Types of pirate ships for an early-1700s fantasy?
Posted by Simpson17866@reddit | sailing | View on Reddit | 3 comments
Posted by Simpson17866@reddit | sailing | View on Reddit | 3 comments
Accomplished_Age_699@reddit
The specifics of the construction of the ship, the condition of the rigging, and just weather will have an effect on speed. Don't get too caught up on classification.
Also, real pirate ships were generally small cargo ships that had been stolen. Pirates had no use for some 80 gun monster. They wanted speed and plenty of crew to take down an unarmed or marginally armed merchant, ideally without firing a shot.
They way you're talking about this, you might want to read more about the period you're taking inspiration from.
ppitm@reddit
Early 1700s ships would look completely different without firearms.
Simpson17866@reddit (OP)
Hence my AU changes the original show’s “no firearms” setting to “limited firearms” ;)
The premise of the show is that an alien general from a galactic SciFi empire crash-landed in a Fantasy world, kicked off an Industrial Revolution in one of the nations, and now his new industrialized nation is trying to conquer the rest of the pre-Industrial planet.
I’m toning down the “SciFi versus Fantasy” angle slightly in my own AU by giving my version of the planet somewhat better tech — before the SciFi alien overlord showed up, most of the Fantasy planet was waging Pike-and-Shot warfare, and the most advanced nation had just started producing socket bayonets (which would’ve made them the dominant pioneers of Napoleonic warfare if the model hadn’t suddenly become 500 years obsolete overnight).
The story starts 40 years after, so if the planet was originally at the rough equivalent of the year 1700 (the socket bayonet had been invented, but recently enough that most armies hadn’t started using it yet), then it would now be the rough equivalent of 1740 (with a few specific anachronisms here and there as some alien tech gets smuggled out of the SciFi nation, but which the Fantasy nation hasn’t been able to mass-produce yet).
For the pre-Industrial parts of the world, I’m trying to start with as realistic a foundation as possible, then adding low-to-moderate amounts of Science Fantasy weirdness on top of it, rather than making the Science Fantasy so dominant that I have to design everything from scratch.