Shipbuilding Skills
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Skills that allow construction of sturdy sea-going ships and their equipment and maintenance. This knowledge is taught and preserved by the Shipwrights' Guilds and is available only to seafaring peoples: Elves and Dunedain.The following are the Shipbuilding skills: Construction, Design, Mastbuilding, Outfitting, Sea Engines.
The skill that allows the shipbuilder to organize and direct common carpenters to execute the designer's plans for the ship. Involves mostly selecting, preparing and bending lumber as well as overseeing the general seaworthiness of the craft and repairing it as needed. The Dunedain excel at this skill, making the strongest and the largest ships of all.
A creative shipbuilder not only follows the designs and counsels of the ancestors, but continuously looks for ways to improve them and generate new ship designs. In charge of maintaining and interpreting the charts for the ship types, Ship Designers have assisted in creating the glorious fighting Navy of Numenor, and are ever concerned with improving it. The Elves excel at this skill, embracing the aesthetic aspects of design and creating ever more beautiful types.
A skill on its own, Mast Building means selecting the right type of tree in the right forest at the right time of year, storing it in ideal conditions and supervising the carpenters who would fashion it into a mast. As the suitable forests are depleted, it is the Mastbuilder's duty to find replacements in strange new lands.
The setting up of the ship with rigging, sails, ropes, anchors and a myriad other implements of the sea voyage and arranging them in the proper order. This also includes the proper management of the rigging during the voyage and overlaps somewhat with Navigation. The pragmatic, functional duties of the outfitters often clash with designers' plans.
The skill that allows the ships to perform additional functions over and above ferrying people and cargo over water. Most frequently this means making war on the high seas. The Dunedain are experts in the craft, ever increasing the size and numbers of catapults, ballistae, crossbows and fire bombs that their warships can carry and employ.
