The Imperial Navy: A Wolfship? 3rd rate? Where the heck do the oars go? How many cannons?

I'm doing up the scenario for the Plot Hook in SHADES OF EMPIRE p.87.

From what I can find..3rd rate ships have around 60 cannons..but MANOWAR shows oar decks and a ram. Any thoughts on design??

jh

Emirikol said:

In Man O'War the empire had two main classes of ships, wolfships and great ships. Wolf ships were galleys. They had a few forward facing cannons, with no firepower to the sides because of the oars. Great ships were bigger, with no oars. They had large banks of cannons to port and starboard. Great ships were the largest ships in the Empire's fleet, however they don't really qualify as 3rd rates as we know them in the real world, being both smaller and having less firepower. It's possible that BI and GW decided to retcon the Empire navy to make it more advanced, but the 3rd rates you seem to be referring to didn't appear until the 18th century, which would be more advanced than the Empire, IMO. However the rating system changed over the centuries - initially, for example, a 1st rate was any ship with a crew of 300+ and might only have 60 or so guns, so a 3rd rate might have far fewer than that. During the 18th century the royal navy settled on using the number of guns to determine the rating, with 64 - 80 being the right amount for a 3rd rate.

For the Scenario: I figured I'd go with the appearance of the ship from manowar. Ram, forward cannons and a few guns in the aftcastle and stern of the ship laterally (at best). Supposedly they're designed for ramming and ease of boarding. Probably not really seaworthy for general use.

Just by design, I think the ship itself has interesting scenario potential in and of itself.

The Empire's navy seems to be roughly equivalent to England's in the mid to late 16th century, after it's "modernization"; retiring a number of the older, slower Great Ships (or carracks) in favor of a few galleys (earlier on) and a primary line of modern galleons (especially in the later 16th with new "race-built" galleon technology). The rating system didn't really exist then that I've read.

Initially larger galleons (at 740 tons displacement) had just under 60 guns each, while the small or mid-sized ones (200-400 tons) had 30 or so, give or take. Later on, the fleet largely consisted of galleons in the 200 to 500 range, with 20 to 40 guns. In the case of the English, much of the dreaded gunnery reputation came from the skill of the crews more than anything else; they could reload and fire at a ridiculous rate.

The Warhammer novel Fell Cargo seems to indicate that Tilea, Estalia, and Araby skew a bit later in naval techonlogy, with 17th/early 18th-style ships like the main character's brig/barquentine-like ship and a small sloop, and descriptions of more complex full-rigged ships (rather than the Empire/16th Britain's more simple square-rigged course and topsail-only configurations). Considering the nature of the Warhammer world and uneven technology development, as well as the litoral between Estalia and Tilea (and the Empire being largely land-locked), it's not too strange that they'd be lagging by a century or so in naval technology.

This book and Wikipedia are a great source of information for naval stuff. Just target the 16th and 17th centuries (with a bit on the fringes if it seems cool) and you're all set.

There's not much out there for naval stuff for warhammer in general, but I just saw a copy of BLOOD ON THE REIK ..all I can say is WOW, that was a neat product by BI (prior to their dumping of WFRP). They show some pix of small boats..with a shrouded martyr tied to the mast..that gives me even more interesting plot info for this scenario

It's amazing what you can dig up with a little research of old official WFRP stuff ..that is if you have access to stuff

jh

I've been doing some digging for resources..I thought I'd make a little list of the warships of each of the races. Remember: the vast number of ships for a kingdom are merchant in nature..but here are their warships:

