Sea of Thieves Ship Realism Analysis

Intro

The ships in Sea of Thieves have names which sound somewhat plausible at first glance, but in reality the game plays more than a little fast-and-loose with its ships and their rigging.

The game’s simplifications are present in three main ways:

The game makes ships much smaller and ship crews as much, much smaller than in reality. This is for good reason- imagine trying to organize a 30-man sloop crew! But nonetheless I feel obligated to note that a Galleon in real life is a massive, hulking ship carrying upwards of 40 cannons and up to 400 men, not 8 cannons and 4 men.

The game massively simplifies rigging and sailing. This is also for good reason- ships had massive crews because sail management is hard work- but the game oversimplifies things to a fair degree. Sails are all square, and yet they catch the wind at all angles instead of only when downwind (the different point-of-sail advantages different ships have, I’ll get to later).

The game gives its ships stereotypical pirate vessel class names based vaguely on their role and performance in the game instead of using an actual designation based on what the ship and its rigging most resembles. This is primarily to make each ship class sound nicer and more... pirate-y.

I will elaborate on this and open for you a small window into the terrifyingly complicated world of sailing ship nomenclature in the next sections. Brace yourself, because we’re about to take a voyage into perilous waters: here there be monsters sailing enthusiasts.

The Sloop

As a small ship with a large quarterdeck (raised rear area) and a single, square sail, the sloop is not a sloop but in fact a much older, 10th century (that’s viking-era) ship design called the Cog.

Compare:

A model of a typical pirate sloop. Take special note of the sail arrangement (credit: Blood & Pigment)

The Ubena von Bremen, a modern reproduction of the 1300s-era Bremen Cog (credit: tallshipsfan.de)

A sloop (in its more narrow modern definition) possesses what’s called a fore-and-aft rig; this means that in its resting state, the wooden beam supporting the sail points fore and aft (i.e. parallel the line of the ship’s hull). Instead, the game’s “Sloop" possesses a square sail, which has a beam perpendicular to the hull. In fact, all ships in Sea of Thieves use square sails exclusively.

A sloop would also possess one or more jibs, which are the sails you can see in front of the mast on the ship model. No ship in-game possesses these either (or any other form of auxiliary sail), again to simplify things- since the purpose of jibs in real life, helping to catch wind at odd angles, is unnecessary when the game’s simplified sails can catch wind all the time.

However, the behavior and usage of the Sloop in-game is very accurate to real-life sloops- fragile, but agile and fast, they were reliant on hit-and-run attacks and often secured victories by boarding rather than through heavy firepower. Even the sloop’s point-of-sail behavior is (almost accidentally) accurate to a real sloop.

As exclusively fore-and-aft rigged vessels, sloops in real life typically had a superior ability to sail towards the wind compared to larger vessels, which would have often had at least some square rigging which is useless when sailing towards the wind. However, the sloops would have done this by sailing at an angle into the wind and repeatedly tacking (zig-zagging) instead of sailing straight into the wind, which no sailing ship can do in real life.

The Brigantine

As a ship with one deck, two masts, and purely square sails, our Brigantine is actually a Brig (yes, there is actually a difference. Ship terminology is pretty wild).

Note this model of a brigantine, especially the rear mast. (credit: Ages of Sail .com)

You’ll see that there’s a fore-and-aft sail like the sloop model had on the bottom of the rear mast. That’s what separates a Brigantine from a Brig (which has all square sails, like the in-game ship does). It also would have auxiliary sails, jibs and such, but again all ships in the game lack these.

If you’re sharp-eyed, you’ll also see a rowboat tied down in the middle of the deck. This nicely presents how all ships in Sea of Thieves have been massively scaled down. While ship sizes weren’t standardized in the Age of Sail, and you might be able to find historical record of a ship in real life with the right rigging type and size, the game’s ships are all much smaller than they would typically be (which is again to accommodate the tiny crews the game uses).

As for overall in-game presentation, brigantines were often built with lighter, longer and thinner hulls than other designs, which made them faster but also more fragile than an otherwise comparable ship. The game does faithfully depict this- the Brigantine is generally faster but also fills with water more quickly than the other two ships. For sailing characteristics, we have another surprisingly accurate case. A brigantine’s mix of square and fore-and-aft sails would give it a versatility advantage and an ability to sail quickly in a crosswind that would map nicely onto the in-game brig’s characteristics.

The Galleon

This one is kind of an odd case. Galleons, in real life, were never really used by pirates. They were truly massive (we’re talking up to several stories tall and half a football field long) cargo-haulers built to be converted to warships, with massive forecastles and quarterdecks which made them unwieldy and slow. As a result, pirates didn’t use them even on the rare occasions they could capture a lone one since they needed speed to chase down their prey and the extra firepower wasn’t worth it to them anyway (if they even had the crew to man one).

