrenia ship. Similar in size and presumably in cargo capacity.

Speaking of Cyprus, the coastal conditions there haven't shown me anything I haven't seen in the Baltic or the leeward parts of the north sea.

 

4 hours ago, M Helsdon said:

What grain ship?

Your Esrolian merchantman. Grain being the prominent export item of Esrolia. Haven't we been discussing grain transport for the Lunar army, indeed for a city-sized siege force around Whitewall? Or river transport of grain down the Oslir?

Grain trade is a fact of Gloranthan naval trade.

 

4 hours ago, M Helsdon said:

Are you referring to the Roman grain ships? If so, there were none in the Bronze Age or early Iron Age.

Big surprise. There weren't any Romans or Phoenicians in the Bronze Age. Nor any Kyrenia type ships.

What we have in the way of evidence is the Uluburun shipwreck from 1400 BC with its shell-first mortice-and-tenon hull, and similar Egyptian designs from the Red Sea.

 

We don't have many archaeological evidence for the extent of naval activities west of the Aegaean prior to the Phoenicians, even though we assume that groups of the Sea Folk may have turned there. Shipwreck sites like the Salcombe, Devon find dating from roughly 900 BC  are identified by the surviving items of cargo, without any material evidence for the vessel. 

 

There were Minoan boats, which we don't know much about except some wall paintings. Similar evidence for Sea Folk vessels, which gives us the weird bird dragons. Some better evidence for Egyptian vessels, both from models and from finds in  a cave-like arsenal on the Red Sea, and some logistics apparently in papyrii.

All the other stuff comes from about 1000 years after the local onset of the Iron Age.

 

4 hours ago, M Helsdon said:

Large quantities of grain were not moved by merchant ship, until Roman times.

How do we know that? The Uluburun shipwreck did yield some remains of grain due to charring, suggesting that these came from preparing a meal, but otherwise nothing remained.

Part of the Uluburun cargo corresponded to the official pharaonic gifts list that documented trade in the papyrii, but the rest of the cargo differed from those royal records, and whatever local records there may have been have been lost, as well as any other cargo the ship may have picked up along the way.

Egypt wouldn't import grain any more than Esrolia would, but sent grain to the temple granaries. By ox cart, or over the Nile?

 

4 hours ago, M Helsdon said:

From the evidence of Bronze Age and early Iron Age wrecks, some grain was transported, but not in enormous quantities.

Grain tends to be perishable, so the few finds at Uluburun are only thanks to charring. Storage solutions like baskets are little better preserved - finding even a fragment of baskets, ropes or textiles from a shipwreck is considered an archaeological miracle.

 

4 hours ago, M Helsdon said:

Captains of the period needed to know of safe shelters every ten miles or so.

Shelters, yes. Ports, no.

 

 

 

4 hours ago, M Helsdon said:

Merchant ships tended to load fresh water wherever available and wherever they traded.

 

4 hours ago, M Helsdon said:

You seem to have lost sight of the fact this thread is about the same merchant ships used by the Phoenicians and Greeks, and in Glorantha by Esolia.

The art direction may have used such reconstructions because there is darn little physical evidence and only very symbolic depictions outside of the model shios found in Egyptian tombs, but your insistence on Greek and Phoenician vessels goes way beyond what actually is said in the Guide.

There is evidence for maritime trade on the Atlantic coast, but the oldest actual ship finds come from ship sacrifices in peat bogs (Hjortspring, Nydam) or from ship burials (Sutton Hoo, Oseberg, Gokstad) of the Iron Age. The earliest useful finds of ship parts in the western Mediterranean appear to stem from the first Punic War, but there can be little doubt that there was naval contact between the Baleares and the mainland prior to the arrival of the Phoenicians - the megalith builders didn't walk there. In fact, the various megalithic cultures are spread in patterns which suggest sea travel.

 

Gloranthan naval history is much different. While there are contunuous coastal boating cultures like the Sofali or the Pelaskites, they did suffer serious loss of habitat in the Darkness era when the Faralinthor Sea disappeared, and Choralinthor was reduced to "a puddle"..

It took the breaking of the Spke to return the seas tto the south of Genertela, and unless they managed to survive in what was left of Choralinthor and possibly a similar remnant site at Erenplose, the ancestors of the current population of Ludoch for Kethaela and the Mournsea.

The Waertagi accompanied that return of the seas, and they claimed the open oceans for their own territroey. This left non-Waertagi naval activities restrained to coastal waters.

Still, galleys for warfare like Penteconters or longships appear to have been developed already during the Waertagi domination, and possibly even before the Dawn.

Finding evidence for trade ships in the myths is a lot harder. We assume that the Froalar exodus and similar crossings of the Neliomi happened on Waertagi vessels rather than a homegrown naval tradition, but these colonies shared their new lands with an indigenous population that may have indulged in fishing earlier.

It is unclear whether there still were some of the western Sofali left when the Brithini colonnies were founded. The journey on turtleback in the Lightbringers' Journey west indicates that there would have been Sofali Diroti at some earlier point in the Godtime.

