The Caravel

Fragment of "Dawn of a Pioneer" First Book of Volume I - By Dra. Lorenza Martell, Dean of Avalon University, written in the year 450 AD.

Navigation was one of Prince Doran's great passions. The first time the young prince boarded a ship was during his journey to King's Landing for the funeral of King Aegon's youngest son, Prince Daeron Targaryen. That trip was relatively short, lasting less than a month, but it was a trip that the young prince never forgot.

His love for the sea and navigation were born on that trip, when the prince was only four years old.

Over the next several years the prince sailed at every opportunity, many times creating those opportunities himself. Some say that the young prince made friends with lords from distant lands just so he could spend more time at sea when visiting them.

The prince's love was not limited to just sailing, Prince Doran began designing ships and tools to facilitate navigation at an early age. His first designs were the product of the wild imagination of a child rather than the ingenious mind of a genius, the first designs of Prince Dorne are still preserved in the Museum of the Sun, highlighting what the prince called the Durmstrang Ship; a ship that could supposedly sail underwater.

The first ship that the prince designed and was built was the caravel.

In the year 255 of the old Westerosi calendar, Prince Doran ordered several carpenters to gather in the place that in a few years would be The Shipyard of the Sun, the best shipyard in the world.

The first ship designed by prince Doran was the caravel, it was unlike any other ship ever seen in the Known World.

The first thing that stands out is the ship's construction method: caravels were carvel-built, not clinker. Most ships until then were built using the clinker method, where in the edges of the hull planks overlapped each other. The prince`s new ship utilized the carvel method where the planks were placed edge to edge, streamlining the boat and increasing its speed. This method would be used in the construction of many other ships, becoming very famous for its greater rigidity that was necessary for larger offshore cargo vessels. Nor should we forget the question of size, carvel-built sailing vessels exceeded the maximum size of clinker-built ships several times over.

Unfortunately, carved-built ships had a tendency to leak over time due to saltwater corroding the caulking required to seal the gaps between the planks. This problem went unnoticed by anyone for years, as no one had any way of knowing the drawbacks of an entirely new method of shipbuilding. This problem was first noticed several years after the construction of the first caravels, this inspired panic among sailors as there was a possibility that their ships would sink in the middle of a long journey. Luckily the prince found a solution to this problem a few months after it appeared: using copper to cover the entire hull.

The procedure was very expensive, increasing the cost of building a ship enormously. For many years the only one who used this procedure was Prince Doran, the other shipbuilders preferred to save gold and therefore did not cover the hull with copper. This obviously resulted in many ships sinking in the middle of a long voyage, a problem that the prince's ships did not face.

The caravels were the first of many ships designed by Prince Doran. The following ships that followed the caravel were the galleons, the cutter, the brigantine, schooner,...

***

Dorne, Docks of Planky Town.

Ser Lothar looked at his prince for a moment before turning his gaze to the sea, in the distance he saw several caravels.

`Caravels, what an odd name.`

The prince decided to build ships a couple of years ago, Lothar still remembers all the headaches he suffered from being tasked with gathering carpenters and shipbuilders for his prince`s new avocation. Getting carpenters was easy enough but finding shipbuilders was a nightmare as Dorne doesn't have, or rather didn't have, shipyards.

Lothar had to search as far afield as Braavos and Westerlands, as due to tensions with the Reach, the Crown and Tyrosh he couldn't hire anyone from those places. Nor could he hire anyone from Lys or Myr for orders from Princess Dorna.

After several moons the new workers finally arrived, fortunately the time it took for the shipbuilders to arrive was long enough for the carpenters to finish building the shipyard so they could start work directly.

Prince Doran supervised them personally, going to the shipyard every day to make sure the builders followed his orders to the letter. Something that earned him the animosity of more than one but his prince seemed to care little about the opinion of the foreigners. Lothar thought it unwise to antagonize his workers but since the prince hired several Dornishmen to become apprentices to the experienced shipbuilders the knight saw the reason for his prince's indifference.

Once the apprentices mastered the trade the foreigners were fired, of course the prince was generous and he gave them each a heavy bag of coins.

