Originally Posted by sdk80:
How do you explain it, that the Romans called the North-Sea Mare Germanicum? Large parts of the North Sea border Celtic lands like Belgium, Gaul, and Britain but still ancient German boats seem to have been more present in the North Sea than Celtic vessels, otherwise the Romans would have adressed it as Mare Gallicum. And how do you explain it, that England was conquered by Angles setting sail from Danmark, Saxons setting sail form North-Germany and let's not forget the Frisians, which also made up a large force in that decades long invasion, which set sail from Netherlands and northern Germany - without having the ability of maintaining and having a military fleet on the Dutch-German-Danish (in future I will adress it as DGD coast) North-Sea coast? How do you explain it that the Frisians already were known as a seafarer people by antic Greek and Roman writers, without a "military" (there were no real exclusive military vessels, existing vessel-types were modified for special purpuses like transport of goods, raiding, warfare) presence on sea?
The Region beeing not well developed is no argument for anything. What are you comparing? This DGD Region is one of the Regions in Europe with one of the oldest and proofed excellent seafaring traditions!
Do you guys really assume that vessels like the Hjortspringboat type came down from Scandinavia? Sorry, but this is absurd.
Whoa slow down a bit. First two questions I defer to my comment regarding the design of the cog (but for the echo of the fact that the cog actually is a Frisian type of ship): I think that such invasions would have (if there you would want to speak of 'invasion': my initial thoughts would be more akin to gradual migration/settling, as the Frisians, Belgae, and other Germanic & Celtic tribe did do all the time, btw) centered around fleets made up of mercantile ships. The cogs were not paticularly well-designed for crossing the Sea (what with it not being very sea worthy, et all) but would actually have cut it for the relatively small distance (hey, they traded all the time using that vessel) and would have been the best you could get your hands on for any such thing as "(mass) migration". It was easily convertible to a floating flat. (It basically was, with the addition of a few sails, some steering mechanisms/tweaks (it was very round, so it could roll over pretty far and still recover), certain stability tweaks and a ton of cargo-space. In short: the ancient, boat equivalent to the modern mid-distance trucks.)
And as for sea-faring traditions. Well, allow me but I don't see why the military navy is a prerequisite for being renown as sea-faring peoples? Methinks that the extensive trade network the Frisians had built up on its own more than meritted their reputation; not to mention their engagement in piracy.
To repeat: mercantile vessels simply doubled as military vessels. Why? Well, mercantile versions had been around for ages, and had been competely adopted to the enviroment, allowing to sail incredibly close to the coast but also to venture into deeper waters for an intermediate stretch of time. And add to that those vesells were made for a combination of cargo-capacity, speed (required because you needed to get the most out of good weather), agiltiy, and defence against pirates (required because the north sea used to be full of them).
Originally Posted by :
True. In the Middle Age the mercantile ship type dominated the North-Sea- allthough f.e. the Hanse (medieval trade union of north-German cities, for the ones, who don't know) developed armed cogs with towers, for the purpose of guarding the merchant cogs, because of the Pirate problem - so this is an example of a original mercantile ship type, which became a war ship. How do you call this modified ship type? It's still a cog for sure, but it's only purpose is war.
Now for the Pirates: Klaus Störtebeker f.e. the famous medieval North-Sea Pirate. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Klaus_St%C3%B6rtebeker How do you think he was able to make a living out of piracy without the ability to maintain his pirate cog fleet? As wanted Pirate he wasn't allowed to use the big ports of Hamburg, Rotterdam and so on - no he succesfully used the small Frisian islands as friendly ports without artifical digged out and created ports of the medieval big cities. But enough of Middle Age and the development of the Netherlands (Amsterdam, land gaining and so on). Back to topic.
Again. He uses mercantile ships as opposed to a real military naval fleet. At times his fleet would be relatively small, at times it would be hughe. But do you think he 'owned' all of those ships? That he actually 'maintained' them?
It is absolutely not in any way comparable with the organised, centralised development of naval infrastructure - not even the very smallest levels. Note that a military port is not just about storing your ships (with the cog types it's not a big deal: you can pull them on the beach/terp and anchor them: by the time the waves will reach your precious boat they will be broken already, because of the long stretch between the beginning of the coast (or rather 'wad') and the place where you'd typically tie your boats up). A military port is also about building the fleet, about repairing it.
The repairing business would've been, again, relatively easy. Most of all because it was not at all that required: just be careful with how you sail, pay some extra attention to how you balance the cargo - and next time you reach a more wooded area you buy your timber.
But that's not exactly how you can actually build any sizable, central, state/tribe/confederation-owned fleet. You can't build a fleet without material. And in the Netherlands the material for large-scale production of fleets just isn't there: by around 1600 just about every forest that had been in any way close to populated areas, and which were sufficiently accessible (as opposed to the Biesbosch) was virtually gone IIRC.
The Netherlands has a long tradition of importing basically everything and being the middle-man. A very long tradition: the Frisians themselves were middle-men already. (Timber, btw was typically imported from Sweden. Interestingly this was one of the foundations of the lucrative trade with the Baltic. Timber and grain were imported to the Netherlands, went through the whole chains of various industries and was then in some form exported again. A most striking thing is the trade in Iron ore from Sweden to the Netherlands where it was used in the various weapon industries. Second-rate quality weaponry was then sold back to the Swedes, the best quality was either kept or sold elsewhere.)