Zzabur boasts to have vanquished three naval assaults - that of the Banthites who managed to occupy a Danmalastan peninsula on the Neliomi for some time, the Helerites of the Churkenos Sea, and the Beakies of the Solkathi torrent.

We tend to identify the Churkenos Helerites with the Helerings that later made landfall in Maniria, where it came to the brothering of Orlanth and Heler rather than the set battle both sides expected. (Given the ubiquity of Heler aspects in earlier Orlanthi imths, like Vadrus vs. Enkoshons, I a inclined to qualify the above event with "aspects of Orlanth and Heler" who had not met in any way before.)

These Helerites brought their cloud-originated naval tradition with them, and may have passed that on to the local fisherfolk, including the Pelaskites. As the magic faded, more material solutions replaced the magical concepts, and the Pelaskites turned to Orstan the carpenter for aid with their wooden vessels.

 

Asking a carpenter to imitate a ship from a ship-buildign traditon that was unknown (rather than having become unworkable due to the deterioration of magic) is something which happened in terrestrial history. This is the origin story of the Hanseatic cogs, built in imitation of the Viking vessels but without access to their ship-building traditions and lore. The platiarism succeeded after several false starts, and later other designs were imitated by these master woodworkers who had by then acquired a ship-building tradition of their own.

When the sources tell us about the expert boat makers of Karse, I cannot help comparing the story of (storm-born) Pelaskos and Orstan with the success story of the Hanseatic ship-builders. I would look at the background of Argos, the mythical builder of the Argo, too, but there appears to be much disagreement about his person, and whether the Argos of the Argo crew (who apparently was picked up along the journey, which would be strange for the builder of the ship - so no mythical precedent for this.

The Hanseatic league's push to the sea is quite attractive in its parallel of a land-locked culture discovering naval trade from almost zero to dominating a sea. It is the best and oldest real world parallel I know for Dormal's Opening of the Seas. Yes, it happened significantly after the Bronze Age. But it happened emerging from a Dark Age.

The Waertagi interdict to human (or uz, newtling or duck) high sea traffic reached all the way to Maslo (see the Edrenlin population) and Prax (Sog's Ruins, one of the few access points to the coast from the plateau), but doesn't seem to have extended to the East Isles or Kahar's Sea. Teleos and Teshnos are unclear.

 

There is a similar such push to the sea with the victory of the Free Men of the Sea over the Waertagi/Triolini alliance at Tanian's Victory. Without Waertagi suppression, the upscaling of coastal designs for open seas trade became feasible. It is unclear whether the populations of Slontos or Kethaela took to high sea trade before the Middle Sea Empire took control. Given the lure of exotic stuff from Teshnos, there is a high likelihood that they did.

The Free Men of the Sea produced a (radically?) new type of ship to battle the Waertagi. Without their cataclysmic summons of Tanien those ships would still have had no chance against the Waertagi navy, but apparently the vessels were fast enough and had good enough detection to avoid contact with Waertagi patrols or other (more peaceful) presence for their test runs to Umathela and back.

 

4 hours ago, M Helsdon said:

Actually, in Maniria as in the rest of Glorantha, and in our Bronze Age and early Iron Age, long distance trade caters to expensive necessities, such as metals, and expensive prestige items for the elite. This is detailed in the Guide, pages 469-470. There is no major trade in foodstuffs, save prestige items such as spices.

Yet there is grain trade away from Esrolia and from Tarsh, and there is a miltary logistics network in the Lunar Empire directing grain transport to support the troops - using water ways.

There is also the canal connecting Glamour with the Oslir river, providing a shipping route for grain and other foodstuff to that metropolis without any sufficient source of food nearby, requiring logistics comparable only to the pyramid building or feeding overpopulated places like Rome, Bagdad or Byzantium.

Accept that grain transport on waterways is a reality in Glorantha, and look at historical examples how that was made to happen. Which does lead us to Roman grain transports from North Africa, or to Hanseatic grain deliveries in exchange for stockfish or furs. Hanseatic technology was hardly more advanced than Roman engineering, so either provides an idea how that would be done. I happen to have good access to details of Hanseatic grain transportations mentioning sailors' duties on a grain transport, but I don't have such sources for Roman grain transport. Do you? Until I see some, I will continue to use what the Hanseatics did and retrofit that to earlier transportation, too. It is not like the Hanseatic merchants invented the trade routes they used, they only went at it systematically and in greater volumes than earlier traders like native Scandinavians (e.g. Ottar) or Frisians.

Apart from feeding Rome or the fisherfolk of the cod grounds of Norway, grain and other food was usually exported processed rather than as raw grain. Probably half of the Hanseatic grain exports were in the shape of beer. We know of the waste product of soused herring aka matjes aka spekesild, the garum fish sauce, being traded in significant quantities in antiquity. The Uluburun shipwreck (the one which did provide findings of grain against all the odds of chemical decomposition) transported resin fermented from pistacias. Wine was traded in bulk quantities.

