I suspect for the same reason that "Profession: Soldier" does not double as the "Single Weapon" and "Great Weapon" abilities,
Profession abilities (IMO) should cover all mundane tasks, with specialist skills covering specialties (such as navigation, etc),
That said, I do suspect that Direwolf is being a touch too narrow,
Profession: Sailor is for the very number of things to work and take sight in a boat or greater. But navigate is a directly part for Leadership in the official. I should seee the rules to trained gropus for see how work a tripulation.
Really?
I was under the impression that slavery was loosing popularty by 1200, especially given the rules against christian slaves.
But then, the slave-crewed galleys were never that popular in the first place. Too expensive, and the slaves take up too much space and too many resources that could've been used for soldiers.
One of the points being that any young sailor WONT be able to handle ALL of those things is exactly why its bad to combine it.
Exactly.
Hmm? In what way?
NOT common. And on merchant ships almost completely unheard of. For warships the severe extra cost of having alot of rowers might be worth it for the ability to go against the wind or move regardless of windstrength.
For merchant vessels, having extra people onboard just for rowing? No. Most ships could deploy oars yes(at least a few), but those were handled by the regular crew the relatively few times they are used.
The cog was a development from the knarr which was essentially viking longship made wider, shorter and higher and relying almost completely on sails. The knarr was good enough to get the vikings across the atlantic and the troublesome north sea and the cog was better from the start, which was 10th century. I would say the cog was a very good vessel, even from very early on.
No, a cog was normally sailed, with a handful of oars available for rowing short distances at times when needed.
And their very design makes them poor for rowing(too high sides). And later on in the 12th and 13th century when full decks became common, this made oars become an even rarer used thing.
Rowed ships remained much more popular in the calmer mediterranean but even there it was rarely used for anything but warships(though in the med the galley was the main part of naval warfare for almost 2 millenia), this was also because the preference of lateen-rigging which made it easier to sail closer to into the wind, making it less needed.
And as has also been proven by modern replicas of cogs, its now well aknowledged that the old assumption of them being poor(or rather supposedly couldnt do it at all) at tacking against the wind is but a myth. They´re not good at it, but they can certainly do it and get somewhere with it.
And where ever did you get the delusional notion about "sailing part of shipmanship was poor during this time" from?
You might want to realise that in some places, mostly around the mediterranean, sailing ships today are still built and used pretty much identically to those of around 9th century and ahead. Although not exactly in numbers any more, but you only have to go back a century to have literally thousands of smaller, lateenrigged ships, especially in the southern med, that are essentially the same as a millenia before.
And while they also often have oars, sailing is their normal mode of movement. The only difference is that last century has allowed easier access to better materials which has made the ships perform slightly better.
Only on war galleys.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:N ... iddle_Ages
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galley
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knarr
And i add this even though its not in English:
sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Äskekärrskeppet
Because of how the repairs found on this ship showed that it had been in use for at least 100 years.
The second picture down shows the modern replica built based on this old ship, having shown itself well able to reach 11+ knots even though many consider the replica to use a much smaller sail than was likely on the original.
And its interesting how the area the ship was found in has since been tentatively identified as a medieval shipyard, as more ships were later found as well as other remnants.
If you have to ask...
(Yeah, like that last is going to happen)
The problem is when the character is designed to be part of a story, rather than of the backdrop. You could give an NPC "Sailor 5" and almost no other skills, and he'd be fine - if he needs to climb a rope to set a sail, or mend lines and patch sails, or dive off the deck, or slap backs and sing shanties to fit in with the crew, it's assumed an NPC can do all that.
But when we're talking about a Player Character, and especially one who, on occasion, might be off their boat, then each individual skill/profession/craft becomes more important to list, depending what they're doing and trying to do, how important it is in the overall story, and how appropriate to their character as described.
(That is, a "sailor" with Craft:Ropework probably would not know a thief's trick sliding climbing knot, but a thief might not know how to weave a quoit (a rope rebraided into a seamless loop for a handle). An NPC with Profession (Sailor) or Profession (Thief) might know each respectively, but a SG would have to be asking for trouble to set a precedent to allow a PC to do the same.)
All these statements are true for certain periods/regiones, and all are gross simplifications and untrue at various other times, and as a general rule for the period.
