Medieval Maritime history

How was war at sea during the medieval period Veeky Forums?

Why is there such a void in martime history during this period?

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en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venetian_Arsenal
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veneti_(Gaul)
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seconding this, most people can easily picture ancient naval battle or age of sail battle but this is blank for me

You know the Vikings are medieval, right?

This is more about the High/early Late medieval era. 1000-1400

*blocks your path*

the navies were on a wild goose chase to find Sardinia

Because to have a naval battle, you need two fleets running into each other at around the same time. You simultaneously had advances in seamanship which made it easier to keep ships away from the coast, but regression in terms of things like scale of military forces and general professionalism, which made it hard to have a separate fleet as a branch of service, or to keep it on the water indefinitely. Most of the time you just had land armies grabbing boats to get to wherever it was they were going across the lake/river/ocean and then taking the route there, and unless there was an enemy fleet right in their path (why would there be?) you didn't have battle at sea.

You tended to only get them on rivers, lakes, or attached to long sieges, when you had a place that you knew an enemy was likely to be at or go through at some point in the near future. Open sea battle? How would you even find the other fleet?

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venetian_Arsenal

I'd just like to remind everyone that Venice built the world's first true factory, solely for the purpose of building warships.

It was worth it to eventually get Constantinople sacked.

Guess you could find them at their harbor or near trade routes.
The Hanseatics were good at this werent they?

>At their harbor
Which will probably have land-based defenses. Historically, attacking a port from ships is colossally difficult.

>or near trade routes.
Why would the enemy fleet be near a trade route? And this is the medieval era. The notion of economic interdiction barely exists, and the lack of a clear distinction between state and non-state actors makes the idea that you could provoke someone to battle by harassing trade far less of a clear one than say, commerce raiding in the age of sail or in the modern era. Not to mention that finding an individual merchant ship, even if you wanted to, is going to run into all the same problems of finding an enemy fleet for battle. It's a big ocean, and finding one ship is hard.

Medieval Naval Warfare in Northern Europe was a retarded affair of battles between merchant cogs outfitted for warfare by nailing wooden towers on them. Then, war became a matter of BANGING BOATS N FIGHTING XDDDD.

The Mediterraneans largely kept to the Galley-warfare of the Classical world with dedicated warships like Galleys, Lanternas, and Dromonds.

The only exception was Viking Naval Combat, but their longships just pale in comparison to Mediterranean Galleys. They were small and lacked fighting decks. Hell when longships went up against Byzantine Galleys they were BTFO.

Are there any sources on how big Asian ships actually got?

>How was war at sea during the medieval period Veeky Forums?
Pretty much the same as in antiquity mostly. Ramming, archery and boarding were the name of the game.
>Why is there such a void in martime history during this period?
There isn't. It's just that the period takes a backseat compared to the much more famous sea battles of antiquity and the age of sail.
There are plenty of naval engagements, hell Venice lived off its fleet and even hired it out to the byzantines at times. The vikings lived off piracy among each other as much as actual raiding.
It's just that there are no Actium, no Gravelines, no Nile and Trafalgar sized battles at the time, not in Europe anyway.

Zheng He's ships are generally compared to roman grain megacargoes, so pretty idiotically big, especially considering how treacherous the sea they sailed was. That size of ship wouldn't be used again for centuries after his death.

Because it's bookended by more exciting periods.

Piracy in the channel was a frequent tactic used by both sides of the Wars of the Roses.

>china built a huge ship therefore their naval technology was superior
>they didn't found colonies like the portuguese and spanish because an emperor chose not to

>Go be barbarians somewhere else

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veneti_(Gaul)

Had Oak ships with leather sails that could handle the Atlantic waters. Rome had to build a new ship just to fight the superior Celtic boat.

The Wars of the Roses are well after the High Medeival period

Who said this was a discussion only about the high medieval period?

This guy, presumably the OP.

Did they really need to?

Lots of raids and small scale encounters. Pretty interesting though and they used a lot of weapons I didnt know existed.

Can talk about whatever really as long as it's medieval and floats.

Just that Vikings is a topic for another time.

They had galleys which did exactly the same thing though.

Posting late medieval shit

PS, read up on that Sicilian wars that had some pretty good naval fighting in it.

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PS the hook at the bowsprit is for boarding

Feel free to ask some specific questions, I read a thing or two about naval warfare from the period.

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>It's a big ocean, and finding one ship is hard.

Why the fuck would people go fight in the ocean when there are seas, with all sorts of natural chokepoints? Your whole post is you just assuming things.

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>Small European countries fearing that they would be cut-off from relevant trade network practice colonialism.
>Large empire that was one of the world centers of trade doesn't do colonialism.
>Large empire is so stupid!

How did the Hansa (Hanseatic leauge) conduct war and how was it strucktured?
Was there mostly pirate raids and action or did they conduct conventional war on land?

kek

Pretty sure it was a lot of boarding and basically land fighting, just on the deck of a ship. Hence the huge forecastles etc, to allow for archers to have better angles etc. There's actually some similarities to be drawn to early Republic (think Punic Wars) Roman naval warfare.

Boats weren't a thing until the age of discovery, moron. Try traversing the open sea for years at a time just to get somewhere, no one wanted that.

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Ye, just bring the land to the sea philosophy.