 

I recently had the realisation that the trade with ostentatious luxuries was in no way a pampering to the elites but a flow of indispensible resources to support the magic of authority and identity of those communities. We might be closer to the economic necessities of the ancient world if we treat such exotic jewelry as their equivalent of microchips or other "essential" components for the upscale necessities of a population.

 

4 hours ago, M Helsdon said:

Even short distance trade in foodstuffs is limited; there are major risks in transporting grains by sea, as in bulk it can settle, affecting the stability of the ship, and there's a danger of dust explosions.

That's where my Hanseatic sources come in handy. Dust explosions don't seem to have been a problem on the grain ships, rather the opposite: humidity and resulting moulding or germination was to be avoided, so the sailors' duties on a grain barge included a constant regime of shoveling the grain in the hold to get optimal aeration. Getting the balancing readjusted in the process was a side benefit, but shows that this was a task that needed some expertise, at least for the person overseeing it.

It is quite surprising what areas of expertise there were in the old times. The handling of barrels especially up or down from cellars was a specialist profession, avoiding injuries or loss of barrels coming down uncontrolled. The German name for these people was "Schröter", and it became a quite common surname, see e.g. our last chancellor. I would expect a similar degree of experience and knowledge necessary for handling amphorae, but I don't know if there are any documentations of such.

 

4 hours ago, M Helsdon said:

Even if transported in sacks it can shift, and if it gets wet can swell, endangering the integrity of the vessel, as the increasing volume can push at the hull, causing it to split.

Hands up who hasn't read "Midshipman Hornblower"? That was a cargo of rice, though, which is a lot worse than wheat or peas in this regard.

 

4 hours ago, M Helsdon said:

There were numerous harbors in Bronze Age Crete. They are where traders would trade, not the palaces. For example, the Minoan center of Palekastro was close to the sheltered beach/harbor of Chiona.

Duh.

Yes, naval trade would be at a navigable shore, and not at the cliff directly below a palace site (unless someone put a quay there). No, that doesn't make sheltered beach elsewhere outside of the vicinity of palaces ports.

 

4 hours ago, M Helsdon said:

Many miles from any coastline...

And still relevant because it shows how trade is organized. It would have been possible to thread a path through existing Vendref hamlets collecting their production en route as an alternative, but Sartar's institution of trade posts gave the Grazer overlords some extra measure of control over their Vendref traders' activities.

The road network in Sartar basically is the extension of the riverine trade route from Nochet or the access route to the port of Karse, so it is related to those ports - even in the time of the Closing.

 

4 hours ago, M Helsdon said:

Firstly, there are no massive Roman giant grain-barge sized ships carrying grain at sea in Glorantha.

 

4 hours ago, M Helsdon said:

Secondly, the use of small vessels is part of the Bronze Age/Early Iron Age feel of Glorantha. There are no human bulk traders.

 

 

4 hours ago, M Helsdon said:

Where, precisely, is this stated?

You are looking at it.

I have been in constructive disagreement with Martin Hawley over his treatment of Pelaskite culture on the Choralinthor shores, as well as a few ongoing amiable differences with Jeff, and they are a subject that I have been writing about since before my old website on the Holy Country went online. A few of the phrasings of that website can be found in the Guide. I have had to reassess some of my assumptions for new directions that canon took, but my old core document for playing in Glorantha (besides King of Sartar and the Dragon Pass boardgame) was the Holy Country description in the RuneQuest Companion. I have seen numerous cases of new additions to canon veering away from that info and then swinging back into a more coherent picture. So forgive me if I don't look at Gloranthan canon as something static, especially when dealing with this area. I am waiting in both happy anticipation and a sense of dread for MOB's work on the Holy Country.

 

Just consider: Seapolis is one of three places in Glorantha where the mermen can enter the dry land (Nochet and the City of Wonders being the other two, I don't see this happen in the Backford terminus of the Fish Roads.) Nobody is considering the Fish Roads as a trade route, although I think it would be quite hilarious to play out a cattle drive from Backford to Nochet on the bottom of the Mirrorsea Bay.

Seapolis is the port for the Rightarm isles. Rightarm islanders own boats like other folk own pairs of shoes, but most of their dwellings are on small elevations above the giant crane-picked tidal flats of that peninsula/archipelago. There will be tidal rivulets providing sort of permanent boat access to their settlements' landing sites, but those are nothing that ships of seagoing size can reach.

Seapolis is very much like Venice - a group of artificial and maybe a few natural islands on a reliable deep water canal in the middle of a muddy lagoon full of opportunities for all kinds of sea-food related activities. But unlike self-governing Venice, the Rightarmers are subjects of the Ludoch tribe surrounding their peninsula/archipelago, more so than their kinsfolk inhabiting coastal an estuary Esrolia and Heortland. Their representative in the City of Wonders is a mermaid, daughter of the Ludoch king, as of 1616. This makes their situation quite comparable to that of the Vendref factors who oversee the international trade through the Grazelands.

