Medieval Ships and Shipbuilding

The City & Guild supplement provides more information on using ships in your saga, but the following briefly describes some of the numerous vessels found across Mythic Europe.

River barges are flat-bottomed, lowdraft vessels designed to navigate streams and rivers. Barges generally have a single deck on which cargo is stacked. The hulk is a blocky vessel, usually as wide as it is tall, again designed for inland waterways, with limited capacity for coastal or seagoing travel.

The cog is a high-sided vessel, mounted on a straight keel and often with a flat bottom designed to settle when the tide recedes. Cogs have a flat stern and it is becoming more common for them to be steered through a central rudder. These vessels are the primary merchant ship of the northern seas. Smaller than the cog, the buss is a round-bodied seagoing vessel, usually put to carrying cargo, though they