Accelerate Nautical Technologies

What would it take to fast track the invention of more useful (carrying capacity/range) and robust ships?

Say if we started tinkering with POD in Ancient Greece what would be needed to have something roughly comparable to bleeding edge high tech 15th to 16th century ocean going ships sans gun powder weaponry by the time of Julius Caesar?
 
What would it take to fast track the invention of more useful (carrying capacity/range) and robust ships?

Say if we started tinkering with POD in Ancient Greece what would be needed to have something roughly comparable to bleeding edge high tech 15th to 16th century ocean going ships sans gun powder weaponry by the time of Julius Caesar?

"A reason".

The conditions that see the development of the ships you're referring to don't exist in the Mediterranean (either of those era or at all), so there would be little reason for shipbuilders to try that tack.
 
"A reason".

The conditions that see the development of the ships you're referring to don't exist in the Mediterranean (either of those era or at all), so there would be little reason for shipbuilders to try that tack.
Source? I don't think I've ever heard anything to suggest that the ship builders of the time were perfectly satisfied with what they had and just never tried to build anything better.

Pretty sure at least a small percentage of ship builders were quite keen on building bigger and better boats, either for prestige or simple because they could see the economic advantages. The problem was that the their tech couldn't support it.
 
Source? I don't think I've ever heard anything to suggest that the ship builders of the time were perfectly satisfied with what they had and just never tried to build anything better.

Any good history of how the caraval or cog developed. I'm not saying you can't or wouldn't get better ships than OTL - but the kind of ships you're talking about were developed for nonMediterranean conditions and demands, they're not something as simple as the high(er) tech version of the ships you're trying to improve.

Pretty sure at least a small percentage of ship builders were quite keen on building bigger and better boats, either for prestige or simple because they could see the economic advantages. The problem was that the their tech couldn't support it.
And the problem is that the tech couldn't support it because there's very little incentive to improve the tech. Give shipbuilders something where bigger ships are needed and they'll try to build bigger ships - witness quintremes for example.

But the cog, for example, is because of conditions that don't apply in the Mediterranean world, so no Mediterranean shipbuilder would have an incentive to build one.
 

katchen

Banned
The place where the biggest ships were being built, bigger than anything in Europe, was Sung China in the 900s. To keep and extend that very promising beginning, one would need to either
a) find some way for Sung China to deflect the Mongols. Difficult, since one of the things driving them may have been global cooling making the steppes less productive.
or b) export not only the shipbuilding technology but the technological basis of Sung China to either Southeast Asia or Southern India. Are there any obvious candidates in Southeast Asia (probably insular) or in India that could pick up the torch from Sung China?
 
But the cog, for example, is because of conditions that don't apply in the Mediterranean world, so no Mediterranean shipbuilder would have an incentive to build one.

Will have to agree, the ocean going ships of Europe where all delevoped by countries with a need to sail the Adlantic, the Med just isn't rough enough, often enough to have the type of ships that the Vikings built.

IF the ships were to come about Carthage would be my choice for a location, as they did trade out into the Adlantic coasts of Spain, France and England, but there is a leap between the way that a trieme is built and a longship.

Instead of accelerating ship design why not look at advances in navigation and map design (prehapse the Athenian navy had a hydrology unit!).
 
Will have to agree, the ocean going ships of Europe where all delevoped by countries with a need to sail the Adlantic, the Med just isn't rough enough, often enough to have the type of ships that the Vikings built.

IF the ships were to come about Carthage would be my choice for a location, as they did trade out into the Adlantic coasts of Spain, France and England, but there is a leap between the way that a trieme is built and a longship.

But why would one want a longship in the conditions of the Mediterranean?

If one just wants improved cargo capacity (and there were, if memory serves, some ships pretty significant here - used for moving grain from Egypt in Roman times, I believe), one doesn't need the ability to handle rough oceans - and why Mediterrean ships would make developments around rough oceans and increasing dependence on the winds is an unanswered question.
 
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