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Colored Sails?


Fuzzyhead12

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question i have, how common were colored, or partly colored sails in the 7 seas? is there any Historical info for that?

 

 

Edit after a hour of research:

 

as far as i know sails were sealed with tar so they wont soak up water in rain.

oh and i found some instances how and why ships had colored sails, Red and Brown were fairly common btw

aurora2.jpg

 

the Practical effect was, colored sails protect the eyes of the sungrare then you need to look in the sails, its basicly a sunglass. White sails were killing your eyes

secondary, red and brown sails could have been a byproduct by sealing the linen with tar, so it might have been not to expennsive, while darker colors like Black were expensive and gray out fast.

Also yellow sails were common too these are also a byproduct by  sealing the linen with tar.

"yellow ochre through various brick reds to dark" was the common results by sealing the sails

 

tall-ship-under-sails2.jpg

 

this is a 1750's era description:

The sails of fishing-vessels are generally tanned: lightermen, &c. use the following composition to colour and preserve their sails, viz. horse grease and tar, mixed to a proper consistance, and coloured with red or yellow ochre, with which, when heated, the sails are payed over.

The following method is also much approved, viz. the sail, being spread on the grass, is made thoroughly wet with sea-water, and then payed over, on both sides, with brown or red ochre mixed with sea-water to the consistence of cream, it is then well rubbed over, on both sides, with linseed oil. The sail may be used within 24 hours after being oiled.

The tanning of sails in the royal navy has been tried, but is not approved of.

 

 

 

 

sailcloth-colors.jpg

 

like this.

 

but for other colors like purple and othe blues and greens you need to have a alot of pocket money, the romans used purply dyed silk sails for some period of time.

But i think a trader with enought pocketmoney would be able to aply blue or greens aswell while these colors must be aplied before the tanning process and will get into a darker tone after it.

 

l1174.jpg

 

Conclusion, Red, Yellow and White tones were the most common colors in the 7 seas due the fact that most ships had tanned sails, these colors have nothing todo with the pocketmoney of a captain.

Fisherboats were more common in Red tones sails due the small sails and its their investment, they were everyday on the seas to catch fish. Military vessels were using more White to yellow colors, aswell as long range traders. While there were also other big squarerigged ships with Red, Blue and Green sails. I personaly dont understand why artist of that period only draws these engagement pictures

 

So Painting/Tanning your sails should be possible, maybe make Tar a primary resource for that

 

Captain kidd was once forced to patch his sails with Red tanned sails, it basicly resulted in a red grey white to yellow pattern and would probelly looked like a camoflage pattern XD

Edited by Fuzzyhead12
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Coloured sails were somewhat popular, some navies liked them, Ottomans for example liked to sail with crimson sails, I'm sure you have seen the red sails of Chinese junks too. Stripes and patterns were also fairly popular like the famous cross from the Spanish navy used them as you can see from the ships under Columbus and also during the armada, Vikings as another example often had something like a raven or stripes. If what you are asking is did navies use them during the game period, its a bit of a yes and no. Generally the main fighting navies would prefer to make sails efficiently rather than make them showy, why spend 2 or 3 times making a fancy sail when you could make 2 or 3 sails, much the same as why patterns and carvings disappeared during and after the latter half of the 18th century. As a general rule if a nation of individual wanted to draw attention to a specific ship they would pay out for dyed sails, but they would generally be in simple cheap colours like red or yellow unless there was someone really trying to show off but it was also often the case that people chose not to use colour because it made them more of a target for privateers and pirates from further away.

So in short colourful sails were used similarly to how pleasure craft use sails these days, white generic sails are more common but if someone wants to make a boat look good or draw attention to it they would have rigged it up with some more "look at me" sails.

