My current roleplaying campaign (AD+D) includes a river, a channel and an ocean.
I have given ‘The Empire’, who just use the channel, galleys. Meanwhile the Viking types (Ocean Barbarians) and the Pirates use longboats and sail everywhere.
Is it realistic for galleys to be restricted to coast or river channels?
What size could the longboats be?
I was thinking of a smaller one carrying about 6 crew and 10 passengers being about 35 feet long, 20 feet wide, with one mast + sail and oars.
How big could they get?
the viking longboats were quite versatile, just google for the Oseberg ship or the Gokstad ship, remains of viking ships found in Norway. They were approximately 30 m long and had room for 30 rowers (15 pairs of oars).
However, in Denmark, remains of a longboat of 36 meters has been found harboring 78 oars with room for more than 100 men.
Galleys – it depends heavily on how sophisticated/advanced your civilization is in regards to maritime technology? Do you have compasses? Advanced navigational tools? Are these war galleys or commercial vessels that depend mostly on sail and only break out the oars when necessary?
But yeah, generally galleys tended to be coastal vessels. There were lots of reasons for staying in sight of land. Navigation was one, but you also wanted quick access to a port or harbor in case of storms. Generally, galleys had lots of men and not a whole lot of storage area (compared to later sailing ships). So you wanted ready access to food and particularly water.
Because they had to be rowed, you wanted to keep galleys pretty light, so they probably weren’t heavily ballasted and keeled. That means that they’d be no fun at all in a storm.