It's a fact that on large boats, in ancient or modern times, sailing is for the average crewman an unskilled position - like digging a ditch or cutting a stone for complex Roman aqueducts, you don't need to know much to get your part of the job done; someone else - someone with real skill and understanding - will tell you exactly what to do, and how and when. "Pull that line", "tie that knot", "shift that load" - strong backs and weak minds do the job just fine so long as there was one person nearby who knew what was needed, and at a basic level even beyond the need for a common language. The need for skill comes in when you 1) want to survive a dangerous situation (of which there are many), 2) want to do your job fast and correctly, and 3) if you want to advance to a position of some small authority or recognition, to become that person to do the telling and not the lifting/climbing/whatever.
So the fact that someone is useful and getting paid to be on a boat doesn't mean they are "Profession (sailor)", but they will certainly start to gain that by exposure over time. (The position of Captain is merely one of supreme competency, ownership or designated authority, and the position of Navigator is akin to the Architect who designed the aqueduct - a different class entirely, and not always a sailor themselves.)
To say that all boats had oars is to say that, like motors today, all sailing boats had some sort of fall-back system for when they could not use their sails. A large sailing vessel might have several "sweeps", but these would be only enough to waddle them over to/out from a dock or wharf when their sails were down, not enough to travel or engage in combat. In a known low-wind environment, different configurations of sails/oars would be more popular or common, that allowed for more (and proper) oars, but also required more crew - which would double as security against attack, another reason not to rely on slaves. (Pure warships could have both, slaves to row and professional soldiers as guards/marines, and this was not uncommon for military vessels of any period.)
Slaves and bound servants (each by any other term) were used, but compared against a minimum wage job in a dictatorial command structure and an often brutal punishment system that's not saying much. Far from being "expensive", slaves were free and disposable - you didn't buy them, you either captured them or already had the prisoners to use as you pleased*. The problem with unwilling slaves is that you have to watch them, and that's tough on anything but a pure oar-powered craft. You can't have unfriendly folk climbing freely about your rigging and expect to keep it intact for long. Slaved galleys were used regularly and consistently, even if they took different forms, from the before the Greeks until the 1500's or later (see the Siege of Malta (1565)/etc.) - it's just too hard to pay someone to row hard all day, day after day, and expect any useful proportion of them to stay on ship for the return trip. Military cultures (Templars, the Vikings, etc.) sometimes could pull it off, but it was the exception, not the rule.
(* For government craft. For private ventures, be that private military (military orders) or merchant ventures, you would need to have government support - convince the powers that had the prisoners that you needed those prisoners as galley slaves, and it was in the government's best interest to give them to you as part of the good work you were doing for that government, be that naval action or key commerce, rather than let them rot in prison. Win/win for all - except for the prisoners, who were always looking at lose.)
I can say for certain that until the 14th century virtually all rowers on Venetian war galleys were (paid) freemen. One interesting part of their contracts was that they would be given a stipend bonus if, upon signing, they waived their right to "mugugno" - i.e. if they accepted not to complain about food, rowing turns and other issues on board. It's only with the demographic crisis of the 1300s that crews started to include indentured criminals (the venetian name for galley, galera, is the same for prison); a trend that intensified as new galley and row designs were developed in the 15th century that allowed the use of less experienced rowers, and as this and the inclusion of criminals in the crews made the rower profession less respectable, driving away free men.
Thus, in Ars Magica times, freemen were the rule, rather than the exception. And slaves (as opposed to condemned criminals - a subtle but important difference) were always the expection and never the rule. At least on Venetian ships.
Yes. Much better than assuming things.
No more or less than you.
Anyway, while prof. Sailor(or Thief or whatever) could, even should certainly include SOME things from other "skills", it wont do so in a comparable way, ie a Sailor score 5 doesnt equate a Ropework score 5, but it might partially equate a score of 1-2.
Have you been on any large sailing ships? Many navies still uses sailing ships as school ships for basic training, in part to give their "noobs" a basic feel for the sea, which you get much easier on a sailing ship than on a motor ship. There´s also a bunch of ships used for "special vacations" for older kids.
Why is it do you think that those ships become ever more agile, faster and safer over time as those onboard learn what they´re doing.
Why do you think the Dutch tended to beat the odds ever so often in a naval fight?
Why do you think nations without a major constant naval prescence failed so often when it shouldnt have in naval warfare? Because they had to recruit their "sailors" from "landlubbers".
