Pre-gunpowder, what were the biggest advancements in warship technology? When I think of pre-gunpowder warships, all I think of are rams and boarding.
>>62881636Probably the most important were access to navigation tools and techniques.
>>62881636Carrack ship.
Deep sea ports => bigger shipsthat's why Ingerlund won against the Netherlands, eventually.
>>62881653>that's why Ingerlund won against the Netherlands, eventually.Its because Netherlands were on continent and were constantly invaded by land.
Those Byzantine flamethrowers were pretty good.
>>62881636pre-gunpowder the largest advancements in warship tech were almost universally hull design and sail layout
>>62881636Navigational instruments (telescope, astrolabe, etc.)Books on navigational techniquesChartsDifferent sail designs, i.e. the advent of Lateen and Spiritsails allowed sailing into the windVarious parts of ships we take for granted today were invented back then, like the keel and rudder.Two types of land-based technology were very important: the ropewalk, which determined how long ropes you could make. And the masting crane, which determined how big a mast you could lift into place on a ship. Both of these limited the size of ships that could be constructed.
late medieval Iberian ship development
>>62882056pretty interesting. lolling at the idea of a ship without a keel or rudder. maybe the most earilest ships didn't even have a hull
>>62882119some of the earliest boats were just leather wrapped around a wicker frame or woven from reeds and soaked in tar
>>62882119Early ships were steered with an oar. That eventually became a proper rudder. The traditional ship's wheel that we think of today wasn't always used either, back in the day big ships were steered with a "whipstaff"
>>62881677Actually they were winning during the times when they were being constantly invaded. It's only in the 18th century, especially the latter part of it, that Bongs started pushing Dutch around.
>>62882132The basic steering oar is quite simple but during the Roman times they were using symmetrical twin oars on each side of the ship that were interconnected by rigging and those provided about as much effort on the ship as the later rudder. They kept being used in the mediterranean until they were replaced by rudders even after the empire collapsed.Whipstaffs were also fairly diverse, from the basic ones that were directly fixed to the rudder to more complex block and tackle systems that used a mechanical advantage to transfer the larger movement of the whipstaff into smaller movement of the rudder almost exactly like the steering wheel does. The actual wheel shape only appeared in the early 18th century on the select few ships at first though so it pretty much missed the entirety of the golden age of piracy, funnily enough.
>>62881649It's insane how intelligent my ancestors were to be able to build things like this with such a small base for knowledge
>>62882244Their knowledge base was literally dozens of generations of people who were building and manning ships their whole lives. How the hell is this small?
>>62881636Multiple masts and moving past lateen sails.
>>62881636the lateen sail. it allowed sailing against the wind, unlike a square sail, and completely changed naval warfare. the shift of clinker to carvel hull construction - enabled larger vessels with greater stiffness.
Greek fire
>>62882379>it allowed sailing against the wind, unlike a square sail, and completely changed naval warfare.this bullshit myth has been completely disproven in modern research
>>62882379NTA, but these are very gradual and geographically dispersed changes happening ever several centuries, and they resulted in truly seagoing ships in the 1400s.But that is pretty decisively in the gunpoweder era, so for this thread we should probably look at a somewhat earlier timeframe.What do we have from 800 to 130 or so?I Northern Europe, this era starts with Vikings Longboats and ends with Hanseatic Cogs (I think)In the Med we have galleys, I guess?But in the end, it always came down to boarding in some form, and the type of small-ish ballista or catapult on these ships was probably more of an antio-crew weapon, too.
>>62881636I think wood, water and wind were pretty important.
>>62881636there really wasn't any single thing, rather just force multipliers and evolution. cannons were revolutionary, just as ironclads or steam were later on.
>>62882634Wtf are you on? Stop watching UFO channel.
>>62882170The end of the Dutch golden age (in the Netherlands at least) is generally considered to be the "disaster year" 1672, when the Netherlands were invaded by England, France, Cologne and Münster at once.The Dutch were able to fight off both the English and French fleets, but were only barely able to defeat the French and Germans on land after the war spilled over into the rest of Europe.
>>62883507Julian Whitewright, but also many others too. I recommend the paper titled "Windward Sailing in Antiquity: The Elephant in the Room" as a first read. The gist of it is that lateen sail did absolute jack shit for windward sailing and the only reason it got adopted was because it was cheaper to build and required less rigging.
>>62883527So yes, basically the garbage like "lateen sails allowed sailing against the wind" is what's relegated to airing on the UFO channel nowadays.
>>62882565Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. So you got any evidence?
