Certainly that's true of merchant ships where a vessel can be sailed with very few crew. From memory (because I haven't got the reference book to hand) merchant ships in the mediteranean often had as few as half a dozen crew. Now a pirate is going to need a lot more manpower than that and they might as well row into combat as stand around. I'm not suggesting pirates would use specialised warships but ones capable of being rowed easily and shaped for speed rather than cargo capacity.
>So in other words, I still think it's likely that the pirate ship will
>be sailing the 5-10 miles or more from the horizon to your ship. :)
>It might strike its sail (and mast) and switch to oars once it gets
>close enough, however.
Alternatively it could lie in wait with sails down until the merchant ship was closer, a low hull is only visible at much closer distances than a ship with sail. Even a mast is pretty difficult to spot without sails so a lookout could see the target long before they were spotted. Then half an hour's rowing, maybe less if they were downwind.
>_Missing Lands_ has plenty of information on shipping routes which
>cross the open ocean. And hugging the coast is only essential if
>you're in an oar-powered galley (since there isn't enough room on
>board one of those for the crew to sleep, and you won't have space to
>carry enough water for the whole crew for very long). Sailing ships
>can easily head out to sea, as long as the captain knows where she's
>going - and I doubt any self-respecting Gloranthan sea captain would
>set out without navigation magic or a working knowledge of the stars
>and currents.
We're straying into digest material here so I'll just say that reliable positioning at sea wasn't achieved in the real world until about 1800. Prior to that open sea voyages were minimised as much as possible. I don't see Glorantha having better navigational means than 18th Century Europe.
>>Surely any competent pirates will have some magic to enable them to
>>intercept other shipping rapidly.
>
>That works both ways - my rule of thumb is that whenever one side in
>Glorantha has useful magic, the other side is almost certain to have a
>magical counter.
>
>>Equally the average merchantman
>>won't have anything beyond the captain's magic
>
>But a ship is a huge capital investment, representing the total wealth
>of an entire trading family. I'm certain every such ship will be
>wreathed around with the best protection a such wealthy and powerful
>group can buy, strengthened after every successful voyage. Not to
>mention that the ship will, of course, have a guardian to focus its
>crew's power...
Depends on the ship and the family, certainly it is a big investment which must be protected but it also has to be profitable. That's why the crew is small, with the captain will be a merchant who has to spread his magic between protecting the ship against all sorts of hazards and making money. Compare that with a pirate ship carrying ten times the crew and several officers with different magical specialities. The pirate ship's guardian is likely to be more powerful as well.
>Caribbean pirates in the 16th-17th centuries also sacked cities
>ocasionally (and, more often, failed) but they never dominated the
>Caribbean to the extent that the galleons stopped sailing or trade
>halted. They were a nuisance at best.
I didn't think there were any cities in the Caribbean at that time, a lot of settlements barely counted as towns mostly defended by a poorly trained militia. Harrek sacking the City of Wonders is the equivelent of the Barbary Pirates sacking Venice.
-- Donald Oddy http://www.grove.demon.co.uk/
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