Because of that, the efficiency of the ships were worse, more mistakes happened, and poof, a theoretically superior force gets beaten by an "inferior" enemy.
Its pretty much the only big mistake from my own nations pre-neutrality history, with only a small portion of sailors being welltrained enough and with generals often taking the place of admirals, because of being "in charge" over this or that unit or area, not because they knew anything about naval warfare.
France had similar problems even though it did have a much larger minimum fleet.
As i already mentioned, this is something that is closer to true much later than the 13th century. When you´re talking about ships of the line with crews counting in several, even many hundreds. But there also, navies with a solid core of experienced sailors did far better than those with only enough people to "tell you exactly what to do".
That is quite true yes, but uncommon. Merchants, cook, medic or craftsmen(especially a sailmaker) and helpers/assistants/apprentices MIGHT very well be onboard without being "sailors" but they will be a small minority of the crew overall.
Its simply not economical to have people onboard that cant do the job properly.
Feeding them isnt free. Which is why it was extremely rare with merchant ships using slaves(or relying too much on oars, as the cost for a greater crew made the ship an economic loss).
Yes, for warfare. And dont forget Lepanto, the biggest fight involving galleys ever(turks vs the holy league).
The Finnish and Swedish coastal warships of the 18th-19th centuries are good examples of the last oarpowered warships(and these war mostly very small).
Galleys, or more correctly galeass continued to be built as warships in the med, where there was a strong prejudice towards oarpowered ships.
And they kept on being built, France built its last galley not until 1720, 3 years after the Battle of Matapan which was the last battle where galleys made any real contribution.
And this was despite such events as the frigate Lion Couronne in 1651 successfully fighting against eleven galleys and Le Bon in 1684 defeating 35 galleys, despite poor winds...
Really? Because from what I read merchants of the northern coast of Europe and of England and Scania were quite willing to keep a hull of slaves precisely because of the need for rowing. I am not speaking of the cog because people smarter than I who studied and wrote their books on trade and shipping of the time of about 800 until late 1100 (and they could be quite wrong as certain as I am that I may be just as wrong) considered the cog a shore running and river ship useful because of it's shallow displacement. But we agree the actually sea and ocean going shipping was done by vessels such as the bussa and the knarr as late as 1180's from what I had copied down. And those did have rowers who were more than likely people bought from slave markets (again can only speak to what I have read, maybe I got a bad batch of books?)
Again I must be betrayed by those authors who task it is to write about such things, in books as opposed to wiki where delusion is actually built into the program I believe. I was not talking about vessels that crewed but a handful of men, so while you may want me to realize that sailing has existed for thousands of years I cannot see how it matters to the fact that actual merchants stated as early as 1080 that the winds took more of his ship's wealth because of fixed masts than any pirate or port agent. For some reason I wrote it down that those ships of the middle ages never desired to take a sail rigged ship within harbors because of the hardship in steering and control. Seems ships of this age did not have a rudder system but steered more by a long aft placed oar. Sailing of those early middle ages was grunt physical work, but not something simply done by the inexperienced. As I had said earlier, from what I read, there were three tiers of people aboard ship, and the actual sailors were usually family, tribe/clan members, or experienced veterans who made life upon a good ship. The sailors knew their ships and I am sure they could get them to spin on points, but that was never questioned by me. I only said that as far as ship life and the creating of NPC or grogs, there MAY be good story in considering that you would have a dozen or so slaves in the bowels bailing water and rowing, while the actual sailors, number maybe 5 to 10 or more depending on craft, would be doing the handling of the ship (ie. navigate, taking depths, ship maintaining, ect.). The early Middle Ages from what I understood were not a time of vast oceanic sailing ships loving the sea spray and adventure of navigating by the stars, they were a time and place of great explorers doing daring deeds against great odds and doing it the hard way, by staying close to shore only daring the open seas when they must.
Hah hah I cannot agree more. The drivel of info I am giving out comes from notes I made (although it is a half full notebook so pretty detailed) from a number of books I got from the De Paul Univ library something like seven or eight years ago. It is probably out of date info, but I was only trying to add the perspective that I found when researching for a "Dark Age" Cthulhu story that involved a Norman invasion of R'lyeh when it sprang from the oceans.
