TL3+1 Mechanical Artillery

[Kraydak]

Originally Posted by teviet

A research project on the Byzantine navy many years ago impressed on me how effective napalm is as a ship-killing weapon. Age-of-sail ships could blast broadsides at each other for hours and still sail away, but one good hit with a 5th century flamethrower and the ship would burn to the waterline. I never understood why incendiaries were not more widespread in early modern naval warfare, though lack of access to petroleum may have been a factor. (Though I haven't exactly kept up with the latest historical research on this.)

TeV

I expect the two big reasons are that it is hard to project incendiaries very far (but see LT's Heated Shot) and that, more, the massively timbered Age-of-Sail ships that can resist cannon fire also don't catch fire that easily. Once they get going, they will be hard to put out, yes, but there are a lot of crew available to smother initial small burns caused by stray incendiaries.

War galleys, on the other hand, are glorified racing shells, and a lot of effort went into keeping the wood as dry (and light!) as possible.