Naval Warfare
War at sea in Teraell: rifled cannon, clockwork rigging, a living colony in the hold, and the question of why anyone still boards.
Vessels
See Vessels of Teraell for the four classes and the pirate hull.
Clockwork at sea
- Rifled naval cannon
- Effective aimed fire at eight hundred to twelve hundred yards, able to target specific parts of a ship — rigging, waterline, gun ports.
- Clockwork gun aiming
- Consistent elevation and traverse. A skilled crew extracts real accuracy at long range rather than throwing metal in a direction.
- Clockwork hull monitoring
- A set of float rods and a board. Each rod sits in a compartment and rises with the water, flipping an indicator on a brass panel in the hold: one forward, one aft, one midships, one for each well. The board shows which part of the ship is taking water, not how much, how fast, or what was holed; somebody still goes to look, but knows where to start. A mate who knows within a moment that the forward compartments are filling and not the aft has saved minutes, and ships stay in the fight longer for it. More rods give a finer picture at the cost of weight and complication, and how many a vessel carries is a decision her builders made about what mattered.
- Clockwork rigging
- Lets a crew trim sails together rather than one at a time. Geared linkages run from a working station to the yards and hold tension mechanically once set; a change that would need men aloft on every spar is made by a few hands in one motion. It does not sail the ship. It means a crew catches a wind shift in the time it takes to decide to, holds the trim exactly, and works a vessel shorthanded that would otherwise need twice the men. The meaningful gain is upwind.
- Chronometers
- Run on a battery rather than springs, because constant power means constant timekeeping, which means longitude. Superior navigation is a tactical advantage long before a good cannon is.
- Coral filtration
- A living Fraeska colony in a circulated tank in the hold, taking the salt out of seawater. See that page for how it works, what it costs, and why nobody sails with low tanks.
- Spring-loaded grappling
- Gets hooks across faster and more reliably than muscle, and is essential to any boarding action.
Water aboard
Every ship runs two lines, fresh from the tanks in the hold and salt straight from the sea, and the two are never confused because fresh water is expensive and salt is not.
Fresh water is strictly for drinking, cooking, and the sick berth, piped from the tanks to the galley and wherever else needs it. On a warship or a large merchantman a small steam plant drives the pumps and fills a header high in the ship so gravity does the work, and a tap works as a tap; smaller hulls use a hand pump at the point of use. A pirate hull uses hand pumps and always will — a boiler is weight, and a pirate crew that takes a working steam plant strips it out and sells it.
Salt water is drawn from a sea inlet to the washing places, the head, and the deck for scrubbing, and nobody rations it. The same line fights fires, which is why every vessel afloat has one regardless of anything else. Washing is done in saltwater on every ship in the world, with a soap made for it: Oevrei-based, with something in it to bind the hardness out of the water, so it lathers, lifts, and rinses clean. A shower is a small header overhead and a valve. Nobody stays clean; spray comes over the rail all day, and an hour on deck a man smells of sea. It is not dirt, it does not come off, and every crew wears it. Baths happen ashore. Crews shower.
Tactics
Engagements begin at a range where ships can be damaged long before they can be boarded; the opening phase — position, and beginning to hurt the enemy — is fought entirely at a distance, and a battle can be decided before anyone considers closing. With clockwork rigging making vessels far more maneuverable, the rigid line of battle is much less dominant than it was: faster ships break lines, outmaneuver slower opponents, and attack at angles a formal engagement would never permit. Naval combat is fluid rather than parallel.
Why boarding still happens
- Prize capture
- Cannon sinks ships and kills crew. To keep the cargo, the hull, or the people, they must be kept alive and afloat, and boarding is the only thing that does it — which is why pirates favor it.
- Inferior gunnery
- If the enemy shoots better or has more guns, closing may be the only option. Close combat neutralizes a gunnery advantage.
- Ammunition
- Long-range engagements consume enormous quantities of powder and shot. Running low forces you to close or break off.
- Weather
- Heavy seas make long-range accuracy nearly impossible. Closing in rough water is also hard, but at least it does not depend on something the weather has taken away entirely.