The way I dealt with the Abilities of being a sailor when I made a Norse raider type (but story set in 1060), was to do the Profession Sailor, specialty Ropework and then do Craft... shipwright, sail-maker, rope-maker and rolled them all into Craft: Ships and then specialized in shipwright (a bit of carpentry and a whole lot of smashing things with mallets heh heh)
Although it is unfair that by taking Profession: Sailor you don't get Carouse bonuses! 
In the end my "thinking" of ships and sailors is without a doubt out of date, most of my focus being 1100 (Normans were into conquering and then suddenly a island appears out of no where... well they wanted to conquer didn't they?) but I was not trying to be so much as accurate as I was trying to help with stories and characters.
The idea of playing a grog that is a slave, or a grog sailor, ect. sounds gritty and fun to me. Oh and I enjoyed that character by JeanMichelle with gusto.
PS. favorite story was from right at 900 AD when a viking ship landed at two villages and all the people ran off before they even landed so they decided to stay out the winter. Well the residents were off starving watching these raiders eat their food and live in their homes eventually they sent someone to speak with the vikings. They agreed to share the town thru winter and then go their way when the weather turned. So in comes spring, the vikings plunder the town, take slaves and decide to give a good bit of mayhem before they leave, when the villagers are begging them for mercy and trying to remind them of the agreement, the vikings said, "We agreed to be neighbors thru the winter, when we were but townsfolk living in this our village, but now it is time to go back to being vikings and so our first raid is this town which is so close to our village." I love a good rational legal double-cross.
In that, while Profession skills should not cover all of the needed skills in depth, it might be appropriate to use it as a stand-in skill for extremely limited tasks, and at a suitable penalty,
So while the mercenary with "Profession: Soldier" might not have the great weapon ability, he has probably seen them used, and will likely have at least some knowledge over their use (enough not to stab them-self in the foot when he picks one up anyway, and enough to judge their strengths and weaknesses when he faces one in battle (which you would normally expect to be a "Great Weapon + Int" roll)), while the non-professional might have no knowledge at all,
I guess I take Profession skills to be sort of like a more restricted form of "Jack-of-all-trades" is in Traveller - it can be used to replace a whole bunch of skills but only in an extremely limited way and with suitable penalties,
Then we dont disagree at all. I pretty much said exactly the same in my previous post.
We most certainly do not agree. The knarr was REPLACED by the cog because the cog was a better ship.
The knarr is actually better at getting into shallow waters because the cog is higher, deeper and heavier so i really dont know how you can get them that mixed up.
Meanwhile, the bussa is pretty much the same development as the cog but probably originating more from the viking longship rather than the knarr, and with 2 or 3 masts. And in my opinion is quite possibly the origin of the fluyt.
The knarr was primarily a sailing ship. The bussa was even still more primarily a sailing ship, for the same reason the cog was, higher sides, a rather "fat" hullshape unsuitable for oarpower(unless you want to tire them out completely after an hour or two).
And again, these are trading ships, trading ships almost invariably did not use slaves(far too expensive to keep them with food) and very rarely used oarpower either(needs far too many crew and the wind is free, crew isnt).
Scania? Or do you mean scandinavia? Scania is a province in southern Sweden(if you cant understand a word people are saying any more despite speaking the same language, you´re in Scania).
Merchants? I cant even come up with where you could have got that from, cinque ports, the Hansa, even the vikings preferred sailing for trade. There´s no good reason for them to use up cargo space with slaves, or with the food and water to feed those slaves.
Not to mention the fact that the ships used, pretty much any that became common after the knarr was directly unsuitable for being rowed any longer distance. And even the knarr wasnt exactly easy to row.
Now warships is a very different matter, but there too if you´re talking about northern Europe, you´ve got the viking longships which most certainly were rowed, except that they were ALSO sailed whenever possible, and they relied on its crew to man the oars.
I wouldnt be surprised at all if there were a few trälar(thrall?) on board ships from scandinavia but if so, i can guarantee that they were not there primarily as oarsmen.
Oarpowered warships was a preference of the mediterranean, not northern Europe(beyond viking longships that is).
Of course it is, but that isnt saying much. Compared to a knarr, its considerably LESS suitable for shore or rivers.
Yes? That doesnt say anything about the ability to sail at the time nor anything about what the preference was.
But try having the 20-40 extra crew required for moving the ship by oars, and THEN you will no longer see any wealth at ALL.