 

Are there other spots on the Rightarm Isles with permanent deep water channels? Yes, a few, like e.g. Ironfort, but that place is a sealed city, without contact to the rest of the world, and the small fisherfolk community next to it doesn't have much worth trading. We have no information who sealed that city. We know that both mostali and uz have magics capable of sealing a place, but it may have been some other party involved in the Machine War, or it may have been the sorcerer population inside that put up those seals. All of that happened more than 700 years ago. The place is still sealed, but I doubt anyone but obscure scholars has an idea about what happened.

(The scenario potential here is basically writing itself, isn't it? A locked treasure trove full of forbidden and forgotten magics like Pavis under troll domination before the Dragonewts Dream, only here you are getting the first picks like Saronil's sons and nephews most likely had in the Rubble.)

There is one other good deepwater access at Zoo island, no human population given. If you want a monster island and cannot be bothered to sail around Magasta's Pool to Loral, look no farther than this place.

 

I have postulated shipyard beaches away from Seapolis for my own campaign and character background, so yes, there will be other places that will attract the occasional cargo ship. Most likely these will be the home harbors of the original crew of those vessels, visited not for trade, but for layovers, repairs, and some family time.

 

Small seaports next to major ones exist mainly for one reason: tarriff evasion, aka smuggling, possibly paired with harboring local pirates, or at least wreckers.

Sailors on regular trade vessels often prefer to avoid such places. Quite a lot of them grew up in places like that and know exactly what happens to beached crew in the way of volunteer salvage parties, and they want nothing of that. And yes, these are the very same people that you meet on the trading sites who you trade and drink with, and share the local women with. Once a vessel turns into salvage, it becomes the prospective property of the locals, and the crew might be considered collateral damage or even additional trade goods.

Communities of wreckers are highly competitive with their neighbors, as speed is of utmost importance in establishing a claim on the salvage. This goes as far as to the joke when one recently deceased member of a wrecker community finds paradise overpopulated by folk from the neighboring community and is not allowed to enter, he shouts out "shipwreck", and all of the dead people of the neighboring community rush out, providing lots of space in paradise.

When I cited the loss numbers for the Jutland coast, at least the first third of that period will have included ships actively lured onto a dangerous beach. A change in this approach to sea salvage happened less than 150 years ago with the introduction of organisations like DGzRS, the German society for saving wrecked sailors, which recruited their crews from these very wrecker communities since they were the ones with the expert local knowledge.

I cannot imagine that ancient coastal dwellers were any different from that.

 

 

 

4 hours ago, M Helsdon said:

The reality is that seafarers need safe stopping (and potential trading places) every ten miles or so along a coastline, in the event of bad weather. These square-sailed ships must either shelter (near shore) or run (on the open seas).

The Jutland coast was so dangerous because there were few safe spots between Esbjerg and Skagen, with the Limfjord and the Ringköbing Fjord the major exceptions, and neither offering a very safe entry once the storm has caught up with you. This tells me that there is a huge difference between what is desirable for a merchant vessel and what is available. The North Frisian islands further south offer some leeward positions, but they are the very homes of the wreckers I mentioned above.

The Mirrorsea bay with its magically calm surface even under strong storms may be the safest water to be in case of bad weather. Your vessel may be driven onto the sands, but there will be no waves shattering your hull, so all you have to do is to avoid the rocky bits of the coastline while driven ashore. No such luck anywhere else on the southern Genertelan coast, which has a mythical past as the Trembling Shore that the waters are only too happy to re-enact.

There is a certain likelihood that the presence of Eastern sages may neutralize the worst effects of a raging sea or even the Closing. The Teshnan expedition to the Zola Fel mouth made its way despite the Closing, and the Seleric expedition to Vormain only was caught up with all the symptoms of the Closing when they came into the zone of rival sages, possibly cancelling out the effect of Sheng's disciples.

(And no, there are no sources for anything of this. All of this are my conclusions.)

 

4 hours ago, M Helsdon said:

Grain barges are large (and there probably aren't any in Glorantha, save on rivers, and in our ancient history, the largest barges weren't larger than these small trade ships).

To me, your presentation is an Esrolian grain barge (barge denoting the flat bottom, grain the major bulk export of Esrolia - all of the other goods that were mentioned get imported to Esrolia). 

 

4 hours ago, M Helsdon said:

None of the human ships of Genertela are very large.

True - no Ormen lange (of Olav Tryggvason's fleet) or Byzantine dromon (roughly contemporary to those outsized long ships, of similar size, but with two decks of rowers) ec

 

4 hours ago, M Helsdon said:

Except the Mediterranean is the model for most Genertelan ships - even a Wolf Pirate penteconter is more like a Hemiolia than a longship or any other Baltic vessel (other than probably in construction).

To use wise words already thrown at me on this forum, the problem is although the Genertelan ships may look similar to Mediterranean models that similar is taken as being the same as, meaning that inappropriate geography, sea behavior, construction methods and material are taken as being Gloranthan.

Your proposal for Kethaelan triremes looks and feels like a copy and paste for Athenian triremes, down to the last details.

This has no relation to Jeff's statement that the ship builders started out upscaling local boat building technology to seagoing size.