Because sea battles were expensive as fuck to have. Building several large transports took months of labor, materials, and drydocks. If you dumped all your money there, your neighbors would just usurp your farms and lands without much recourse.

If they did fight, it was very much like a land battle. Flat plains offering a space for warriors to hack at one another

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I'm actually rather amazed that no one designed a ship optimized for speed, like the clippers, until the 19th century. They could cross the Atlantic in 2 weeks

In contrast, it took ships from earlier centuries 2-3 months. Really amazing thinking how much a few masts and sails "shrink the world" in terms of communications and transportation, both in terms of news, vips, and important cargo. Was reading a book on sea power in the 15th-16th century in the Mediterranean; and it could take 2-3 months to go from one end of the Med, to the other, in that time period.

Both the Byzantines and the Italian City states fought a hell lot of battles against the moslems.

>lmao what is an "island"?
>a piece of land that's not on the coast? are you a fucking retard haha

I guess you have to consider that a) even a slow ship was still faster over long distance than most land transport, and b) carrying capacity and fighting survivability weighed against speed. Sure, high decks and towers slow you down, and make for inefficient sail and hull layouts, but they make it so it's harder to board. No point in gettting to yoir destination quickly if you if you're boarded by pirates in some chokepoint, whereas with a more warlike ship they might not even try to board or you could fight them off.

Secondly, and even more importantly, unless you have available goods (e.g. tea for the flipper ships) it's better to carry 100% more cargo than go 50% faster. Flush decks and narrow hulls really cut down on cargo space. Even if you can go 100% faster and make 2 trips for the same total cargo, there's more risk of a second voyage, more wear and tear, etc. Plus maybe the crops or weather only allow for one trip a year. Much like today, many major merchant lines are actually running cargo ships at like half the speed they did just a few decades ago, because it saves tons of fuel, and focusing instead on bigger and more efficient ships. Finally, overpowered ships with more complicated sail plans require more crew proportional to their size, and more very skilled and seamanlike crew to handle sails at that.

In Scandinavia it is not. The middle age starts there after the viking age

Cogs are shitty medieval warships.

Post galleys.

I got a first hand account somewhere i'll look it up.

It took folks four centuries to go from a single masted cog to the basic square rig. On top of that the clipper would be absolutely hell to defend prior to the 18th century, boarding was still de rigur for large parts of the 17th, especially when facing natives.

How are those glorified rowboats better?

Don't get me wrong, I like galleys but they didn't have shit on many sailing ships.

Here is the account of the first decade of the 15th century.

Much of it would also apply to earlier naval warfare. Its not just boarding the ships, there was more strategy and seamanship involved.

Sail ships are limited to the wind. If there is no wind, they cant maneuver. A galley does not have this problem.

Different tools for different tasks.

Pls do

Ancient maritime warfare is where its at

Granted that it does have other problems when it comes to maneuver

most of the documents about Zheng He's voyages were unfortunately destroyed by a vice minister of military affairs in the late 15th century who didn't want any future emperors to be awed by them and start the project up again, so we don't really know. Best guess is about 450ft long and 150 feet wide.

what is a whaler in the context of the writing? I keep picturing fiberglass mantauks in medieval naval combat...

They were practically at war with Denmark for their entire duration because herrings are serious fucking business here in the north.
They would ally with Sweden and German duchies to kick our assess and have their own kicked again and again.

Because there isn't? It just isn't as popular. Mare Nostrum and after the empire with the muslim shit navies just made large scale engagements more rare until the late middle ages.

What is the guess based on then?

Probably a non-warship but honestly I am not sure.

Perhaps something like the Newport ship pictured here

Anyone have anything about the battle of lake Poyang all i’ve Found is the Wikipedia page and a forum post

>Parroting the spice trade meme
You're also a brainlet sweetie.

The drydocks. The rudder. And hstorical records (that are not Zheng He's)

>I like galleys but they didn't have shit on many sailing ships.

Since you're talking of the medieval ages, you'd want a galley more than some single-masted fat piece of shit in battle.

Sailing ships really only became serious contenders as warships in the late 16th century when advances in sail technologies and the concept of a broadside meant Galleys were outgunned.

But in the medieval ages you'd want something oared as to maneuver around a naval battlefield.

>Spice trade meme.
Finding new avenues of trade was the chief launcher of the age of colonization.

Furthermore Chinese not engaging in colonialism is not exactly true either. The Government forbade it, but Merchant Clans looking to one up each other sent their relatives to set up trade posts all across Southeast Asia to grab a foothold on the SEAsian trading scene for their families. The origin of many Chinese communities in that region.

so i this why there is a large chinese comunity in malaysia?

See battle of La Rochelle if you want a big sea battle a how it was in the late medieval period.

Can you be a bit more specific in regards to the records?

I could only find the Ming Shi and thats pulling numbers out of asses

I am pretty sure that Carracks were the shit in the 15th century when two hundred Turkish galleys couldn't even stop three genoese carracks

In this panel of the Beachamp Pageants the Earl has tied himself and his family to the ships last during a storm, so if they're killed they'll be found and identified for proper burial.

I am not sure if that thinking is genius or insane but I like it.

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This drawing was made around the year 1500 and might be representative of the larger ships used by Vasco Da Gama