Medieval Warships Research

[lion8000]

I've made a quick research about the Bulgarian medieval fleet in the 14th century.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Despotate_of_Dobruja

[You_Guess_Who]

Too bad there is no port on that area in Attila Campaign Map. The closest one is all the way in Bilhorod and Constantinople.

[Fluffy_Fishy]

Hello everyone, some clearing up to do here;

Artillery use on ships began with large cogs at the Battle of Arnemuiden (1338) to limited tactical advantage, they started to be placed on galleys after Choggia (1380) and became pretty widespread over the next 25 or so years with small cannons aligned down the centreline, its not right to say that these cannons weren't widespread, mistaking things like the Lepanto Galleass to being the first well armed ships. People quickly mistake the fire and withdrawal tactics of the 16th century to the modern line system following the Anglo-Dutch wars. When it comes to galleys, they would simply be fired at as close range as possible, hopefully creating as much disruption as possible before the ensuing boarding combat, even with ranged combat it was generally less effective than the use of crossbows. Similarly cannons on large northern warships would more often than not be a premise to boarding, this is why the development was mostly to do with height and fore and aft castles.

The Dromon was mostly phased out being Italy in the late 900s and the European nations following quickly during the 11th century, the Byzantines clung onto the design for slightly longer but this was mainly due to the fact their most prominent naval families leaving for Italy during the 11th century, finding more lucrative work for the growing naval yards in the mercantile republics, the most famous Byzantine shipwrights being Dodecanese families working in Rhodes during the period who would migrate to Venice. This left the Byzantines in a horrible position with a great hole in naval technology, they answered this by taking a damagingly conservative approach to naval design, relying on their age old technology of Greek fire. Even with this, Byzantine Dromon production was soon outstripped by their galley forces.

Moving onto the whole Greek fire thing, thanks to the Byzantine migrants the fiercely protected technology of Greek fire spread to italy, while I can't confirm that it spread to all of the Merchant republics it certainly found its way to Venice. The Venetian government deemed the technology tactically indecisive, favouring their faster more aggressive galleys instead. Shortish range flame throwers are a fairly useless defence against a ship that seeks to close ground and board you, naval combat in the Mediterranean was mostly based on shock value.

The ships themselves I will post some pictures soon