Help me design a 16th Century-style fantasy warship.

[AndersonsBiographer]

No, I'm probably not going to sail it into Thunder Bay, lay siege to the city, and establish a pirate republic.

Probably not.

Word had spread from world to world and port to port: the Dread Pirate Benji Bilgeman had died by mutiny in the middle of a sky portage! His barque had been destroyed in the fighting. Wreckage from the Brass Raven had been found in the seas below the portal, a message had been carved into a floating cask in testament to her fate. Her priceless portolabe and her captain's kingly treasure trove, among the greatest ever pilfered by any reaver of sea or sky, were surely lost forever.

Baron Herkul Bellfont would be born a few days later, at the time of his purchase of the sky-carrack Gelt Chimaera. Originally bearing twenty-four broadside guns and three basilisks, more lighter guns, with three masts and six wings, one thousand tons burthen and with an original complement of three hundred sailors, one-hundred gunners and eight hundred marines, few world-bound vessels could compare in size or power.

Thirty-five years ago, it was among the greatest vessels to ply the skies of any world. Now, it was an aged and obsolescent design, with most newer ships being smaller yet faster and stabler. Bellfont’s purchase of such a vessel, renamed the Calm Heritage and running on a skeleton crew of only two hundred men, albeit two hundred men of his own hand-picking, would help to sell his identity as a minor nobleman who had taken to the merchant trade after some legal yet disreputable career which he wishes to put behind him, perhaps a captain of mercenaries. That, of course, is why he’s reluctant to speak overmuch about his past, and surely no one would be so crass as to associate a merchant gentleman with the scarred, black-bearded brute of unlamented memory.

I'm looking for something sitting somewhere in between the Mary Rose and the Vasa in terms of sophistication, and significantly bigger than either. It's pretty much the Great Michael but with big, extendable wings.

The one big fantasy element of this vessel is that it can fly. Or more accurately, it can rise up and glide back down on certain occasions, when drawn up towards magical interplanetary portals. While that might seem like something that would radically alter the shape and design of the vessel, I think the fact that these "wings" are used more to harness magical energy than to generate lift should minimize the differences between this and a typical, world-bound vessel.

Portals and portolabes:

The glossy dark face of the portolabe glowed with dim flowing lights and colors as the ship pushed through the waves, indecipherable to most and fully understood by none. Built firmly into the bittacle, the large black tablet was of arguably greater value than the whole rest of the ship. Only a few thousand had ever been recovered from the ruins or shipwrecks of the Soneans, and many of those had since been lost to accidents and violence.

In the Migration Era, the pilots of sky-faring ships and fleets typically found the nearest portal by placing a ribbon of enchanted gossamer in a gimbal and seeing in which direction it leaned. Following the invention of the compass, it was common to wrap a ribbon around the end of a needle. That presently remained the second-best option, and it would surely become more common as the irreplaceable artifacts grew rarer. These alternatives were always available, but those who relied upon them typically endured longer portages from one world to another, and they also ran a higher risk of being wrecked or lost or careening onto dry land and having their descendants devolve into inbred cannibal reavers.

It was dawn of the second day when the portal was sighted. It appeared in the distance off the bow, floating against the sky like a strange, unmoving black cloud. With a nod from his pilot, Baron Bellfont gave the order to furl up the mast sails and spread the wings instead. As sailors worked the capstans, slender crisscrossed beams scissored out to full length and shrouds and stays unreeled to hold them above the waves. The shimmering gossamer sails seemed to come alive as they unfurled, billowing and tugging in the direction of the portal, pulling the vessel along at higher and higher speeds. The lights of the portolabe began to take on a flowing auroral appearance as they increased in intensity, the pilot gave orders for minute corrections to the wings. Bellfont held tight to the taffrail and set his feet against the deck as the acceleration continued. Some of the more nervous sailors implored their gods for protection while others stood by to watch the coming spectacle.

This never got old for him. The wind against his face died of a sudden, there was no sound of it singing through the rigging nor of water resisting the groaning, speeding hull. Before long, the carrack was planing across the waves at a speed that would disintegrate any unenchanted vessel. Not long thereafter, it was steadily lifting skyward, the bow turning up as if riding the face of a massive storm wave. Encased in protective magic, the Calm Heritage left the sea behind as it rose steadily skyward.

Portals created odd illusions as one drew near to them. They almost seemed to get small and run away at first, then they would suddenly grow outwards to reach around and envelope the ship in darkness. Flame-like luminescent discharges would start dancing to and fro atop the masts and yards, and the blackness beyond the vessel would show the same auroral glow as was being shown on the portolabe. This was the sign that very little remained for them to do in the weeks or months to come, except to tend to their duties aboard ship and wait for the portage to conclude.