Having loyal Dornishmen working in his shipyard was a very wise decision on his prince's part as there is less chance of his designs being stolen. Lothar remembers when Prince Lewyn scolded his nephew, and his response:

***FLASHBACK***

"-It's stupid Doran! You say you want to protect your designs but you fire workers who have been working on your boats for more than a year!"

Lothar watches as the newly knighted scolds his nephew, Lothas had to agree with prince Lewyn.

`I have known him since the day he was born but I will never understand my prince`

"Uncle, have some faith in me." Doran answers him with a calm voice, the prince is not even affected by the scolding of his uncle. Something remarkable because Lewyn Martell at the age of fifteen towers over his nine years old nephew.

"Faith?!" Lothar watches as Lewyn snaps again. The Dornishmen are known for their passion but Lewyn was always calmer than his peers, rarely getting angry, so Lothar is quite surprised by the elder prince's outburst.

"Shut up!" It seems that his prince has had enough. "I won't let you take your frustration out on me. We both know your anger isn't because I fired the shipbuilders."

Seeing his nephew yell at him, Lewyn became speechless, something that does not surprise Lothar because in his entire life Doran barely raised his voice a couple of times. Those occasions were when he argued with those old men in the Citadel, and during the birth of Prince Olyvvar, Lothar doesnt know of any other. Lewyn was never present so this is the first time he has witnessed his nephew's temperament.

`And what a temperament is that. Prince Doran may have the patience of a saint but he's still a salty Dornishman through and through.`

"And for your information, uncle." Doran spits out with clear anger in his voice. "The ships the foreign builders worked on weren't my new designs, they were existing ships with some improvements to the design I made as an experiment. Their sole purpose here was to train new shipbuilders, shipbuilders loyal to me and to Dorne that won't sell my designs to the the first person who offers them a bag of coins."

After Prince Doran had finished explaining no one said anything for a few moments, the silence was eventually broken by Lewyn who, cheeks flushed with embarrassment, apologized.

***END FLASHBACK***

`The problems of going from boy to man` Lothar remembers with an amused smile the why of Prince Lewyn's behavior, at that age Lewyn developed feelings for a girl from Shadow City, lust more than genuine feelings, but princess Dorna paid a generous amount of gold to the girl to move to another city because Lady Genna was going to visit Sunspear in a few moons and it would not look good for Prince Lewyn to have a mistress. The bad thing for the prince is that the girl left before they could consummate their relationship, and since then Lewyn had been in a very bad mood.

"It's time." Lothar turns his attention to Doran who jumps out of the yard swinging on a rope and landing a few feet away from him. "Come on, you have leaden legs." Doran winked at him as he walked toward the dock.

For a moment Lothar froze, amazed of how much is grown his protege. Is unbelievable, the baby prince is almost a man, Doran at almost twelve years old stands at 161cm, looking one or two years older, tho that does not suprise him since since his father is a very tall man.

"You are the one who has been sunbathing all morning." Lothar murmurs as he follows his prince.

Ser Lothar watches as the prince moves unnoticed through the crowd.

`All thanks to his clothes and the way he moves`

Lothar was raised to be a warrior, not a spy but by serving a prince as unpredictable and versatile as Doran he ended up learning many skills that he otherwise wouldn't even think about.

One of them is how to walk and blend with a crowd without attracting attention. For that he had to change his way of walking, because the nobles and knights have a very distinctive way of walking that any merchant or peasant will distinguish from leagues.

`Walking and moving in a different way was more difficult than I expected but it was worth it` Lothar watches as no heads turn towards them. `Although that would change if I were to remove my cloak and they would see my armor. Even tho Im only wearing a breastplate, the quality of it betrays me as a knight or nobleman`

Unlike him Doran does not wear a cloak or any form of armor. The prince is dressed in simple brown cotton pants, worn leather boots, and a gray shirt. On one shoulder he carries a leather bag inside which he has his hand stuck as if looking for something, Lothar knows that his prince is not looking for something; He is using the Valyrian artifact to follow their targets.

`As if prince Doran was not weird enough, although magic explained a lot`