The Kingdom of Night and its successor the Holy Country may have had more than just small vessels even during the Closing. To my knowledge, Choralinthor Bay wasn't hit by a devastating sweeping front like Ozur Bay, so they would have had whatever fleet and trade vessels that were inside when the seas outside of Troll Strait became impassable, and given the attitude of the Beast Valley inhabitants to trespassing humans, the only useful connection between Heortland and Esrolia was across the bay, so a fleet of merchant ships and a few patrol vessels would have been kept in operation. Possibly more than just a few patrol craft during the Readjustment Wars. And then there is that hidden inlet to a semi-flooded grotto at the foot of Shadow plateau, hidden behind a layer of floating vegetation indistinguishable from the soggy marsh to either side, where a fleet of black troll galleys is preserved for a time of re-emergence. Or used ot be preserved - it is possible that upkeep has been neglected after the fall of Akez Loradak, that the entry passage has sanded up, or that it left subsequent to the Opening and now operates from Jruztela.

 

4 hours ago, M Helsdon said:

Glorantha has tides, albeit fairly slow ones.

Yes. The tides not only are fairly slow in the rising, they are extremely fast in the falling, faster even than our daily tides, creating Saltstraumen-like conditions in places like the Troll Strait upon exit. Never on the entry, however.

 

Tidal beaching relies on the 12 hour rhythm of terrestrial lunar tides. Run in with a high tide, do your business during low tide, run out again with the next high tide. The change in water levels does most of the heavy lifting for you, at no charge.

Waertagi used directed tidal waves for their beaching (or entry into dry docks). Those waves are not subject to the Annilla tides, but water entities of (second or third generation) divine calibre.

 

4 hours ago, M Helsdon said:

Getting in close enough to shore to load and unload without harbor facilities. Most of these vessels are too small to carry skiffs or lighters. You are fixating on ships carrying significant amounts of cargo, when in the actual Bronze and early Iron Age, most merchant ships were small.

Smaller than the Kyrenian ship you used for your model, then? That vessel has the capacity to carry the annual surplus produced by a 1000 inhabitant settlement in a single run, unless you add bulk cargo like grain for the overlord's granaries. Then maybe two such runs.

Ports at rivermouths provide access to the output of many such settlements in their hinterland, however. Rhigos may be a metropolis of 25000 souls, but its river network brings in surplus from about 1.5 million souls - more than half of Esrolia, a good portion of Caladraland, all of Porthomeka, and most of Ditaliland. Nochet with the New River connecting to the Sartar road network and the Esrolian river ports as transshipping places for the Grazeland route into the Oslir Valley maybe fewer people whose surplus goes to Nochet, but in addition to that the lion's share of the speciality trade from Peloria (although Karse has quite a bit of that, too, if not by river any more).

The other ports of Heortland are mainly access points to the local economy of their hinterland - worth 50,000 souls or so each, but a lot less lucrative.

Seapolis is a place where ships returning from long, exotic journeys will lay over (or exchange crews) for some family time.Just enough of that lifestyle that the sailors itch to get the ocean under their keel again. That will give it a higher proportion of exotic overseas goods than you would expect from a tidal marsh dwelling folk of seafood gatherers.

The premier port for things magical and exotic has been closed off since 1616. Nochet managed to scoop up much of that trade in addition to the amount that it already had thanks to its role as access point to the Pelorian market.

4 hours ago, M Helsdon said:

Same goes for human ships along the southern coasts of Genertela. There are no large ships, no anachronistic xebecs or cogs.

The hanseatic cog was a fairly small ship. It had a higher board and deeper draft than Viking ships except the biggest Iceland merchants, but was shorter than most. The bigger designs of the later Hanseatic period were holks or caravels, some of which sported extra masts. Modern vernacular still calls them cogs because they were Hanseatic ships, but the shipwrights made those distinctions.

 

But then, already Phoenician or polis Greek vessels are the oversized anachronism already. Minoan ships appear to have been well suited to sail major rivers. And I have serious doubts about the use of penteconters for the Troy venture or the Argo journey. A trentaconter like the one used by the experimental archaeologists would do. (Which brings us to Hjortspring boat size, to bring me back into my comfort zone of non-Mediterranean sailing with more hostile seas.)

The use of triremes by the Kethaelan navies for overseas missions is jarring with everything that I would expect Dormal's cabal's research coming up with. Triremes are singularly ill suited for travel outside of the Aegaean waters, there is a reason why Romans and Phoenicians used biremes to claim the Mare Nostrum. The trireme is an oared ram designed to cripple enemy ships. A bireme allows some space for marines and necessities on patrol missions, even without the Roman invention of the Corvus to egalize their lack in seamanship.

Your inclusion of bireme ships in the Kethaelan navy makes a lot of sense, but is in no way supported by the source material.

 

4 hours ago, M Helsdon said:

You need to read about actual sites. Examples are Mount Batten, St. Michaels Mount, Burgh Island, Hengistbury Head, and the Erme esturary. Hengistbury Head, for example, despite being a wide beach with a headland, was a major port in the Bronze Age and in the Iron Age for the tin trade and for importing wine from the Continent even before the Romans arrived to do a hostile takeover. Yes, a major trade port with no quayside.

