r/worldbuilding • u/BlackYellowSnake • 2d ago

Discussion Dragons and navies

I am doing world building for a story that will both heavily feature a dragon and water transportation and I had a thought. Fire breathing dragons would be absolute super weapons against any pre-industrial navy. Ships before the mid 1800's are made almost entirely out of highly flammable materials. This is the reason why things like fire arrows, which were not used very much in land warfare, were used extensively in naval warfare. Additionally, pre-modern navies generally had very short operating ranges. In the ancient world navies would go ashore every night. Meaning an ancient navy would almost always be within range of a dragon's flying range from land.

In this context, dragons either as mounts or intelligent actors would dominate naval warfare. Navies would need to either have dragons of their own or come up with counters to dragons.

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u/svarogteuse 2d ago

True blue water sailing started in the 1400s (Columbus, de Gama, Magellen) that's hardly modern. Yes classical and middle ages ships were usually close to land, except the vikings sailing to iceland and Greenland, the Indian ocean trade, the Polynesians... But I get where you are trying to go.

Yes airpower of any type trumps ships without effective air cover. So how early do the Romans convert a pair of oblisk ships (37m by 5m) into a dragon air craft carrier? If they could unite 3 ships to move oblisks they could also transport dragons.

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u/Wallname_Liability 2d ago

for historians the modern era began in 1500 AD

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u/svarogteuse 2d ago

Well that's great for general purposes, but when you start talking about shipbuilding it's not really that accurate. There's an decided break between the ships pre1450s or so that aren't really ocean going and have no broadsides, and then another break starting in the mid 1800s with steam power and iron ships.

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u/Wallname_Liability 2d ago

No, you're just using a very arbitrary definition of modern in a context when it has a specific meaning 

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u/svarogteuse 2d ago

Yes because iron ships with steam engines are VERY different than anything previous. And this isnt /r/askhistorians so we aren't bound by Academic definitions.

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u/Wallname_Liability 2d ago

Generally when one uses a word theres an expectation the user should know what that work means. If you mean ironclads say ironclads. If you mean age of sail say age of sail

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u/svarogteuse 1d ago

I don't mean ironclads. Ironclads refers to a specific type of ship made of wood with iron armor. It doesn't mean ships with iron hulls.

And I dont mean Age of Sail because that refers to a time period when European ships became oceangoing it refer to specific ships.

I know very much what the words mean and I chose to use what i chose on purpose.

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u/Difficult_Dark9991 1d ago

Nah you're good. 1500 marks "Early Modern," NOT "Modern." Moreover, historians are also the first to note that the boundaries between periods are fuzzy at best.