Carrack and/or Galleon

[kevincompton]

Would it be unrealistic to make these as both the transport vessels and war vessels of the era?

You see i have the carrack unit as the Portugeuse UU but i named it a Nau. And I want the caravel to be obsoleted by magnetism so i added a galleon. I want the civ3 frigate to come way later and i changed the name to Ship of the Line. So I need a transport and unit so i simply made the Nau and the Galleon do both. Is this innacurate?

 

[kevincompton]

whoa, its empty in here today. I'll post this in creation.

 

[North King]

Well, no, neither would do well as a warship. Both are transport vessels. I think some sort of "Early Ship of the Line" and "Galley" would be better for warfare (the latter oceangoing, the former perhaps more powerful but confined to coasts or something to make it an interesting tradeoff).

 

[kevincompton]

Coloniel Kraken says otherwise and I'm apte to take his word for it. Thanks anyways, though.

If memory of history serves, I believe it would be completely accurate to use the Galleon in both roles. As ship building technology became more pronounced, however, dedicated warships were built.

 

[Evie]

Here's an interesting article on galleons that clear up a lot of associated crap Civ (among others) insist on regurgitating regularly : galleons were not "transports", at least no more than they were warships.

http://home.att.net/~ShipModelFAQ/ResearchNotes/smf-RN-Galleon.html

What is certain is that virtually all sources I found refer to such ships as the HMS Revenge - the vessel that was essentialy the prototype of the "all-guns deck" ships (ie, the vessel from which ships of the line all the way to HMS Victory are descended) - as a galleon, and that most of the major warships engaged in the armada campaign - on the english side - were galleons.

Calling the warship "early ship of the line" as North King suggested is just wasteful hair-splitting because "early ships of the line" is EXACTLY what galleons were. (and late galleons is exactly what ships of the line were). If anything, galleons should be warships with transport capacity which upgrades to SotL.

 

[North King]

As I recall, galleons were used as trading vessels. They were not used primarily as transports, or primarly as warships. They were a multi-task vessel. Every ship had the capability to defend itself in those days, yes, but there were few ships specifically devoted to war, except for a few galleon-style and galleys that served that purpose.

If galleons were only early ships of the line, how come Spain used primarily galleons for hauling gold? No, they were multi-task, and for the purposes of a Civ scenario, which is what I believe the question is about, more than one "type" of galleon serves the best.

 

[kevincompton]

I think this is pretty simple. There were no transport ships of the era for military! But there were because Galleons transported armies as well as engaged in naval combat. 1 ship then for that era = Galleon.

 

[Evie]

Galleons were not "primarily" anything. They were primarily EVERYTHING. Some galleons were built with trade as their primary use (espcially in portugal and spain), and some galleons were built with war as their primary use (especially by the Royal Navy - again, the fleet that met the Armada was primarily based on the royal navy's galleon forces - that is, galleons built expressedly for war).

Multiple type of galleons may work, but IMHO the best idea is something as simple as making the galleon a multi-purpose ship, able to both handle a fight better than most other ships AND transport stuff.

 

[cemo1956]

Reading this and after studying the fabolous book
Warships of the World by Gino Galuppini,
I think the issue is that Galleons where many types of ships and that the later warship types where more named "Three-deckers"

Great big Carracks like Henry Grace a Dieu (Great Henry) from England 1514 where one of the biggests Carracks in service. 184 cannons, 130 small-caliber iron ones, 54 larger bronze cannons. So that Carrack was a warship in the first rank early 16th century.

Golden Hind (1560) Commanded by Francis Drake was a small armed merchant Galleon with a dsiplacement of around 98,5 tons. She had two decks and armed with 26 eighteen- and nine-pound culverins.

Revenge (1560) A large four-masted three-decked galleon of around 960 tons.
thirty eighteen- and nine-pound culverins.
Francis Drake commanded this ship against the Spanish Armada in 1588.

San Martin (Spain 1567) Three-masted galleon of 984 tons. 40 guns on two gallery decks and twelve smaller pieces on main deck. The flagship of the Invincible Armada.

Later on in mid- 17th century bigger three-deckers came along.

Wasa (Sweden 1627) Three-masted three-decker of 1,121 tons.

Sovereign of the Sea (England 1637) Armament was made up of 24 twenty-four pounders in the lower battery, 24 twenty-four-pounders in the top battery and 22 eighteen-pounders pn the main deck.Plus various small pieces
from nine- to twelve-pounders on fore and afterdeck. Displacement was 1,516 tons.

The use of two maybe three types of Galleons would porbably be the best IMHO after reading this book.
The known Ship-of-the-Line most certain came out of those huge three deckers to be sure.

If merchant vessels can be seperated I would think of the Cog if any, but Galleons where doing fine in this class too.

I believe that I read that many times the ships surely wasn't classed in these names but in rate of the numbers of guns and so on. That went on all the way into the early 19th century.

That's my two cents on this subject

Cemo

 

[Adler17]

The Cog was also used as warship. At about 1400 cogs from Hamburg attacked the Vitualienbrüder, pirates, at Helgoland with that ships. All of the pirates were killed or imprisoned to be beheaded in Hamburg- Grasbrook.
Another ships type is the convoy ship. In the middle of the 17th century the Hanseatic cities used heavy frigates to protect convoys. he most famous ships were the Wappen von Hamburg and her sister Leopoldus Primus, armed with 54 guns. They were built in 1667 to fight enemy pirates and protecting Hanseatic convoys. In 1683 The Wappen von Hamburg blow up in Cadiz after a fire. Admrial Karpfanger and 64 sailors and soldiers out of 220 men died.

Adler