Again this is perfectly correct. And still says nothing about the average ability with sailing of the time or wether they preferred to use sails elsewhere. The simple fact is that this isnt a matter of sailing skill, its a matter of poor harbours. Even today it happens that ENGINE-powered ships has accidents in ports, despite tugboat assistance, excellently dug out and deep port areas and GPS, radar and sonar assisted navigation.
And you may be failing to distinguish between having ANY rigging at all and trying to move into a port under sailpower. Using oars to get into tight places like a harbour was perfectly normal, but you didnt have extra rowers sitting around doing nothing 99% of the time just to have them around for this.
Yes. Guess why its called "starboard", or in Swedish "styrbord"/roughly~"steeringboard"? Except it WAS a "rudder system", because no oars would be large enough for any common ship.
And an oar isnt normally fixed to the ship.
No more or less than it is now. There´s more assistance and more developed "hardware" today, but the handling is exactly the same.
Thats probably overly simplified, extremely so. And mostly not even true. Simply because the generalisation is untrue for the large majority. Its probably true for the Turks and the caliphate navy, and as mentioned also for some of the citystate and crusader NAVIES... But navies you know, they´re a tiny part of the shipping total.
Thats again overly simplified and overgeneralised. While most shipping certainly preferred sticking to the coastlines, open sea navigation was clearly realistic by this time. As shown by the vikings but also by the fishermen from western Europe who went halfway across the northern Atlantic and sometimes ended up in sighting range of America. And still got home safely without following any coasts.
And of course, i can cheat a bit and start talking about the Polynesians, who by this time navigated seemingly without effort across hundreds or thousands of km of open water. Like the settling of Hawaii and Easter Island(although the latter fell out of contact with their origin).
Anyway, there´s plenty of material to suggest that most north and west European(in the mediterranean, there was little reason to go beyond the basics needed to stick to a course) as well as western African ships captains considered to be of any real skill had the ability of open sea navigation to a greater or lesser extent.
The debate about exactly what that ability consisted of and how extensive or common it was is argued loudly enough to make a foghorn sound like a whisper. But thats not the same as these captains or crews WANTING to go swanning about on the open seas. Although as mentioned, fishermen from both western Europe and Africa still did.
Considering that my earliest source book is from the 50s, and the latest book is from just a few years back, and neither them or any in between agree much with your notes, i wonder if you didnt mix things up rather badly when writing them?
Thats a decent enough way to handle it.
Ouch. Thats extremly "unvikingy" though. They held far more to the spirit of a deal than to its legalese.
Thats one reason they were highly sought for as mercenaries, because if they made a deal, as long as the other party didnt obviously and blatantly break it, they stuck to the deal.
In the above story, i would change it so that there is a 2nd set of vikings coming in as "aggressors", because a deal to share a village would quite possibly mean the vikings would also defend it as their own, or at least would be fairly easy to convince or simply bribe into doing so.
Dont forget that the Normands were simply vikings who the local lords originally hired to keep other vikings from threatening the area in return for ownership to the land they settled.
You can hyper divide what a Sailor does to many skills but most of it is unskilled labor. I'm sure I could teach all of you to splice rope and even do an eye splice in less than an hour if we had a coffee break. Learning to do it well takes some time.
The only special skills needed on a ship are Navagator, Blacksmith ( not sure about this in the 13th century ships) and carpenter. Captain was the most knowledgeable and best leader but also replaceable. Blacksmiths were common on 17th and 18th century ships. I'm not sure if they were used on 13th century ships but it makes sense. Carpenters are needed to fabricate things and repair the ship. They generally had 1-5 mates/journeymen that are learning the art.
If you want to make a player character on a ship make him a captain or the navigator.
That unfortunately is an assumption based on ignorance or quite possibly "Hollywood style history".
A skilled crew can squeeze out an extra 10-20% speed and cut the time for maneuvers by over half, not to mention having far superior precision in performing them(and not getting hurt in the meantime).
For warships thats the difference between winning and dying. For traders its the difference between more and less profit. For both its the difference between loosing many times more ships to storms, groundings and accidents overall, as well as loosing crewmembers to accidents.
For warships, you simply needed to train the crew as much as possible because it meant win or loose, for traders, heh well there´s nearly always more sailors around than ships, except while fitting out a wartime fleet of warships, so they had no reason to accept any large portion of "unskilled" as crew.
Yeah well, to operate a ship effectively, "doing it well" was pretty much the requirement.
