The Merchant Vessel Kraken's Maw was the first of a new class of merchant vessels, so named for its unprecedented size and it's specialized cargo hold designed for grain. The success of the Kraken's Maw led to the construction of a large fleet of merchant vessels, vastly enhancing maritime trade and spurring the foundation of sprawling mercantile empires centred on a number of fiercely competitive city states.
Construction
The Kraken's Maw was one of the first vessels to use a new, lighter weight form of ship construction. Where earlier vessels were constructed with thick overlapped planks to form a thick hull with a slender frame of ribs, this design features features a heavy timber frame with a thin outer hull with planks laid end to end with only a layer of tar to keep the water out. This design maintains the overall strength of the ship's structure while vastly reducing it's weight, allowing for larger ships to be built. This was the first design to truly take advantage of this, featuring a 60 meter long keel and a beam of 16 meters, more than twice the size of the largest ship ever constructed at the time. During construction, competitors mocked the idea, claiming it to be madness to build a vessel as large as a kraken (though later explorers have proven, much to their dismay, that this comparison was rather hyperbolic). The shipyard workers were amused by this term, and began calling their latest project "The Kraken," a name that was eventually formalized when the ship was completed.
The Kraken's Maw featured 3 masts rigged for a total of 6 sails: the square rigged bowsprit sail, foresail, mainsail, and topsails (on the fore- and mainmast and a lateen rigged mizzensail towards the rear. While many later ships were built with tall forecastle and aftcastle sections to help defend against boarding actions, the Kraken's Maw and her sister-ships feature only a low aftcastle, maintaining a much more stable height fore to aft. This design accomodated a cargo hold of unprecedented size, easily triple the size of most earlier ships.
This cargo hold was a specialized design, intended for bulk storage of grain and similar products, It consisted of a series of three 12 meter diameter barrels, built directly into the frame of the ship. At the bottom of each, 4 hoppers allowed grain to be drained into portable sacks or other containers in a controlled manner, and then hoisted to the top deck for offloading. The top deck could be opened up at the top of each of the three holds, as well as more modest hatches along the sides just fore and aft of each for hoisting the grain out - this design greatly improves access for both loading and unloading the ship as compared to the single centralized hatch common to many ships before and since. The immense size of these holds led to unusually cramped conditions for sailors below decks, despite the ship's unprecented size, with nearly the entire crew quarters found in the bow of the ship and officer quarters, the galley and the food and water supplies intended for the sailors found in the aft section.
Immediate Impact
Upon completion of her first voyage, the Kraken's Maw immediately demonstrated the value of such a large trading vessel, instantly converting the food supply problem for the city of
Caelester that had stifled the city's growth for decades to one of building sufficient milling and export infrastructure to sell excess grain to neighbouring areas. Being able to buy grain in such large quantities and transport it so efficiently soon drove import prices down to the point where local inland farms struggled to compete with imported grain and the eventual transformation of local agriculture toward high value fruits, vegetables, and animal products. This greatly increased the wealth of the region of
Asuria and is a primary contributor to the development of the highly specialized and competitive city states found throughout the region.
The Rise of Piracy
Unfortunately, the increased reliance on sea trade gave an opportunity to those willing to turn to crime. Patrols along the highroads had long since proven to be an effective means of protecting trade routes, this practice proved much more difficult to implement at sea. Along with the advancements in hull design, new navigational aids such as the cross staff and chip log allowed sailors to venture out into the open ocean and, for the first time, predict when and where they might see land again with some degree of accuracy. This freedom of movement allows for much more direct trade between distant realms, but it also opens the entire ocean to seafaring bandits to prey upon honest merchantmen, with little hope of patrolling warships being able to stop them.
This spelled doom for the Kraken's Maw and most of her sister-ships. Having been designed entirely to maximize trade efficiency, she was particularly ill suited to defend against any sort of boarding action. She was lost at sea with a small cargo of gold sufficient to purchase grain to fill her holds. Pirate legend makes out that the Kraken's Maw, being the oldest and most well used of these ships, was destroyed, along with the pirate ship tied up next to her, when a lantern fell into one of the holds and ignited the residual grain dust housed therein, leaving no survivors. Many question this tale, in part on the grounds that if there were no survivors, nobody would be able to tell of the lantern falling into the hold, but since then it has become standard practice to regularly spray fresh water into grain holds on modern vessels after they have been unloaded, just in case. It is considered much more likely that the Kraken's Maw was simply scuttled or taken as a prize and converted for pirate use under a different name.
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