The time in hyperspace sky-portage typically lasts 2 to 3 months. It's a simple enough affair, running out of air never seems to be a point of concern, though fire and disease are still as dangerous as ever. It is heavily implied that the biggest danger crews face is boredom.

Is there anything I'm missing when it comes to designing and operating a vessel of this kind? I feel like there might be something big that I'm overlooking, but I lack sufficient knowledge of the subject to know what it might be.

What effects would extended periods out of water have upon a large wooden sailing ship? I could see it as potentially a good thing (good chance to go over the rails and inspect, clean, and repair the keel) or a very bad thing (lumber fatigue from the constant wetting and drying action). Or, considering the presence of magic, it might be that neither are a problem.

Is 35 years too long of a service life to be believable? Granted, some carracks did last that long. The Great Michael did, Ferdinand Magellan's Victoria served for 50 years even after circumnavigating the world. But most, it seems, were lucky to last for more than a decade.

I'm really not going to set up a pirate republic in Thunder Bay. I promise!

 

[Bramblethorn]

RL sailships depend heavily on being simultaneously in contact with two different media (air and water) that are moving at different velocity. They are designed to exploit the differential between the two to do things like steering, moving against the wind, and so on.

Under RL physics, if you're only in contact with the air, your options are much more limited. If the wind is blowing steady, you're going to end up moving with it, and your steering options are very limited. This is why hot-air balloons don't have rudders; they're only useful if you have some velocity relative to the medium you're moving through. Their only option for steering is to fiddle with buoyancy in order to ascend or descend to an altitude where the wind is blowing in the direction they want to go. Steering in air requires some way to achieve a velocity relative to the air. Gliders achieve that by starting at a height, and trading off that height for forward movement, which then lets them steer via interaction of control surfaces with the air - but unless they can find a handy thermal to recover altitude, they're limited in range by how high they started. Other aircraft require powered flight via props/turbines/flapping wings/etc.

So at the point where you have a ship using sails to fly through the air, you're already well into the realms of fantasy. If your setting is magical enough to handle that, the other issues you're talking about shouldn't be deal-breakers.

 

[Jackie.Hikaru]

 

[AndersonsBiographer]

RL sailships depend heavily on being simultaneously in contact with two different media (air and water) that are moving at different velocity. They are designed to exploit the differential between the two to do things like steering, moving against the wind, and so on.

Under RL physics, if you're only in contact with the air, your options are much more limited. If the wind is blowing steady, you're going to end up moving with it, and your steering options are very limited. This is why hot-air balloons don't have rudders; they're only useful if you have some velocity relative to the medium you're moving through. Their only option for steering is to fiddle with buoyancy in order to ascend or descend to an altitude where the wind is blowing in the direction they want to go. Steering in air requires some way to achieve a velocity relative to the air. Gliders achieve that by starting at a height, and trading off that height for forward movement, which then lets them steer via interaction of control surfaces with the air - but unless they can find a handy thermal to recover altitude, they're limited in range by how high they started. Other aircraft require powered flight via props/turbines/flapping wings/etc.

So at the point where you have a ship using sails to fly through the air, you're already well into the realms of fantasy. If your setting is magical enough to handle that, the other issues you're talking about shouldn't be deal-breakers.

I put some thought into that, though really not enough.

I'm thinking that larger sky-ships (carracks and galleons and the like) have very limited steering ability while approaching or leaving a portal, and they seldom stay aloft for long periods of time. Their forward momentum is caused by the their wing sails drawing them to the portal when entering and slowly lowering them when exiting. In the latter instance, they're essentially very cumbersome gliders.

There are smaller/lighter craft (sky-barques, sky-skiffs, sky-shallops, etc.) that do stay aloft for extended periods of time, and their design will more closely resemble large 1940's-style gliders or possibly 1930's-style flying boats. I'm still not entirely sure where they'll be getting their lift and forward thrust from. Possibly using wing sails to slingshot around the portals and then proceeding to their intended destinations.

 

[AndersonsBiographer]

Kind of like that, but the unenchanted mast sails are furled before and during the portage, and I feel like trying to surf through a portal would be a bad idea...

...I suppose that kite-surfing into one would be possible, if you could somehow keep from dying of thirst and starvation.

 

[Rustyoznail]

Another option.

 

[AndersonsBiographer]

Hmm...

