Records: the Royal Company Shipworks

## **The maritime division of the Royal Company**

England needed maritime capacity: even that they tried to legislate it into existence in 1381 (or at least incentivize it) with the Navigation Act. This started out as virtually a dead letter because of a shortage of ships. The Royal Company was going to do it the right way, first, and be the example England needed.

One of the reason for the shortage, though, was a Plantagenet problem: the reign of Edward III had pressed English shipping into war time capacity so much that they couldn't afford to operate. This led to a decline in native shipping, outsourcing lest they drafted again.

The Crown Prince supported the initiative with guarantees: the Crown would never press more than 50% of a given merchant’s capacity into wartime activity, *by number of ships*. The catch was that it was the top half of that capacity... but if the vessels were uniform top to bottom, then English merchant shipping would never be squeezed out by warfare.

This proved to be a very popular act, immediately goosing the London Docklands and sparking a spike in ship construction. That spike would eventually grow into a massive, sustained surge over the next six months.

### **The Crown charters a Maritime Guild**

The Guarantee of Naval Limitation was only laying the foundation. As a good faith effort, the palatine regency took it a step further, and under advisement from naval and maritime experts, brought several of the import-export merchant companies came together to form the Honourable Company of Master Mariners, the first guild to be chartered since the refresh of the City of London Corporation.

The Honourable Company became the the collective English Merchant Marine.

### **Together, Crown and Maritime Guild found the *London Nautical College***

The guild came together very quickly – and instantly jumped on their next step: cementing official, high-profile ties to Royalty.

The English Royal Navy existed in a ghost state, but the Crown Prince was dropping massive hints of things to come, especially in relation to findings from the Council on Military Affairs. England was building her own Royal Navy. As the first representative then, the Royal Navy in cooperation with the Honourable Company of Master Mariners, founded the *London Nautical College.*

The college itself would be in Wapping, bringing new development and respect to the outlying, rural hamlet that was otherwise a collection of refuse from the immediate dockside area along the north shore of the Thames.

The RN dedicated the 3 cogs as repurposed training ships. The Dieulagarde, a carrack, was already away on official business.

### **Merchant Shipbuilding**

England’s merchant marine, especially those based in London, experienced a mild renaissance of sorts. After the Guarantee of Naval Limitation, the Maritime Guild and Nautical College, the pump was primed. A lot of that pump was directly from the Prince's gentle nudges and inspiration regarding Shipbuilding via the college.

When Prince Edward released detailed plans for the carrack *Dieulagarde*, there was a sudden rush of English ship builders to emulate what was one of the largest ships to sail anywhere. Prior to that, English shipping primarily topped out at a few 200 ton cogs, and most were between 25-50 tons.

There was a rush of 300-ton carracks built in the style of the *Dieulagarde*, then a rapid growth from competing yards as they started getting a feel for what was possible in this new style, with the new construction techniques.

By late August, the commercial builders were building a few 500 tons carracks, with plans for 600 and thoughts that they could reach a massive 750 tons!

## **The Royal Company was leading the way**

In the spirit of the magically-enchanced construction of the Royal Company complex in Rainham, they needed to find find suitable Thamesside land, then develop it into a shipwright good enough to carry the Royal Company name. Instead of shouldering others out of the way, the RC demonstrated *true* power: *claiming a massive swath of the **worst** riverside territory and **transforming it into a shipwright's dream***.

While the merchant marine was exploding with growth regarding shipbuilding, the Royal Navy engineers and architects were far more focused under Richard’s careful (and secret) guidance. In this case, it was the same shipbuilding techniques elevated another order of magnitude, with a special eye on long-distance exploration and Naval warfare.

Richard personally drafted the rough plans and prints for a new type of hull that was considerably larger than even a 750-ton sailing carrack. When the Royal Navy engineers saw it, it was as if the seas parted and the angels sang. It was the *galleon*.

The galleon blue-print was actually split into two sub-designs

* Man-o-war: a more maneuverable vessel and by far the most imposing thing on the water, each equipped with multiple cannon. This was both a naval superiority ship and landing support (shore bombardment was planned and eventually practiced).
* Merchantman: a wider logistics ship, but still equipped with a few defensive cannon. The Royal Company ships would ferry troops when called upon, but would otherwise be directly involved with shipping and trade. The Royal Navy would be primarily involved as troops transports or tenders for either the men-o-war or the exploratory ships.

As the English shipyards were busy catering to commercial merchants, the miraculously refurbished docks at Ratcliffe started a monstrous new project as the Prince commissioned 10 new keels that month – to be built at the Royal Docks.

* 8 were 1250-ton merchantmen.
* 2 were 1500-ton Men-o-War. At the time, few could guess what the holes in the sides were for…

## **Navigation Developments**

By December, the just-formed Royal Academy of Natural Philosophies was formed and pieces were plugged in for instant (magically-enhanced) results. In particular, the Royal Academy working on navigation and cartography development in some of the most secret development projects ever.

The vikings were rumored to have had settlements on distant shores *to the west*... and it wasn’t China. That meant new lands. The Crown already knew, but it was about establishing precedent to follow for public consumption.

In particular was the development of the ***astrolabe*** and the ***sextant***. This was coupled directly with point-to-point long-distance navigation.

Further, they'd "tracked down" the viking sunstones, which at this point were all but lost to the Scandinavians as well. Identifying the crystal, they went about searching for it, collecting it, and cataloging how it was to be used as a navigational aide.

Additionally, the RANP *Intelligentsia* had created a sealed, water-filled floating compass for much greater accuracy.

The cartographic element required better maps, and this translated into both nautical and overland navigation. In the process of surveying an area, they created the builders level (spirit levels on a telescope) on the way to creating the theodolite (a telescope that can measure angle with extreme accuracy). This added the element of not only positional accuracy to a map, but topographic accuracy as well.