Seamanship

Seamanship is the handling of a vessel — sails, sheets, oars, ground tackle, cargo and the thousand pieces of ropework that keep all of it working — together with a practical knowledge of the sea’s animals and plants. It is the crew’s skill, where Piloting is the navigator’s.

For a voyage, a collective seafaring ability is built from the average Seamanship of the crew, with the pilot’s Piloting as a Secondary Modifier, and that composite is what the passage is resolved against.

In the short term — sail-setting or ropework carried out inside a handful of five-second rounds, which is the sort of thing that happens when a squall arrives or a boarding party does — Seamanship is tested with Strength, Dexterity or Climbing as a Secondary Modifier, whichever the task actually calls on.

Discipline. A leader addressing sailors aboard a vessel applies their Seamanship as a Secondary Modifier to persuasion tests. Mariners are a clannish lot and are not readily moved by a landsman, however eloquent.

Rowing. Some work on the water needs no seamanship at all. Rowing a boat is a Strength (Seamanship SR) Success Value test, the successful Secondary Roll adding one to the Success Value — anyone can pull an oar, and someone who has spent their life doing it pulls it better.

Weather lore. A sailor may test Seamanship to predict the weather for the next four-hour watch, resolved exactly as under Agriculture.