Caravels can cannon

[TacticalGrace]

Originally posted by Kingof the Apes
TacticalGrace: wasn't boarding ships a Roman innovation? I thought that before the Punic wars ship combat consisted of shooting arrows and ramming each other.

Yes, I'm glad you asked that question. The Romans were great at infantry tactics. On the land they were undefeatable. But they didn't have expertise in naval combat and instead just rammed them and then soldiers rushed on board and then they could use the land tactics that they knew and loved.

as for shooting arrows, romans were never really renounded for their archery. However, Roman triremes are sometimes depicted as having towers from which archers could fire at enemy ships.

[CerberusIV]

Originally posted by TacticalGrace


In fact ancient (and even medieval) warships primarily didn't have much in the way of bombard ability. Naval combat was mainly fought by drawing alonside (or ramming) then sending over infantry. Even by the time cannons were available this still happened. The Mary Rose for example had loads of cannon (which was a major reason that it sunk) but it also had stacks of troops on board and had a "castle" and a "fore-castle".

AFAIK the defeat of the Spanish Armada by the English in 1588 was the first time warship commanders consciously set out to destroy enemy ships by bombardment and chose not to close in and board. Some of the English captains were not happy about this as they did not think it was 'honourable'.

They didn't have much choice really as the Spanish ships were generally larger and carried more soldiers so trying to board one would have been fairly suicidal.

[redhat]

IMHO, I would recommend that one play with the .flc and the sound files to customize the caravel to what you think it should be!