TOTAL WAR WIKI

Shipyard
Category:	Port - Navy
Level:	0
Turns to build:	2
Building cost:	1250
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Enables
Dockyard

A shipwright needs somewhere to build ships, even if this is only a slipway and a timber yard – but any piece of firm foreshore will do for smaller vessels!

The services of a smithy within the yard are also very useful, as most ships use a surprising amount of bespoke ironwork in their construction, not to mention hundreds of nails! A shipyard can produce smaller vessels and carry out repairs and maintenance too. Careening is a regular chore for wooden vessels: hulls become fouled with weeds and barnacles that cause drag and slow the vessel. A shipyard has all the gear necessary to empty a ship, then haul it onto a beach or slipway so that it can be scraped clean and washed by the tides.

Historically, shipyards needed a good source of timber close by, or were on the estuaries of navigable rivers (so that wood could be shipped from further inland to the yard). Buckler’s Hard on the Beaulieu River in the New Forest in southern England is a typical shipyard in where it was constructed. However, it is larger than many, and had an extensive staff of artisans and could handle two ships at once. The shipwrights of Buckler’s Hard built HMS Agamemnon, Admiral Horatio Nelson’s favourite ship, in 1781; many of the crew were equally attached to their captain, and followed him to later commands.