...actually, gunpowder does behave oddly on some of the worlds with high levels of wild magic. I could maybe see a situation where, if you set off a lot of it in juuust the right manner, you could launch a manned and heavily-shielded vessel skyward with at least some hope of the passengers surviving.

16th Century Project Orion.

 

[onehitwanda]

What effects would extended periods out of water have upon a large wooden sailing ship?

Negatives:

* The planks of the hull would dry out and pull apart, thus letting sea water in at an amusing rate the next time the hull was immersed.
* Various important bits of the substructure would warp and distort.

Positives:

* the crew could clean the barnacles and weed off so she'd be quick and responsive when she is re-immersed.

Were I to do this I'd do away with the weight and complexity of extendible sails and paraphernalia. Since magic is already involved, use magic to lift the ship and magic to provide resistance to the keel.

Sail the ship into the portal with topgallants aloft.

 

[Jackie.Hikaru]

Negatives:

* The planks of the hull would dry out and pull apart, thus letting sea water in at an amusing rate the next time the hull was immersed.
* Various important bits of the substructure would warp and distort.

Positives:

* the crew could clean the barnacles and weed off so she'd be quick and responsive when she is re-immersed.

Were I to do this I'd do away with the weight and complexity of extendible sails and paraphernalia. Since magic is already involved, use magic to lift the ship and magic to provide resistance to the keel.

Sail the ship into the portal with topgallants aloft.

kiss me hardy!

 

[AndersonsBiographer]

* The planks of the hull would dry out and pull apart, thus letting sea water in at an amusing rate the next time the hull was immersed.

That... yeah, that was a concern of mine.

...uh, can anything be done to prevent that? I mean, sure, if the portal can keep air in the lungs of the sailors then it can keep moisture in the hulls of the planks. But if this is something which presents an obstacle, but not an insurmountable one, then it might further explain why all ships aren't sky-ships, apart from the fact that wings are complex and the enchanted sails for them are expensive.

Were I to do this I'd do away with the weight and complexity of extendible sails and paraphernalia. Since magic is already involved, use magic to lift the ship and magic to provide resistance to the keel.

Sail the ship into the portal with topgallants aloft.

Tempting. But if winged ships aren't an aspect of the story, then I'm not sure that light ships with longer glide times like the ones mentioned earlier would ever be developed. I could do without them I suppose, but they were going to be of later use in the narrative.

Plus, I kind of like the idea of 16th Century PBY Catalinas.

Hmm, how do wooden-hulled flying boats keep from warping?

 

[Devinter]

...uh, can anything be done to prevent that?

Of course. Just talk dirty to the ship to keep her wet at all times.

 

[AndersonsBiographer]

Navisexual?

 

[StillStunned]

Of course. Just talk dirty to the ship to keep her wet at all times.

I was going to suggest sailing through clouds, but your idea makes much more sense. It also explains the moans and groans that a ship makes at sea. And the bottle of champagne to launch it.

Of course, in a world where ships are male instead of female, you can just feed it a pill to keep the wood hard.

 

[AwkwardlySet]

What you are describing is definitely going to require some suspension of disbelief. Then again, if it's magic that is keeping those ships in the air, you should be all right. When you use magic, you don't really need to sell the science of it all. You can even use some special metal, some crystal or whatever as the material that soaks up magical energies and keeps the ships in the air, although using crystals would make it too similar to Jim Butcher's work.
The real trick is to sell interplanetary travel while the technology is still at the level of the Age of Sail as most people associate such achievements with high tech. Still, I can't see why it wouldn't work. By the way, if those portals are static - if they are always in the same place, then it makes sense that someone would want to take control of them, to control traffic towards other planets. Just a few thoughts.

 

[StillStunned]

Of course. Just talk dirty to the ship to keep her wet at all times.

Can you imagine how much you could earn writing erotica in a world like that? Every ship would need a Senior Smut Officer, with a handful of Junior Smut Officers to assist. A good Smut Officer has to know what their ship's preferred kinks are, and whether they like strokers or long-form stories.

 

[AwkwardlySet]

One more thing that concerns world-building. How are all those different planets at the same level of science and technology? For planets that weren't previously in touch with each other, that is extremely unlikely. So you need to come up with some explanation for that. For all planets to roughly equalize in science and technology it would take centuries of continuous trading and travel among them.
Sorry, this is the topic I love so I can't help myself

 

[lovecraft68]

Can't help with your request, but I give you credit for seeking help from actual people and not just telling AI to describe/build one for you.

 

[Bramblethorn]

Of course. Just talk dirty to the ship to keep her wet at all times.

That's what the seamen are for.