Edited by Fluffy Fishy
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Salt water and sunlight would bleach sails so to color them would just be a waste of money. Color wasnt that real at this time.

as far as i know sails were sealed with tar so they wont soak up water in rain.

oh and i found some instances how and why ships had colored sails, Red and Brown were fairly common btw

aurora2.jpg

 

the Practical effect was, colored sails protect the eyes of the sungrare then you need to look in the sails, its basicly a sunglass. White sails were killing your eyes

secondary, red and brown sails could have been a byproduct by sealing the linen with tar, so it might have been not to expennsive, while darker colors like Black were expensive and gray out fast.

Also yellow sails were common too these are also a byproduct by  sealing the linen with tar.

"yellow ochre through various brick reds to dark" was the common results by sealing the sails

 

this is a 1750's era description:

The sails of fishing-vessels are generally tanned: lightermen, &c. use the following composition to colour and preserve their sails, viz. horse grease and tar, mixed to a proper consistance, and coloured with red or yellow ochre, with which, when heated, the sails are payed over.

The following method is also much approved, viz. the sail, being spread on the grass, is made thoroughly wet with sea-water, and then payed over, on both sides, with brown or red ochre mixed with sea-water to the consistence of cream, it is then well rubbed over, on both sides, with linseed oil. The sail may be used within 24 hours after being oiled.

The tanning of sails in the royal navy has been tried, but is not approved of.

 

 

 

sailcloth-colors.jpg

 

like this.

 

but for other colors like purple and othe blues and greens you need to have a alot of pocket money, the romans used purply dyed silk sails for some period of time.

But i think a trader with enought pocketmoney would be able to aply blue or greens aswell while these colors must be aplied before the tanning process and will get into a darker tone after it.

 

Conclusion, Red, Yellow and White tones were the most common colors in the 7 seas due the fact that most ships had tanned sails, these colors have nothing todo with the pocketmoney of a captain.

Fisherboats were more common in Red tones sails due the small sails and its their investment, they were everyday on the seas to catch fish. Military vessels were using more White to yellow colors, aswell as long range traders. While there were also other big squarerigged ships with Red, Blue and Green sails. I personaly dont understand why artist of that period only draws these engagement pictures

 

So Painting/Tanning your sails should be possible, maybe make Tar a primary resource for that

 

Captain kidd was once forced to patch his sails with Red tanned sails, it basicly resulted in a red grey white to yellow pattern and would probelly looked like a camoflage pattern XD

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Linen base colour is more grayish or brownish. Cotton being more white wash.

 

Might be that many mending could be done with prized cloth and if we move to the Indian Ocean, as many pirates did, I bet the amount of tinted silk was put to good use.

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question i have, how common were colored, or partly colored sails in the 7 seas? is there any Historical info for that?

 

[...]

 

Conclusion, Red, Yellow and White tones were the most common colors in the 7 seas due the fact that most ships had tanned sails, these colors have nothing todo with the pocketmoney of a captain.

Fisherboats were more common in Red tones sails due the small sails and its their investment, they were everyday on the seas to catch fish. Military vessels were using more White to yellow colors, aswell as long range traders. While there were also other big squarerigged ships with Red, Blue and Green sails. I personaly dont understand why artist of that period only draws these engagement pictures

 

So Painting/Tanning your sails should be possible, maybe make Tar a primary resource for that

 

Captain kidd was once forced to patch his sails with Red tanned sails, it basicly resulted in a red grey white to yellow pattern and would probelly looked like a camoflage pattern XD

 

White was the norm thought, and probably by a large margin. Wheathered sails was probably common, and some yellowish tones of white would probably not be uncommon. However, red blue and green sails is something more akin to sails in the later part of the 19th century. If you have scources that states otherwise please post them.

 

For me coloured sails would really break the immersion. I like the feeling of being in one of the paintings. That said, I am all for more customization of the hull.

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Dont like idea of colored sail but i love to see at some point user made sails pattern like we use to do in PotBS. Ofc this need to be approved by developers (or moderators) and be appropriate to the era and game design. As well pattern should be allowed only on main sail. Great addition to clans - sailing under clan sail pattern imo.