Much like Dorestad on the Rhine estuary during the Frisian domination of the North Sea (following the lack of Saxon sea presence) or the beginnings of Bergen prior to Hanseatic arrival. Hedeby had a single wooden pier - hardly the only place where cargo would be loaded or offloaded, only the most convenient one. The Bergen piers were a slow development, picking up in speed as the warehouse space spread towards the former coast line, and ever deeper blockhouse-like supports for the planked pier along the bay were constructed, until finally there was Bryggen, an exclave part of the city run by foreign merchants riding high on the dried cod trade. So yes, a pier is what people associate with Bergen, but the initial establishment of the port as the major transshipping port between the Nordland sailors and the continental sailors had no such amenities (or any exclave rights).

Of the Halogaland ports, only Skrova had something like piers - the island is shaped like a C, providing an interior anchorage next to steep rocks. Steigen has some of the most beautiful sand beaches I have visited, unfortunately in a climate that doesn't quite invite lazing on those beaches.

So yes, I am perfectly aware that piers are luxury amenities. But so is tidal beaching, especially in tidal funnels like the Channel coast.

 

4 hours ago, M Helsdon said:

YGWV, but it doesn't define the realities of Bronze and Early Iron Age trade, or the trade patterns detailed in the Guide.

Your Democratic Greece era naval constructions don't either. The ships need to be more archaic, and they don't have the Egyptian technology of Rhamesis era to inherit.

Yes, the mention of triremes does steer us to an unpleasant anachronism. I find triremes to be an order of magnitude more anachronistic and problematic than Viking or Hanseatic era ships, not because of the year number associated, but because of the order of organisation involved. Already Harald Finehair's military reform that led him to commanding a fleet of about 100 long ships upon the rare occasion of a full muster is an order of magnitude too big.

Agamemnon's nominal command over a bunch of individual fleets resembles the Great Viking Fleet that pestered Britan and France, the Mediterranean and even deep upriver cities in the 9th century has a volunteers for plunder structure with dozens of sea kings uniting under a council of more charismatic individuals among them is rather similar to the force described in the Ilias. The streamlined naval milita of Belintar along with a core of vessels constantly under direct command of his admiral is way more like Harald Finehair's model than Agamemnon's fleet, but not quite on the level of the Attic League. I would be way more willing to believe that with ships and tactics that allow somewhat less professionalism and more enthusiasm than triremes.

 

I cannot picture the Alatan war fought with triremes. Armed merchantman/explorer vessels slightly less tubby than the grain barges, yes - these are the first years into the Opening, so everybody tries to stick as closely to the Dormal's original building plan as the building material allows.

 

Given the use of naturally branching or twisted branches or trunks for ribs and bracing, no two wooden ships would be exact copies of one another. A shipwright's art was to combine and modify these naturally formed shapes into the sleekest lines possible with that material. Designing the ribs from what weird shaped lumber the foresters brought in was the real art.

Straight logs would still be sought after for planking or masts, but the real supply bottleneck were the timbers for the ship skeleton, whether building ribs first or shell first.

 

What is your reason for adopting the shell first approach for Kethaelan boat building?

Yes, boat building, as in fisherman's skiffs or river boats. It is that art which is famed in Karse and other Pelaskite sites, and which was expanded into full-blown ships when it became clear that Dormal's prototype wasn't the only shape of vessel that would be able to do the Opening rites.

Why would Orstan the Carpenter, a profession where you start with the frame and add planks or wattle and daub, go about building a boat shell first? Why would a design inherited from fancy cloud ships that would appear as big dugouts when in water  (if the similar Artmali sailing history applies to the Helerites, too) result in a shell-first construction?

 

While we need to look at a sleuth of archaic ships from various millennia of sailing with rather small ships from all over the world, we mustn't forget the mythical and then historical developments of sailing in Glorantha. And that may mean a breakdown by cultures and points of cross-pollination. There must be a reason why the Kethaelan fleet jumps from three-man fishing boats or 6-man trade or harvest boats to triremes, or there must have been some gradual development.

Why triremes, and not the easier to build and coordinate biremes? Or if there was an intermediate step of biremes, when and why did those fall out of favor?

Due to the Waertagi interdict and the Closing, we have two rather narrow windows where coastal Genertela was likely to develop and perfect bigger craft. In Kethaela, that period is even shorter because of the Slontan domination of the waterways for the second half of the 9th century with their weird specialized craft in addition to whatever native or Seshnelan standard architecture they used. Seshnelan sailors in turn inherited the innovations that the Free Men of the Seas had led into battle against the Waertagi.

 

So I am asking what new designs were brought by the Free Men of the Seas, and what native designs did theiy have to work on?

And what made Dormal's new construction so special that he couldn't just have modified one of the surviving Choralinthor Bay trade vessels?

