How much did pre-steam/pre-breechloader ships advance over the centuries?
How big is the gap in capabilities between a 15th century carrack vs a 17th century galleon vs a 19th century ship of the line be?
How much did pre-steam/pre-breechloader ships advance over the centuries?
Sailing ships; the story of their development from ancient times to today.
You're welcome.
They decreased in quality because Europe ran out of good old growth wood to build ships in the 15th-16th century. This was the entire reason to colonize America and also why they transitioned to steel ships once they lost access to American timber.
You are absolutly full of shit, did you intentionally make this up to bait /k/?
You're a moron but you're half right. Shipbuilding required an absurd amount of very specific wood types, so much that it pushed some species to near-extinction and devastated some areas of America and Africa due to deforestation
IIRC Scotland, Ireland, and Iceland were heavily deforested for shipbuilding
Scotland was deforested by the Great War, out of a need for more explosives
Iceland what deforested in the medieval era. The problem is the soil is actually pretty bad, so once the trees that were painstakingly eking out an existence over centuries got chopped down, the forests were not able to recover at all.
fricking moron
>15th century carrack
those short fat bulbous things were, due to the limited knowledge of shipbuilders of the time, not as seaworthy for their weight as
>19th century ship of the line
so they mounted fewer cannons, sailed slower, and weren't as manoeuvreable
The US navy owns a small forest in Indiana for the sole purpose of repairing The USS Constitution.
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This guy explains it better.
>This was the entire reason to colonize America
Meds now
This is impressively moronic, for the speed of the post and the obvious confidence of the prose.
Early gunpowder-armed carracks (1500s-1600s) would have been armed with an array of relatively small cannon of a shocking variety. (pic related)
>the Spanish used twelve sizes, and the English sixteen. They are, from largest to smallest: the cannon royal, cannon, cannon serpentine, bastard cannon, demicannon, pedrero, culverin, basilisk, demiculverin, bastard culverin, saker, minion, falcon, falconet, serpentine, and rabinet.
Ships of the era were fatter, less handy, less well-armed and battles of the time would devolve into a morass of small duels and boarding actions.
By the later 17th century ships begin to resemble what we imagine them to be. More standardized cannon, better handling, and most importantly better tactics on the part of their commanders.
Through the 18th century ships become much more efficient and mature, standardizing on 2-3 types of cannon, becoming sleeker, faster, and tactics develop accordingly to more orderly lines of battle, which give commanders greater control of a naval battle's course.
The gap in capabilities between a 15th century carrack and a 16th-17th century galleon is considerable, The galleon having considerably more cannon, and those cannon being considerably better than their older cousins in the carrack, and handles much better on the ocean as well.
Between a galleon and an 18th century ship of the line depends on when the galleon was made, but again, the ship of the line is better-armed, handles better on the ocean, is faster, and has the benefit of better seamanship borne of experience and tradition. It would be greatly in the favor of the ship of the line.
19th century ships are an entirely different animal. A the beginning of the 19th century a ship of the line is almost exactly the same as it's late 1700s predecessors, except perhaps more efficiently and intentionally built. It uses the same cannon, is shaped mostly the same, and uses mostly the same tactics. Against an older ship in a fight the newer ship has the edge in capability, but not decisively so.
By the mid-19th century ships of the line are even swifter, more refined, armed with heavier guns. They may be equipped with explosive shells which absolutely devastate any wooden-hulled vessel they encounter. They might carry a steam engine aboard which allows them to still move without having the wind. The technological gap only increases as the century goes on, but even before the age of the explosive shell and the ironclad, early-mid 19th century ships of the line are the pinnacle of wooden-hull fighting sail.
>pre-breechloader
Breachloaders were some of the first cannons to be developed. But they where dogshit back then and tended to explode.
Carracks were floating wooden fortresses - tall, slow and made to resist boarding. They weren't the primary warship of the time but rather converted merchant ships and prestige projects while the galley was the primary warship, being fast, agile and carrying lots of people for boarding. The guns weren't there for sinking ships yet - only for killing the crew and damaging rigging, no different from bows, catapults, javelins and so on that've been used since ancient times.
In the 16th century galleon was developed, which wasn't as tall due to smaller forecastle and had a pear-shaped hull that allowed to carry heavy cannons up high closer to the center of gravity. Only during the Anglo-Spanish wars did the ships start using cannons for atacking ships for the first time, first agaisnt rudders, sails and rigging but the whole fire until sinking thing wasn't a thing until the 17th century.
From then on the main developments were in sails and maneuverability, with more advanced rigs that were cheaper, easier to manage with less manpower and propelled bigger ships. The ships grew in size and their armament did so too. 16th-17th century capital ship would only have as much cannons as a 3rd rate warship(the ship of the line wasn't anything specific other than a warship bigger than a frigate).
In the late 17th and the 18th century as more and more conflicts occured away from shores the ships were more adapted for going into the open seas and maneuvering and navigating there, intoducing more jibs, using sextants, becoming lower and more sleek and so on.
By the 19th century things really started to change with the industrial revolution. Carronades could fire heavy shot from fairly small guns, diagonal trusses made larger, more rigid hulls stronger and eventually armor plating, steam propulsion, explosive shells, steel masts and hulls and so on all resulted in ships completely alien to the ones that have existed for centuries.
I know it's just a movie, but Master and Commander had an extended subplot about how much ship design had advanced in just 30 years or so.
Not so much construction/design, but I love how modern financial institutions started to develop as these cute frickers sailed further
>Be Joe
>Own trading ship
>Invest into crew and provisions for a trip to buy spices
>Ship sinks off the coast of madagascar taking all if your investments with it
>Joe's face when go oak go broke
>Be Joe V2, new ship new me
>Get together with 9 other blokes who all also own a ship each
>Bundle ships together, everyone owns 1/10 share in eachothers' ships
>Joe practically still make the same amount of money as he would have going soli
>Having your ship sink off the coast of Madagascar only costs you 1/10 of your investment instead of totally bankrupting you
>Not so much construction/design,
The hulls of late first rate ships could be double or even triple the thickness in certain sections.
Ships in the 17th century could only go a mile before sinking
This was Sweden's first attempt at shipping in refugees. They've improved since then, you can't make an omelette without breaking a few eggs after all.
>How big is the gap in capabilities between a 15th century carrack vs a 17th century galleon vs a 19th century ship of the line be?
much of the plot of image related novel series revolves around this question
>David Weber
it's sad that this is the most prolific male military sci-fi fiction writer
What I want to know is how shipping was affected after the fall of Rome.