How to hinder the development of sea travel until the industrial age?

Instead of Earth as we know it, humans evolved on a slightly smaller, habitable earthlike planet with different geography. Due to the plot reasons, I would like to keep them confined to one (large) continent with no seafaring until they achieve late-19th century tech level, delaying the age of discovery (this world contains other significant lands, but they should not be discovered by mankind too early).

But how can I achieve this? I was thinking mostly about the geographical reasons so far, and came up with following:

• the sole inhabited continent should be remote from all others (pretty obvious)
• strong currents along coast making seafaring in small boats dangerous (and without mastering the small boats, large ships will not be developed)
• the coastline should be relatively simple, with no peninsulas and significant islands - pretty much like Africa in our world
• ideally, the coastline should be a barren wasteland with no trees and Atacama-like deserts, so humans will have little incentive to live there and experiment with boats (and no building material for boats in the first place)
• no big lakes to experiment with boats inland
• fertile lands, where human civilization developed, should be locked deep in the continent's interior, ideally separated from the coast by mountain ranges and deserts

Is it believable, that such conditions may prevent humans from becoming sailors and expanding to other continents? What else can I do?

posted about 6 years ago

Ijon‭

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