Sailmaker... The single most important... They were always busy.
Many ships probably had someone capable of acting as blacksmith, but until much later with the ships with very large crews, few are likely to have had dedicated blacksmits.
D-Dog - so, SO wrong.
Do you sail? Have you ever sailed out of sight of land? Been part of a crew sailing a vessel overnight? Do you have any first hand knowledge on big boats (boats with a keel, not just dinghies)? From your own naive comments, I have to assume the answer is "no" to all of the above, thus the only ignorance is on your part. (If it's not "no", then you are more confused than even I guessed.)
The only skill related to speed comes in trimming the sails and/or steering the ship itself to the wind, and on a large ship that detail is all handled by the senior officers. They direct the unskilled labor to pull or let out a line, and tell them which one and how much - and that's all the unskilled labor needs to get right. No "sailor" would ever be allowed to make a sail change on their own on any craft bigger than a couple crewmembers (and maybe not even then), they are always overseen closely by an officer. (And that tends to reduce the exposure experience, as they are never allowed or expected to use their own judgement, but that's a diff discussion.)
I believe the "Hollywood" is in your own understanding only. A later-period square-rigger might have drills to train a watch of 10-20 to work together to reef or bend on a sail a bit faster, as that could be critical for canon-warfare, but in this period there were not big sail changes to be made in short order before a battle. You had your boat, you had your unskilled labor, you had your officers who knew what to tell them - that's all you needed.
It's much like claiming that a tug-o-war team needs to have "Profession (Tug-o-war)" or they cannot win a competition. or someone with "Profession (crank operator)" is needed to haul a drawbridge up better. After someone who's done it before tells you what to do and what not to do, it's not something that requires any practice, only a strong back and a willingness to get callouses.
As I said before, the officers made 99.9% of the decisions - the rest just followed orders. The only time "skill" comes in handy for a crewman is to keep them alive and all 10 fingers where they started while performing dangerous tasks, or to become one of those doing the telling instead of the hard work.
The answers are yes, yes, yes, yes.
Big "boats":
tallshipsraces.com/vessels/v ... VesID=2800 Gunilla, largest sailing ship in Sweden before the replica of Götheborg was built
sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/T/S_Gunilla
tallshipsraces.com/vessels/v ... VesID=1418 Gladan
sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Gladan_(1857
tallshipsraces.com/vessels/v ... VesID=2873 Westkust
tallshipsraces.com/vessels/v ... VesID=3361 Tre Kronor Af Stockholm
sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tre_Kronor_af_Stockholm
tallshipsraces.com/vessels/v ... VesID=3245 Helene
(crap, just noticed the above site doesnt allow hotlinking, oh well ill add the names, just enter the site, choose Vessels -> Vessels database -> apply the filter to show Swedish ships and the names are there, adding wikipages for those that have one)
My own "dinghie" was an Apollo that my older brother once built, 3m long about 1.2m wide, 5m high mast and at its length one of the faster and "wilder" boats you can play with.
And in between that, there´s all the regular "family sailboats" at 8-13m length that i´ve spent time on, mostly in the Stockholm archipelago, but also some time in open sea.
Im officially qualified as a 1st mate on sailing ships, or whatever you want to call the one next to the captain.
I got distracted from getting my captains license at the time and never got around to it later.
Yeah, oh so confused. I think ill rather be "confused" than ignorant.
Yeah, when they have time to spot it. And no thats not the "only skill related to speed" even if its the most important one.
However, even for a highly skilled "senior officer", its very hard to actually notice exactly when and where there is a need for trimming. A skilled crew means they will do it right from the start.
Well, thats mostly correct yes. But you´re still talking about 18th century and onwards warships rather than merchants from the relevant era. Which again, make up the vast majority.
A well handled ship, officers will "say" what they want done and the crew makes it happen.
Before battle you tried to guess what you most likely would need, or just "simply" picked battlesails to minimise the exposure. However, whenever you made any major turn, adjustments were preferable even if not always an absolute must do.
If you wanted to loose.
And that freaky stupid comparison tells me you dont know crap about the subject.
Oh yes, the "officers" took the decisions. But if those have to tell the crew every single order in detail, you´re going to need twice the "officers". And medieval traders didnt have much officers.
The crew followed orders, but they were not mindless drones.
