>From what I've read over a period of time, some things to keep in the back
of your mind...
Pine when used as a building material for the hull, resulted in hulls whose
life time was less than 10 years, sometimes less than 5. This implies a
lower HT rating for the ship on a whole.
Pine was used for spars and the like because it was flexible enough to
handle the stresses without cracking.
Hull design was such that a man could look at a hull and know right off the
bat what the ship was designed to carry by weight of gun, because the
distances between gunports were of a specific size for specific guns.
Scantlings were bigger and more frequent with warships as contrasted against
non-warships. The problem is: Scantlings were not 100% on a hull in the
sense that they were side by side with no gaps. If a ball hit the hull that
abutted scantlings, the ball had to go through both the outer wood and the
inner wooden strakes, before it struck the scantlings, and after it
penetrated all that wood, could then be free to strike anything in the
interior of the hull.
In 1784, a British 98 gun ship of the line extracted 200 roundballs from its
hull after the battle of the Glorious First of June, and was ready for
battle a fortnight later. These ships could take a major pounding and still
remain afloat.
If you need specific dimensions on ships as recorded in history, I have a
few that I can give to you for some English ships. Also, do a search on my
name at the Forums where it comes to masts on age of sail ships. You'll
find some entries on mast heights and how they were figured for various
masts and even for various specific portions of the mast. This information
is more historically accurate than was the information given in GURPS
VEHICLES 2nd edition.
Feel free to contact me via email if you want specifics - I might be able to
get them for you, or I'll say I don't have access to that information. At
one point, I was able to find the cost of ball and shot because I contacted
the curator in charge of the HMS VICTORY.
Hal
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