 

Here is examples from PotBS (those ones on red sails but game allowed you to choose sail color anyway) - in old days i got plenty of nice screenshots but now only few left:

 

TqgxPXX.jpg

 

SXGF5eO.jpg

 

Flags user made its a different story - not sure how much need to be reworked in game to allow that.

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Dont like idea of colored sail but i love to see at some point user made sails pattern like we use to do in PotBS. Ofc this need to be approved by developers (or moderators) and be appropriate to the era and game design. 

The question is whether we can actually find anything appropriate for the era.

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From looking through the Ship paintings thread, I could not find a single example of colored sails, or sails with patterns on them.  While I'm not against having variants of off-white sails, I'd need to see an example from the in-game timeline to stomach anything more egregious.

Reddish tanned sails for the game's smaller vessels would be fine. Anything gaff-rigged.

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well ive tried to post images with tanned sails on ships but aperently the image extension is not alowed, but i think historical paintings of that time period is counting more then replicas with tanned sails, but if you do a imagesearch "Tanned Sails Ship" then oyu will find alot of tanned sails.

 

here have something from imagur instead

 

7LtFnL4.jpg

Edited by Fuzzyhead12
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here some more tanbark sails

tanbarksails01.jpg?w=590

 

from-eyeofthewind-2.jpg

 

eye_of_the_wind.jpg

 

^this one shows how the sun bleeches out the color out of the sails

 

 

 

Tres+Hombres+foto+Hajo+Olij.jpg

 

 

also please consider everyone of us is a Privateer, we buy our own ships so we should be able to decide if we want tanbark or not on our sails

Edited by Fuzzyhead12
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here some more tanbark sails

 

 

Is that a screen from a game? Tanbark sails on small ships maybe (that have basis in history), but I still don't think it should be on the larger  square rigs. PotBS had coloured sails, and it made the game look worse. For me having customization limited to the hull appeals to both the people that want to make the ship personal and the people that want the historical immersion. 

Edited by accents
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Is that a screen from a game? Tanbark sails on small ships maybe (that have basis in history), but I still don't think it should be on the larger  square rigs. PotBS had coloured sails, and it made the game look worse. For me having customization limited to the hull appeals to both the people that want to make the ship personal and the people that want the historical immersion. 

1st one is from black flag, and these are just excempel how these sails would look like , i think bigger ships would also work with this. But since the bigger ships Military or Traders were mostly owned bynation you usually dont see tanned sails.

 

These ships wer most likly to encounter combat and thos it woulg have been cheaper replace the untanned sails, instead of tanning the sails

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I haven't come across any historical exampel of ship that size having that dark sails is all I am saying. I think your earlier picture gives a better picture of how tanned sails looked. 

i havent come across any historic painting that shows tanned sails on big square rigged ships, but in the era of the Barqes there are alot of tanned ships.

 

probelly because the big square rigged ships in that era were in the hands of private traders, these Barqes got very popular in the secound half of the 19th hundred, (1850 +)

 

Alexander_von_Humboldt_ship_all_sails.jp

Alexander von Humboldt

its to note that this Barqe got her green sails because of a Beer advertising around 1988, she was a Fireship in the Kaiserlichen Marine from 1906, surived both worldwars and got refitted as sailship in 86

also just another Exemple

 

 

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Do note that althought small civilian vessels regularly had colored sails, it was still expensive to color them, especially on a large military vessel, and that large military vessels were more likely yo have their sails damaged by the rough weather or hostiles than by rot.
 
So as a genrality in-game that would be a yes on small trading vessels but rather ahistorical on this era large military ships.
 
"[As opposed to small fishing vessels], The tanning of sails in the [british] Royal Navy has been tried but is not approved of"
Source for that quote: The Elements and Practice of Rigging, Seamanship, and Naval Tactics, 1794 ( with later reprints under different names )

 

A pirate could probably do whatever he wants with his sails thought as long as he is not busy pillaging, but i'd like a source on it.

 

abd4e460c4f62a4cd2ad00f0d6483d2f.jpg

Edited by Captain Jean-Luc Picard
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