Anyhow: I think we can agree that if, as is being done consequently, military ports are only allowed in regions which historically had the resources, the expertise and the 'location', then we should exclude the Netherlands if only for the fact that they did not have the resources, right ? Same would go for Denmark which is pretty much a copy of the Netherlands (ok, apart from what those weird humans did to it), with proper hills if you will. Or was that the other way around? ~;)
Originally Posted by :
If that part is already covered up in EB by the mercantile ports it's a bad system, because the ancient German vessels were no war-ships, but transports, mercantile ships, pirate ships in one. The Hjortspring boat which you included would be able to be created and maintained everywhere on the North-Sea coast. Flooding is no problem at all. People have learned to live with it over centuries, don't you think? And actualy the DGD-coast was the base for the invasion of Britain within the late antiquity. Now we have the military port in Scandinavia, while there is no known invasion in the antiquity, which began from Scandinavia! If you accept the Hjortspring boat as ancient military boat (which it isn't!) then you even have to make military ports available everywhere in Sweboz-homeland provinces with access to the Sea.
Well, as has been pointed out:
A) For the most part that was how the local naval military was.
B) For the most part that was how the local culture was (trade first, and the rest uses what trade can spare)
C) For a substantial part the regions simply lacked the means as required for a military port of their own.
Make no mistake: nobody is saying that it is perfect. But just consider this: to properly accurately represent the way how a fleet would be raised, we'd need to have a lot of mercenary fleets in the region. Basically to simulate the fact that the peoples who had the cogs/etc (virtually every village had a few) would join the army. Just like Antigonos persuaded Agean & Kretan pirates to join his war against the Koinon Hellenon.
But does the game support this kind of mechanism? Well, not RTW... (Incidentally M2TW does, so it could feature in EB2.)
Originally Posted by :
Now for the next thing. There were ancient German boats which were used for military and raiding purposes like the Saxon style boats and the quite similiar Nydam-type boat (the very early ancestor of the famous Viking longship!!), which are dated 300 A.D.. Those are better to be accepted as military boats and they operated all over the DGD coast and they had their home-"ports" there. This is a fact and therefore a hard proof and evidence that it was possible to maintain and have a military fleet in the North-Sea. They have a unique design and were developed exclusively by the ancient Germans, since the Celtic boats or Roman boats were of completely other design and contstruction! Now you may say that those are too late for E.B., but keep in mind that there are hardly boat findings at all (because they are wooden and therefore aren't that much resistent against the curse of time. I know only of two: The Saxon Sutton-Hoo boat, which is dated even much later, but without doubt historians accept that this kind of shiptype was used for the passage from the DGD coast to England centuries before by the Anglo-Saxon invaders, and the Nydam boat, which was used by unlucky Saxons raiding the Danish arounf 300 B.C.) and only one new finding can turn the history of shipbuilding in the DGD-area upside down. Keep in mind that we also don't have that many viking boat findings, but the waters of the North Sea were full of it in the early Middle Age. So I'd make the Nydam boat type available after the Reform of the Sweboz, which takes place very late in the EB timeframe.
By the way there is a large Celtic warship included (don't recall it's name, since I just began a Celtic Aedui campaign - good work till now, I like the presentation of the Celts in EB) Do you really have proof for this one? I really doubt it very much: I only know of leather and fur boats, which were used by Celts but I'm no expert on this.
Wow finally finished. Never posted something huge like this :sweatdrop:
Well first of all: that's quite indeed way out of time frame. But again I'd like to defer this to earlier remarks:
A) Most notably the one about how a fleet would be gathered. This is quite distinctly separate from the way which is represented through military ports as in-game: RTW enforces that you'd need to build the fleets as a faction (aka ruler). This is perhaps (incidentally in various poleis it was customary for individual, prominent citizens to pay for equipping a ship rather than to draw upon state-funds) quite accurate for the various Mediterrean powers, but in no way is it even close to accurate with societies based on a much smaller scale: i.e. the difference between the size of a Greek or Roman or Carthaginian coastal city with military port and that of a Frisian village, or a Frisian town.
It was much more de-centralised, much more geared towards 'private' commerce/piracy; there was much less of a central thing that enforced the construction of the required infrastructure: there was no need, for every community had it's own ships. (You'd need to.)
B) The one about how a ship would be pulled on land and anchored: i.e. the local villagers would have their ships close at home. There would not be any such thing as a true port in the biggest part of the Netherlands, and certainly not any such thing as a military port.
It boils down to one real simple sentence: AFAIK there was a substantial naval activity (even military at times) on the North and Baltic Seas, but - especially so with the DGD-coast the use of ports and especially military ones was very limitted at best. The ships various commuities would gather a fleet, recruited from the local 'tribesmen' if you will, by simply adding each other's ships to the big ensemble. Not by building a brand new one with the sole purpose of going to war and leaving the 'working' ships at home.
A final note: all such ships could and would be used for piracy, raiding and whatnot; but their primary goal was to be a failry cheap and reliable cargo-carrier.
