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Discussion Manoeuvrability and Speed of Historical Ships

Pieter Boelen

Pieter Boelen

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Well, speed in the Age of Sail was primarily a function of waterline length (with displacement/sail area ratio thrown in for good measure), so, sure, a SoL could sail as fast or even faster than a frigate. And with a greater displacement, they had a built-in advantage in heavy seas or when sailing into a head sea.

Based on contemporary sailing reports, out of the Ships of the Line in Naval Action, the Wasa should be the fastest sailer (especially close-hauled) and the one with the best turn-rate, followed by the Bellona.

Rated by speed on a broad reach, the fastest ship historically was Endymion, followed by La Renommée, Prince, Belle Poule, Trinc, Wasa and Hermione.
Close-hauled, Endymion, Prince, Wasa, Belle Poule.

But smaller ships like the Prince de Neufchatel or La Renommée needed smooth water to reach their top speed, otherwise they were relatively easy prey for bigger ships (the former was captured by the Leander of 56 guns, the latter by the Dover of 44 guns)

By the way, the worst frigate in terms of sailing should be Surprise/ex-L'Unité, the worst SoL Santissima Trinidad. The latter was pretty much a haystack with sails after her conversion to a 4-decker.

The Wappen von Hamburg is complete ****-****, they took the plans of a generic british 60-gun ship, gave it the stern of the model of the WvH III and over-gunned till kingdome come. The original, a vessel made for convoy duty, not for the line of battle, carried 6 18-pounders, 16 12-pounders. 26 8-pounders and 4 3-pounders, which is a far cry from the ship in-game.
 
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Last time I played the most thing I enjoyed doing is being part of SORRY pirate clan and do team missions with 12-20 in each battle, and you got first and second rate AI ships to kill. Tough at times, but very nice if you cooperate.
Reaching level of being 100% efficient in first rates is the best reward in the game; that and having access to tens of millions to replace all your bad luck :D
 
I read the following somewhere:

The theoretical maximum hull speed of a ship in knots is the square root of the water line length of the ship in feet.

There are obviously other factors involved. This speed was apparently the speed at which a hull would start to plane, and NA ships wouldn't do that as they couldn't generate enough power to get "on the step."

Hook
 
A good hull-speed calculator: Hull Speed Calculator | Boat Displacement Speed Calculation

Note that hull speed isn´t a 'solid' barrier, but a ship with a displacement hull needs exponentially more power to increase speed as it approaches hull speed, a thing sailing ships normally can´t do (the exception are catamarans, IIRC)

It´s been a while, but when I last checked historical sailing reports to compare hull speed with the actual speeds achieved, very well designed and relatively small vessels like the Prince de Neufchatel or La Panthère were able to get within 90 - 95% of their hull speed.
 
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LarryHookins said:
The theoretical maximum hull speed of a ship in knots is the square root of the water line length of the ship in feet.
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I know it works with that number of 0.4 and the speed in metres per second.
Maybe the conversion with knots and feet happens to be close to that 0.4 with metres per second.
So you may very well be right!

Also, this sounds like an interesting topic.
How about making a separate thread out of it?
After all, we're talking mainly about real history and physics.
 
The LWL was a good way to get a ballpark of the speed capability of the ship, and yes, the larger ships were faster overall than the smaller ones, the REAL issue is that something like the Victory took over 90 minutes to get up to full speed and could take well over 8 minutes (roughly 1.4-1.5 degrees a second) to make a 360 degree turn. We used a 'compressed time' physics for Tides of War using Froude for the hull drag (both fore/aft plus sideways), Bernoulli for sail pressure (thrust + slip), Archimedes for buoyancy, Newton forces thrown in for all of them. It was very interesting how long it took for the larger ships to get moving and how sluggish they felt compared to the smaller ships like frigates. We had to tweak the compression system to use a curve because compared to the 1st rates, the frigates were sports cars. They literally lept off the line and were up to speed in 10-15 seconds and the 1st rates would take up to 90 seconds to get moving. They could also pull off a full turn before the 1st rates had made it a quarter of the way through theirs.
 
