- In WorldofGlorantha_at_yahoogroups.com, "Toread DuDerysi"
<jakyer_at_...> wrote:
>
> --- In WorldofGlorantha_at_yahoogroups.com, "Jeff Richard" <richaje@>
> wrote:
> >
> > > Being a fisherman, familiar with boats, does not qualify a person
> to be
> > > an officer of a warship.
> >
> > I've been rereading a bit about how the Athenian triremes were
> > officered and manned. Rowers and helmsmen were the skilled
> > individuals - the actual trireme commander was usually the wealthy man
> > who paid for the ship.
> >
> Large numbers of the 'Athenian' rowers and officers were trained seamen
> from Rhodes who joined up for the money. This was especially true after
> the 'restoration' of Athens in the late 4th Century BC after the
> Athenian fleets were rebuilt.
>
But probably key is the trainers. Armies and factories all over the
world have shown pretty conclusively that you can take a random
assortment of people and train them to work cohesively and with
considerable precision, if
a) you give them a limited number of tasks to master, and
b) you have skilled trainers who know how to teach these tasks and
enforce the discipline to always do it the same way when ordered, no
matter what else is going on.
I have no idea what the positions would be called in the case of
galleys, but I'm sure they'd have one--the equivalent of the centurion
or NCO. I know in the big "war canoes" the lead paddler on each side
was key, but I have no idea in galleys. In Glorantha I'm sure that
there is magic associated with this task.
It is those people that I think the RAI would provide, the people who
are used to turning a group of people into a crew, and who have the
right skills and magic to be able to do so repeatably. How many of
those people were lost in the fleet sinking may be key in how well the
navy recovers--there are functionally an infinite number of Esrolian
peasants with strong backs, but if you don't have skilled trainers
you'll never get a good crew out of them.
--Bryan