Have some boats. If I understand correctly these would be smaller craft more suitable for rivers, lakes, and coastal waters. Some of them may be more modern then you would like, but dhow, junk and sampan have been around for a long time. Also some, like the junk and dhow had larger versions for the open ocean. Of course that's just what I've gleaned from some online reading, more knowledgable folks please feel free to chime in.
A public domain image.
Not much to add but about 10 years ago I got on a nautical jag and started looking at books of ships and ship models for ideas to make ships for the Games Workshops "Man o War" game, and found a number of awesomely strange medieval cogs and war ships with towers and platforms fore and aft. I'm afraid I didn't keep a bibliography or anything but if you have access to a big public or university library look for stuff on ship models and naval history, you'll like find interesting stuff. (One of my favorites was book on making ship and boat models out of wine corks to float in you bathtub).
ReplyDeleteAnyway I built a trio of cogs you can see here:
http://mikemonaco.wordpress.com/scratchbuilds/man-o-war/
each is about an inch long; the sailing ships are 2-3 inches I think (they've been sitting in a box for a good six years I guess). The one with stone-looking towers is not completely fantasy -- they would paint wooden forecastles and aftcastles to look like stone, just as elephant howdahs were painted to look like stone or metal in India. FWIW. The idea of the fighting platforms and "castles" was obviously to give an advantage in boarding actions in the days before broadsides.