Even without a regular series of innovation, these two events which started their respective periods of high seas sailing are what shaped historical Gloranthan ship-building.

Telling how it is excessive verbis

 

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2 hours ago, Joerg said:

Gloranthan cultures aren't Mediterranean cultures. And your examples are middle Iron Age examples, not Bronze Age. Thus, your Kyrenia-type ship is irrelevant. 

Curiously, I am also using Bronze Age wrecks, and cargo manifests...

2 hours ago, Joerg said:

Your Esrolian merchantman. Grain being the prominent export item of Esrolia. Haven't we been discussing grain transport for the Lunar army, indeed for a city-sized siege force around Whitewall? Or river transport of grain down the Oslir?

Where does it state that grain is a cargo that Esrolia ships overseas? There's considerable difference between riverine barges and sea transport.

Grain is missing from the list of Holy Country exports on page 470 of the Guide.

2 hours ago, Joerg said:

Big surprise. There weren't any Romans or Phoenicians in the Bronze Age. Nor any Kyrenia type ships.

You'd better inform the archaeologists studying Bronze Age Ugarit and Byblos... And then there's the Uluburun shipwreck, constructed from timber not far from those cities, or no further than Cyprus.

2 hours ago, Joerg said:

We don't have many archaeological evidence for the extent of naval activities west of the Aegaean prior to the Phoenicians, even though we assume that groups of the Sea Folk may have turned there. Shipwreck sites like the Salcombe, Devon find dating from roughly 900 BC  are identified by the surviving items of cargo, without any material evidence for the vessel. 

See above.

2 hours ago, Joerg said:

The art direction may have used such reconstructions because there is darn little physical evidence and only very symbolic depictions outside of the model shios found in Egyptian tombs, but your insistence on Greek and Phoenician vessels goes way beyond what actually is said in the Guide.

Actually, Joerg, I've made use not only of the text in the Guide, but also the pictures there, the pictures in the Gloranthan Sourcebook, and Kalin's art for the King of Sartar comic.

2 hours ago, Joerg said:

There is evidence for maritime trade on the Atlantic coast, but the oldest actual ship finds come from ship sacrifices in peat bogs (Hjortspring, Nydam) or from ship burials (Sutton Hoo, Oseberg, Gokstad) of the Iron Age.

This will come as a great shock to the marine archaeologists working on the wrecks in the English Channel, as the finds support the tin trade with the Mediterranean.

2 hours ago, Joerg said:

I have been in constructive disagreement with Martin Hawley over his treatment of Pelaskite culture on the Choralinthor shores, as well as a few ongoing amiable differences with Jeff,

I would never have guessed.

2 hours ago, Joerg said:

(And no, there are no sources for anything of this. All of this are my conclusions.)

Uh huh.

2 hours ago, Joerg said:

To me, your presentation is an Esrolian grain barge (barge denoting the flat bottom, grain the major bulk export of Esrolia - all of the other goods that were mentioned get imported to Esrolia). 

But not to me.

Please read the list of the Holy Country exports in the Guide.

2 hours ago, Joerg said:

Your proposal for Kethaelan triremes looks and feels like a copy and paste for Athenian triremes, down to the last details.

Just the material in the Guide, HeroQuest Glorantha and the comic... There's quite a detailed description of an Esrolian trireme in HeroQuest: Glorantha, and the close similarity to a Greek trireme is apparent.

2 hours ago, Joerg said:

Tidal beaching relies on the 12 hour rhythm of terrestrial lunar tides. Run in with a high tide, do your business during low tide, run out again with the next high tide. The change in water levels does most of the heavy lifting for you, at no charge.

That's on Earth, not on Glorantha. Tidal beaching in the Mediterranean wasn't so reliant upon tides because they have a very low amplitude.

2 hours ago, Joerg said:

Your inclusion of bireme ships in the Kethaelan navy makes a lot of sense, but is in no way supported by the source material.

See the illustrations in the Glorantha Sourcebook. They have an uncanny resemblance to Phoenician biremes as depicted by the Assyrians.

2 hours ago, Joerg said:

What is your reason for adopting the shell first approach for Kethaelan boat building?

 

  1. Because the terrestrial equivalents were built using the carvel method.
  2. To distinguish them from the Western (and Northern) clinker-built ships.
  3. Because it was fun.
2 hours ago, Joerg said:

Your Democratic Greece era naval constructions don't either. The ships need to be more archaic, and they don't have the Egyptian technology of Rhamesis era to inherit.ship-building.

Cf HeroQuest: Glorantha.

The Greeks didn't obtain ship-building from the Egyptians.

2 hours ago, Joerg said:

This has no relation to Jeff's statement that the ship builders started out upscaling local boat building technology to seagoing size.

Um, Jeff seems to have defined the ships in the artwork and also noted that there was access to ancient designs.

2 hours ago, Joerg said:

The use of triremes by the Kethaelan navies for overseas missions is jarring with everything that I would expect Dormal's cabal's research coming up with. Triremes are singularly ill suited for travel outside of the Aegaean waters, there is a reason why Romans and Phoenicians used biremes to claim the Mare Nostrum. The trireme is an oared ram designed to cripple enemy ships. A bireme allows some space for marines and necessities on patrol missions, even without the Roman invention of the Corvus to egalize their lack in seamanship.

