What would it take to build a ship capable of crossing the Pacific?
In my story, I have a small extended family of 30 to 40 individuals ranging in age from 0 to 50 who are on the run from Chinese and Japanese forces in 1400AD. No place in Asia is safe for them. By a series of lucky chances they have found a very quiet location that appears to be untouched by humans. Escaping by getting out to sea is of the utmost importance. Trade of any kind will give them away so they must do all their preparations in secret and by themselves.
They have access to plenty of wood and iron ore deposits. Their location is sufficiently remote that they have up to 5 years to complete their ship and get out to sea. The refugees are traders, not craftsmen or metalsmiths. Iron is known to them but they don't have anything other than introductory knowledge of how to smelt iron or form tools.
What will they need in terms of construction supplies and construction facilities in order to build a ship strong enough to get them across the pacific? How likely is this little band to pull of this kind of a project? Commentary about provision requirements to put in the ship or the required ship size is also welcome.
Equipment List
- Small herd of horses, 5 cows and 1 bull.
- They have the iron tools required to maintain their tents and herds but they don't have any blacksmith tools. (They were in a bit of hurry to get out and didn't bother to kidnap a blacksmith or shipwright.)
- Ceramics are their primary eating and cooking implements.
Note that this is a hard-science question. You must account for the laws of physics when figuring out the size of the ship, the nutritional and water requirements of the crew. If you must handwave, please provide some justification for your guess.
Helpful Information
While the following information is unknown to this little band of fugatives, please incorporate it into your answer.
- It takes about 2.5 years to drift from the shores of Japan to California so their voyage won't take any longer than that.
- They don't know it but they are attempting to get from Japan to the West Coast of the United States along the northern portion of the Northern Pacific Gyre.
This post was sourced from https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/q/25272. It is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.
1 answer
I'm sorry, but you need to change your story. I think you can, and I hope you do: from a dramatic standpoint, it's a hell of a good tale in the making.
However, you have set your protagonists up to attempt something that's just not reasonably plausible. You burden them with inventing, from scratch, too many things that just can't be invented that way.
I have been a sailor on submarines, yachts, an oceangoing tug. Until you've actually been to sea, it's hard to get your mind around just how damned much there is to know. I really like the answers from @James and @bowlturner, and won't bother to add more critical or significant prerequisites. But please do review those lists.
Your challenge, as I see it, is to retain the dramatic narrative, but back off on the intractability of the problem. And really: the Sea provides enormous amounts of drama, without layering impossible and unrealistic challenges on the protagonists. You can relax the stringent constraints that you have declared, and it will still work.
You have the bones of a pretty thrilling story there.
This post was sourced from https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/a/25288. It is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.
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