 

[Devinter]

Can you imagine how much you could earn writing erotica in a world like that? Every ship would need a Senior Smut Officer, with a handful of Junior Smut Officers to assist. A good Smut Officer has to know what their ship's preferred kinks are, and whether they like strokers or long-form stories.

Ah, but then what happens when the Smut Officer cannot find their muse? Or when they get assigned to a ship with a fetish that they do not quite understand, and they have to try and come up with an alien impregnation story at 4am on a Monday just to prevent disaster? The wood of the ship could quickly turn limp and unusable in such a situation. Though I suppose if all else fails, you could just go manually rub the limber holes or perhaps the mast with your hands and hope for the best.

 

[onehitwanda]

kiss me hardy!

If you haven't yet read the Aubrey/Maturin books by Patrick O'Brien... well, I'm going to tie you down and narrate them to you. They are sooooo goooood.

 

[onehitwanda]

Hmm, how do wooden-hulled flying boats keep from warping?

They weigh significantly less than age of sail warships, for starters. They're built out of marine plywood and the thickest bits of this will be the foot and planing surfaces of the hull, the rest just needs to be thick enough to withstand the aerodynamic forces which (at the maximum speed of most flying boats) is not significant. Also, apart from the spars of the wings, almost every other part of the aircraft is not load-bearing.

Age of Sail ships had to be built to withstand storms and, in the case of warships, sustained cannon fire. The design principles are radically different. HMS Victory had a displacement of 3,500 long tons (very long in Hardy's case, by all accounts...) while the Hercules (aka the Spruce Goose) displaced 210 metric tonnes at maximum take off load. They had to be built to take the force of up to three masts of full canvas, on a pitching and yawing deck, often in extreme conditions. A first rate line of battle ship is, in some ways, the absolute peak of evolution up one part of Mount Improbable.

The ocean is a merciless mistress; engineering for a surface nautical environment is in many ways harder than engineering for space. Every little bit of an age of sail ship was a product of hundreds of years of learning, often from the dead.

 

[onehitwanda]

Can you imagine how much you could earn writing erotica in a world like that? Every ship would need a Senior Smut Officer, with a handful of Junior Smut Officers to assist. A good Smut Officer has to know what their ship's preferred kinks are, and whether they like strokers or long-form stories.

I'm suddenly having Liveship fanfiction urges and it is filthy.

 

[StillStunned]

I'm suddenly having Liveship fanfiction urges and it is filthy.

I'm known for giving women filthy urges. Mostly the urge to scrub themselves.

 

[AndersonsBiographer]

What you are describing is definitely going to require some suspension of disbelief. Then again, if it's magic that is keeping those ships in the air, you should be all right. When you use magic, you don't really need to sell the science of it all. You can even use some special metal, some crystal or whatever as the material that soaks up magical energies and keeps the ships in the air, although using crystals would make it too similar to Jim Butcher's work.
The real trick is to sell interplanetary travel while the technology is still at the level of the Age of Sail as most people associate such achievements with high tech. Still, I can't see why it wouldn't work. By the way, if those portals are static - if they are always in the same place, then it makes sense that someone would want to take control of them, to control traffic towards other planets. Just a few thoughts.

Jim Butcher? Dresden Files?

Hmm, apparently he wrote a series of fantasy novels featuring sky ships. I'll have to look into that.

It does amuse me to have people traveling to other worlds when they're still not sure if those worlds are wholly round or not (somewhat anachronistic) or whether they circle their suns or their suns circle them. In our world, the concept of interplanetary travel was toyed with by none other than Johannes Keplar. The concept of travel to alternate/parallel worlds was an existing motif by the 17th century, so we're not too far out from people thinking about such things, even if they can't actually do them.

One thing I've done is mix magical elements with things that merely seem magical. A notable example is a lightweight porous stone (floatstone) which is harvested from volcanic regions and ground into a slurry which can be poured and molded into strong structures of any shape imaginable (flowstone). Only wizards and alchemists know how to do it. They understandably see it as something magical, we would recognize it as pumice and concrete. DNA and gene-editing also factor somewhat into the story, but the characters have only the vaguest of ideas about the science underlying it.

I considered pulling a Gene Wolfe and more heavily implying that portolabes are actually computers/hyperspace drives. But, nah...

Portals do move around within a general oceanic region. Thus why portolabes or gossamer compasses are needed to help find them.

 

[StillStunned]

Hmm, apparently he wrote a series of fantasy novels featuring sky ships. I'll have to look into that.

I started reading the first and gave up after about three pages. I don't remember much except I couldn't continue.