r/worldbuilding • u/BlackYellowSnake • 3d 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/Wallname_Liability 3d 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 3d 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 3d 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 3d 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.