Edit: For clarities sake, ill add this, have YOU tried being the person giving the orders to noobs and/or a trained crew? I´ve done both and anyone ridiculous enough to suggest that it works well to run a ship based on officer skills only have certainly never tried doing just that.
Have to say, I've only ever sailed on vessels of 10 crew or less, just the coast hugging type, but sailing all day and night ends up with the 'officers' taking breaks and the 'normal crew' making most decisions except for sail changes without input.
As for skill sets, wouldn't navigation be well simulated with Area Lore, as in a knowledge of reefs and other dangers, as well as knowing which channels between what islands are safe?
I think you are right that Area Lore might give you that sort of knowledge, but I don't think that's what navigation is.
Navigation is for use when you are a long way from the coast (although in period ships would often still be in sight of the coast). Banging into islands and reefs is not such a problem in this part of the sea. That's why you have a watch; islands don't (usually) sneak up on you; and you get a local pilot (i.e. with local Area Lore) sent out to your ship when you try to enter a port. Your navigation challenges are mostly about figuring out where you are, what direction you are sailing in, what direction you should be sailing in, and how long you should (and have been) sailing in that direction.
If you are just puttering about in your local area and you can see a coast that you are familiar with --- you might be able to get by with just Area Lore, although that presumably gets a bit fraught if you are trying to sail through the night (or when it is foggy, or during and after a storm). If you are sailing further from home, in waters you are only a bit familiar with (if at all), say you are a raider or a trader, then Area Lore isn't likely the Ability you are trying to use.
re "Area Lore" - read some of the Master & Commander series. No, not the same as saying "see the movie" - the books were taken largely and directly from the records of the British Navy. Therein, recognizing a distant coastline by silhouette was the only method of "navigation" that many relied on, and that was all many ancient traders needed. (Far higher levels than most AM characters might have, but that's how it worked back then.)
Parallel descriptions can be found in Mark Twain's "Life on the Mississippi", of steamboat captains (late 1800's) who had memorized - memorized every turn, snag and depth on entire stretches of the winding Mississippi river. This was not passive recognition, filling in details once they saw the locale - they could recite them back from memory while sitting around a table, and compare details and changes, and then memorize those even to allow night running.
That's how the human mind can work. Navigation is only needed when out of sight of land, and in a world where literacy is rare (and has better and safer applications), Navigation may not be the number one favorite profession to pursue for the educated.
Then they weren't acting as "officers", were they? Not in the traditional sense, at least.
Or, they were not filling the same duties, which are to be in charge of their watch - impossible if they leave the deck. Most modern sailing/racing ships enjoy a crew who are all sailors, exactly because of the reasons I specified above - without that skill, they are a danger to themselves and others (a consideration not particularly valued in the 13th century - some, but not as much as todays sensibilities re life and limb).
Considering that is a large part of any senior officer's job, I pity any ship you serve on.
I have about the equiv of the experience you claim, and would never, given your descriptions of the "difficulties" of spotting such, accept such performance as adequate, or even close.
More, you seem to think that one "sailor" can trim a sail - this is only true on modern boats (with steel geared winches) or in very light wind. In standard medieval conditions, and especially in any large ship, it takes teamwork, many souls to lay hands on a line and haul or give. One person, and one person only, makes the call on where to trim - by definition, that's the officer on watch, not a common, random sailor.
Now, a sailor may indeed have the skill to spot that - and so he reports what he's seen to the officer on watch, and the officer makes that decision. On a smaller boat, there may not be enough manpower for such hierarchy, and in that case each of the few crew need to be self-sufficient - but that's not what we've been talking about.
And in an informal boat, a crewman with skill might be allowed to make the change on their own inititative - but again, then we're talking about a crewman who has moved themselves up to a position of authority - and they tell the others, the ones without skill, what to do and how much to do it. And that's one of the main reasons that the others don't have the skill - because they don't need it, or not much of it.
Big words unsupported by counter example. Typical of your style.
It tells me you don't have the ability to grasp analogies, and your use of profanity that you don't have the ability to maintain an intelligent debate. So let me put it in terms you can understand - kkbb.
(Oh, for the previous forum, and the "Ignore" button...)
Yeah, but thats rarely making decisions, its making sure the decisions are "kept in place" so to speak.
Of course, that depends on how detailed you get, and its exactly why a crew needs enough skill.
Definetly yes in that its useful. It is not the same as navigation however.