Um, no. A classic bireme and trireme aren't significantly different in size and space available; a trireme added an extra level of rowers in the outriggers with no appreciable increase in length. It therefore had a third again the motive power in combat, outclassing biremes, which is why they subsequently fulfilled lesser roles. After the trireme, there was an arms race for every larger ships with more oars, so that the quadrireme replaced the trireme, and then even larger ships appeared, culminating in Ptolemy's mad '40' which had 4,000 rowers - utterly impractical, if only because it would have taken many hours for the crew to board the ship. It was a demonstration of power and wealth, and never fought.

The Romans and the Carthaginians fought their wars using quinqueremes (the Romans used a few triremes in the 1st Punic War as well), and other large ships.

The Roman ships stationed in Britain and the Continent included triremes and biremes, modified with higher sides and bows to cope with conditions in the North Sea and Channel.

Terminus Est.

 

Edited by M Helsdon
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I think I've only ever considered ships twice in my Glorantha.

(i) When Harrek, after great sacrifice, warded his ships' hulls and rowed them upstream against the raging currents of lava flows all the way to the summit of the Vent, where he sacked the High Temple and stole the mountain's magic. (*coughs* This needs to happen in official Glorantha, btw.)

(ii) When I discovered that the Closing was caused when Loueydril and Hueymakt's brother, Deweymal, got into a bad run of luck at Casino Town and had to pawn his yacht, closing the seas until he had enough winnings to get it back again. (Making or not making this official isn't really a dealbreaker for me.)

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3 hours ago, Joerg said:

So I am asking what new designs were brought by the Free Men of the Seas, and what native designs did they have to work on?

I've wondered this for awhile (Borostonar experiments with a fairly aggressive oared concept but there's no mention of sail) but it's almost more interesting to test the real limits of the Waertagi interdict (as opposed to the rhetorical claims that "it was always thus, the man of LePlain says so"). What independent seafaring traditions existed that could have made contact with Jrustela and awakened the ambition to sail on their own terms?

Unfortunately Jrustela is (currently) Malasp territory so if there's a direct sea transmission it's an untold story.
 

singer sing me a given

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Black Galley

The unireme Black Galleys of the trolls of the Jrusteli Islands are both traders and raiders, and may be encountered almost anywhere. A galley has 24 rowing benches to a side, each with three oarsmen, with two steering oars aft. It has three masts. The vessel is named for the black pitch which coats its hull.

Many at the oars are undead, capable of rowing almost indefinitely, until they fall apart. When the chained slave rowers die, they continue to serve at the oars as undead.

A galley has a crew of five officers, 20 sailors, and up to 144 rowers

Accommodation for passengers is either on the rowing benches or in deckhouses at the stern and bow.

During the day, the trolls rig the sails as a tarpaulin to keep off the worst of the sun, preferring to sail at night.

 

Black Galley

Length

138 ft.

Beam

24 ft. outrigger

17 ft. hull

Draught

6 ft.

Speed

Knots

Duration

Sail:

3-8

Night

Oars:

Maximum

9

20 minutes

Cruise

4-5

Indefinitely

 

Edited by M Helsdon
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  • 4 years later...
On 4/3/2018 at 8:59 AM, Joerg said:

Density of cargo items are a big deal when loading a ship, too. Metal ingots, millstone raws and similar heavy stuff doubles as ballast near the keel line (provided the vessel has such). Light but voluminous stuff goes on top. This may require some additional work if you are unloading only part of your cargo at a given stop.

Many of the old threads are great for light reading.

I recall there was an issue with offloading supplies at Guadalcanal as well as they were not packed combat ready. I guess it was still being done the old fashion way in the 1940's as well until there was a temp wharf in place?

Maybe trollkin were used as ballast for the troll shipping and isn't the Bay rather calm until after 1616, thinking flatbottomed barges could have been used along the coasts in the Bay.

 image.png.18326ba01dbdbd96219f04c6cc6e328a.png image.png.c7b78e8bc0d4436aa2ad63768cb825ec.png image.png.4dbf2137ed2cc41d1684527f61a29c2c.png image.png.ea83974e72280ea72f2078a5a72c336e.png

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12 hours ago, Erol of Backford said:

thinking flatbottomed barges could have been used along the coasts in the Bay.

Merchant tubs have fairly flat keels to permit draft beaching, so that the ship can be loaded and unloaded in the shallows. These ships are used in the Mirrorsea and along the southern coast. Larger round ships have to either use lighters offshore or dock at a pier or wharf.

Heavy cargo such as filled amphorae and metal are loaded as low as possible, with the heaviest cargo towards the stern to maintain the vessel's trim under sail. 

Sketch by Mark Smylie - a work in progress. Note the shores used to prop the ship in place, and the ship's ladder.

draft beaching sketch.png

Edited by M Helsdon
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