Captain Murphy said:
the Victory took over 90 minutes to get up to full speed and could take well over 8 minutes (roughly 1.4-1.5 degrees a second) to make a 360 degree turn.
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That's a surprisingly fast turn rate, actually!
45 degrees per minute is not something you would commonly do on a modern cruise ship.
10-15 degrees per minute would be far more common. Of course the ships CAN turn father, but you wouldn't except in emergency.
 
I don't know how exactly the underlying calculations work in AoS2, but it takes around 4 minutes to tack with a frigate with a trained crew and 2-3 to wear, so it does seem realistic. I guess, 3-deckers are much slower in turning, I just didn't mess with them enough to measure.
And, indeed, the inertia of large ships is very palpable. Once you get even a large frigate under way, you have to plan very carefully if you want to stop it for some reason.
 
8 minutes for a 360° turn? That´s quite fast, actually. For comparison, here´s a overview of the sailing trials of the Wasa (166', 62 guns), took her 2 1/2 to tack and wear
 

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Here is a Russian report from 1820's:
In addition to speeds, the lower table lists times to wear (above) and tack (below), with 5 and 7 Beaufort winds.

So...

80-gun - wears in 8 minutes, tacks in 3.5(?) - 10
44-gun frigate - wears in 4.5 minutes, tacks 3-3.5
another 44-gun frigate - wears in 2.5 minutes, tacks in 2-3
24-gun corvette - wears in 6 minutes, tacks in 4-5
28-gun corvette - wears in 4 minutes, tacks in 3.5-5
 

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Bava said:
8 minutes for a 360° turn? That´s quite fast, actually. For comparison, here´s a overview of the sailing trials of the Wasa (166', 62 guns), took her 2 1/2 to tack and wear
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8 minutes is assuming the mean average rate of turn for the duration of the entire turn, it would always depend on speed traveling in addition to other factors. Getting a ship like that turning is a question of the drag of the hull laterally in the ends, the ability of the rudder and sails to push the vessel in the direction desired, and the inertia of the turn with the mass and forces to complete it. In reality it would likely take a lot longer as the ship loses the inertia through the turn and wind shape of the sails would change, so some of my numbers are generalizations based on simulations. I imagine a ton of factors like crew skill, sail setup, rudder configuration (size and force capable), etc would all have an effect on the results, so the same size of ships could have rather wildly different results even being technically the same class of ship. The point is actually illustrated by the table @Martes posted above with similarly sized ships having nearly 100% difference in times.

We tried like hell to come up with a functional physics based system for Tides of War but the amount of numbers to balance was nuts and we ended up moving to static systems of polar diagrams in order to get a better balance of the ship control that felt more 'natural' than full physics based.
 
Captain Murphy said:
being technically the same class of ship
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Even being technically the same ship, but loaded differently.
Gardiner mentions that when they fine-trimmed the Leander (1813), she completely changed her behavior.
 
Martes said:
Even being technically the same ship, but loaded differently.
Gardiner mentions that when they fine-trimmed the Leander (1813), she completely changed her behavior.
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Another good point. I used to do the small 6 meter boat races locally and we couldn't modify the standing or running rigging but we could change the trim and balance. It was amazing how much faster or slower that boat was just by moving some water jugs around.
 
Bava said:
8 minutes for a 360° turn? That´s quite fast, actually. For comparison, here´s a overview of the sailing trials of the Wasa (166', 62 guns), took her 2 1/2 to tack and wear
Click to expand...
Are those the real historical sea trials of the Wasa?
I thought she never got as far as sailing?!? :shock

Captain Murphy said:
Another good point. I used to do the small 6 meter boat races locally and we couldn't modify the standing or running rigging but we could change the trim and balance. It was amazing how much faster or slower that boat was just by moving some water jugs around.
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Argh, now I really, REALLY want to experiment with that in my own boat!
I already wanted to, but now I want to even more. :cheeky
 
Pieter Boelen said:
Are those the real historical sea trials of the Wasa?
I thought she never got as far as sailing?!?
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Hehe, that´s not the Vasa with the stability problems, but the Wasa built by af Chapman in 1776 ;)
 
Martes said:
Is it known what moment the 90 minutes were measured from?
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I wish I could tell you. I have seen the number thrown around on multiple websites about the Victory, and even ran it through a fairly complex acceleration calculation using their sail size and wind speed (something like 26-28kn) and came up with similar numbers, so it could just be a complete estimation.
 
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