Fighting at sea
Ramming, grappling and boarding, what breaks a hull, and the wreckage a sunk ship leaves.
Ramming
Drive your bow into another ship and it takes a blow that grows with the square of the closing speed, and is worst when you strike square on to its side. Your own ship takes a share of it. A Trireme's bronze ram is built for this: at full stroke it can break a Cog in one blow, and its ramming sprint (Space at full stroke) hits harder still. Glancing blows and slow nudges do little.
| Ship | Hull | Ram (at 7 m/s, square on) | Takes back |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cog | 6,000 | 1,500 | 30% |
| Sloop | 8,000 | 1,800 | 30% |
| Carrack | 16,000 | 2,500 | 30% |
| Caravel | 20,000 | 3,000 | 30% |
| Trireme | 22,000 | 9,000 | 8% |
Other ways to break a hull
A ship is a structure: a catapult, ballista or trebuchet shot that lands on its deck does its full damage against buildings to the hull. Weapons and spells hurt it only a little.
Grappling and boarding
A Grappling Hook (made at a Wooden Pier) thrown from your deck catches the rail of the nearest ship within 15 metres, so long as the two of you are not passing each other fast. The line is hauled in until the two hulls lie side by side, and while they are lashed neither can make way. Step across with F as you would board from a pier. A ship can carry four lines at once.
A ballista on your deck can throw a grapnel much further: at its controls press 1 to load one from a hook you carry, and the next shot that strikes a ship hooks her instead of breaking her (up to 60 metres), then the line is winched in.
To get free, stand at either end of a line and press F: it takes three seconds of cutting, and moving away stops you. A line also parts if the ships are dragged too far apart, and goes down with a ship that sinks.
Siege engines on deck
Use a Ballista or Catapult kit while you stand on a ship's deck and the machine is set up at the deck's free station, and sails with the ship from then on. Crew and fire it as on land: a ballista traverses on its mount, a catapult turns on its station (A D). Its shots fly clear of your own hull. A Sloop and a Caravel carry a ballista; a Carrack and a Trireme carry a catapult and a ballista; a Cog has no deck for one. A ship with engines aboard cannot be moored until they are packed back into their kits, and if the ship is lost or sinks they go down with it.
Sinking
A broken hull sinks: the deck goes under within half a minute and everyone aboard ends up swimming. In shallow water she settles on the bottom with her masts out of the water and lies there as a wreck for half an hour; in deep water she is gone. A deed is spent when the ship is launched: there is no insurance.
Wreckage and salvage
Whatever a ship carried in her hold, and some of her timber, iron and sailcloth, floats up as wreckage where she went down: barrels, crates and planks riding the swell for an hour. Swim up to it, or bring a ship alongside, and press F to salvage it. Anyone may: a merchant ship's whole cargo is there for whoever sank her. Sinking a merchant, or a ship someone else was sailing, is worth experience; sinking an empty hull you launched yourself is worth nothing.