NAVAL RECORDS FROM MAN O WAR & WFRP1 DSS
IMPERIAL FLEET
Men O'War
-Greatships-
Ships of the Line
-Wolfships
-Wargalleys
BRETONNIAN
Men O'War
-Galleons
Ships of the Line
-Corsairs
-Buccaneers
DWARF (also see Dwarfs WFRP1)
Men O'War
-Ironclads
-Dreadnought (WFRP1 DSS)
Ships of the Line
-Monitors
-Gunboat (WFRP1 DSS)
-Nautilus (WFRP1 DSS)
ELF FLEET
Men O' War
-Dragonships
- Eagleships
Ships of the Line
-Hawkships
DARK ELF FLEET
Men O'War
-Black Arks of Naggaroth
Monsters
-Sea Dragons
-Doom Reavers
ORC FLEET
Men O'War
-Hulks
Ships of the Line
-Bigchukkas
-Drillakillas
CHAOS
-Khorne Bloodship
-Khorne Ironshark
-Slaanesh Hellrammers
-Slaanesh Hellslicer
-Tzeentch Great Winged Terror
Nurgle Plagueship
Nurgle Plaguecrusher
CHAOS DWARFS
-Chaos Dwarf Warship
SKAVEN
-Skaven Clanship

The Empire also had a large number of 'specialist' ships, ones designed by their college of engineering. These included galleys with mortars and ones with a single giant cannon.

Yea, I saw those. I figured part of the plot of the scenario would be regarding "advancements" blah blah blah..but the dark dirty secret will be having to do with a "seed of a nurgle plague ship." I figure I'd have the Wolfship going through various states of transformation..insanity checks..and the like...

Now, if I can take a break from watching the Olympics.

jh

A point to note is that many ships with both oar and sails (such as the Wolfship) did have side mounted cannon batteries, requiring the oars to be pulled in before firing.

The English Navy of the time used a line formation involving snaking past the opposing fleet (or preferably through the middle of it) in a long line and broadsiding them one by one in a continuous concentrated rain of cannon balls, forward mounted cannons would not have fit in with this attack strategy.

And yes, instances of a ship shooting its own oars off were fairly common. Thats why they had spares and more than a few carpenters on board.

Btw, the galley with just one massive cannon was a Hellhammer, and they pwned.

There's a pretty big article about the Imperial navy in Shades of Empire for WFRP2 if you are looking for some more inspiration.

That's what I used as my starting point. It's handy.

jh

No idea how I missed that in the OP. I must be going word-blind or something. Anyway, glad you liked the article, and it's always nice when you hear someone is developing one of your plot hooks. I trust it's 'The Lone Wolf', yes?

Anyway, for me, the 1st fleet wolfships are mostly 3rd rate with around 60 cannon, with a broadside in the region of 24 guns to each side, with about 16 on the main gun deck (again, on each side). I used the artwork of Warhammer ships as the primary inspiration rather than the models (which were constrained by the scale, and sometimes not very good). I seem to remember the Wolfship that acted as my primary source for a Reiklander example was somewhere in the Man O' War rulebook, and had a lower deck of oars, then a gundeck, then an upper deck where marines stood ready (and a few more guns were placed). Obviously, there is a fore and aft castle as well, each boasting more cannons, and a large ram.

Does that help?

Yea, that's a great help. Thanks!

jh

In addition to the above, looking at Man O' War and elsewhere, it's clear you can pretty much do whatever you want, as the artwork certainly does. Take the example of the wolfship on page 1 (the title page) of Man O' War as a single example: it has a central oar deck with most of the cannons split fore and aft, and even crazy cannons up in the masts! Further, judging by the heraldry, it's an Ostlander vessel (hence my inclusion of the small Ostland section in the GM material). This stands in comparison to the Wolfships on the cover of the rulebook which are more like the description I gave in my previous post.

In short: do whatever suits your campaign best seems the best option.

Rough sketch of decks:

Should the oarbanks be on the main gun deck or the lower gun deck? For the writeup of the "Lone Wolf" hook I'm expanding, the ship has been out to sea for 3 years (meaning not at this port..could be anywhere) as part of a hunting party seeking out Le Febvre, the infamous Bretonnian admiral.

jh

Do the gun gun emplacements look accurate?