Which is all fine, since the galleon in-game really isn’t a galleon. Primarily because it’s just far too small, but also because it doesn’t really have the right proportions: it has no proper forecastle or quarterdeck. To be fair, it does have raised sections on the front and rear, but these aren’t nearly the size of a real galleon’s, even when speaking proportionally to the relatively tiny in-game ship- these parts were, on the largest galleons, almost like small forts built onto the deck.

See? You can fit a whole squad of guys in those! (credit: War History Online).

Now, as for what our “Galleon” actually is…

Firstly, it’s a full-rigged ship. This isn’t a specific designation- it just means that it has three sails, all of which are square-rigged. This is sometimes referred to as a “ship rig”, since in ye olde days the distinction between a “ship” and a “boat” was whether or not it had this rig style. But this still isn’t a specific designation. As an additional note, real-life “full rigged” ships often used a lanteen (triangular) sail on the rear mast instead of another set of squares like the in-game ship does. They could go either way, though, so it’s not a huge issue.

I’m fairly sure our Galleon is actually a fairly obscure ship type called the Full-Rigged Pinnace. Those of you who played Sid Meier’s Pirates might be asking, “but isn’t the pinnace a tiny ship just a step above a rowboat?”. The answer is actually yes- the term pinnace was applied to two different types of ship. One, the tiny rowboat-like auxiliary craft you’re probably thinking of, and this ship type, which was a relatively small and speedy type of “actual ship”.

This would actually match fairly well with what we see in-game. The game’s galleon is big and very clumsy, but not overwhelmingly so (it’s hard to overstate just how clumsy a truly large sailing ship was). It can actually outpace the other ships in ideal wind conditions (a tailwind, which is the ideal condition for a full-rigged ship in real life), which the notoriously slow real-life Spanish galleons would be unlikely to do. The game’s galleon doesn’t even have a gun deck, just a few cannons on the top deck, matching the relatively so-so armament of most small ships.

An oil painting of the Kalmar Nyckel, a Swedish Pinnace. See the rowboat at the rear for scale, surprisingly close to our in-game Galleon if we allow for the game’s general ship size reduction.

So the Galleon is really a substantially less impressive vessel than it claims to be. It is still the largest available vessel on the Sea of Thieves though, so it’s not like anybody else is going to show up and claim the title from it.

Other Vessels

The Rebuilt Burning Blade

Ah, a proper galleon! Well, giant burning maw and pagoda quarterdeck aside.

This would actually still be a relatively mid-sized example (again, because a truly big ship would be massively impractical in-game), but it just shows the extent to which our “galleons” don’t actually measure up. Of course, the fantasy elements here would not be present on any real life vessel, but as far as scaling and layout goes this is just about spot-on for a small galleon. It even has a jib!

The Wicked Wench

Hector Barbossa's ghostly ship from that one town-raiding scene in Pirate's Life. Not really much to note, since you can't even board it, but it does feature a structure much more similar to a real galleon than the player galleons are (forecastle, quarterdeck, gun deck and lanteen sail and all) even if it's even smaller than a player ship.

"Strike your colors, ya bloomin' cockroaches!"

Rowboats

This is just a quick tangent essentially just to make note of the fact that, as weird as it may seem, rowboat-based piracy was actually extremely common in the Carribean. Pirates did use rowboats that were quite a bit larger than the ones we have in-game- they went by many names including pirogue, piragua, launch, and (yes) pinnace, but all were essentially just big rowboats, sometimes with a small sail. Sometimes, they even mounted small cannons called swivel guns on them, meaning the cannon rowboat is actually historically accurate!

Conclusion

As you can see, sailing terminology is anything but simple. The sources out there tend to be either surface-level or extremely pedantic and detailed, no in-between. This guide falls very much on the latter side of that scale, but hopefully if you made it this far you enjoyed picking up all of this highly specific and mostly useless knowledge. Maybe try to avoid giving people a hard time about using the "wrong" names, huh? Or do, if that floats your boat.

I also feel the need to say that this shouldn't be interpreted as a complaint about how clueless the devs are or anything. The game does what it does very much on purpose to make things a more streamlined, accessible, and balanced experience. With that said, I do have hope for a pirate game that can more effectively merge realism and fun in the future (and I have a current recommendation, Sail Forth, for anyone that might share that).

Credits

Thumbnail by Mgmfjesus on reddit

Burning Blade concept art by Rare

Wicked Wench screenshot by the Sea of Thieves Wiki

Special Thanks

To the Youtube Channel Gold and Gunpowder- I heavily recommend it for any pirate or sailing nerds who made it this far into the “guide”.

To various excessively pedantic and detailed sources across the web that are too numerous and obscure to fully list.

And of course to you, for reading all of this stuff.

Source: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3296655973

Ship Realism Analysis