Kevin's Watch

can anyone confirm what material Giantships are made from??

In the first chronicles (pronounced episodes ) in The Illearth War, it described how Hyrim & bloodguard travelled through groves of redwoods & teak that were used by the Giants to build their ships ....

yet in the second chronicles it appeared that the Giant's ships were made from stone hence the need for Pitchwife as a mender of damaged giantships....

answers on a postcard please......

The original Ships of the unholmed i dont think it says what they were made of...but it says they had giant stands of teak and redwood for ship making....the giants of the Searchs ship was made of some type of flexible granite. in the first chronicles its possible that the type of granite needed to be flexible enough for ship building was not available in the land.

answers on a postcard? does that mean keep it short?? hehe

the ships in the second chrons were stone, hence PitchWife's work aboard the Starfare's Gem.

TIW was first chrons, and I think they were possibly wooden, because Saltheart wanted 7 gilden-lode keels and rudders , which were wooden.


good catch!

iQuestor wrote:the ships in the second chrons were stone, hence PitchWife's work aboard the Starfare's Gem.

TIW was first chrons, and I think they were possibly wooden, because Saltheart wanted 7 gilden-lode keels and rudders , which were wooden.


good catch!

The Unhomed may not have had sufficient quantities of stone from which to build ships; thus, the need for hardwoods.

I believe that the Giants may have arrived in stone ships, but those were lost, or beyond repair by "any but the Shipwrights of Home" (to paraphrase the level of damage Starfare's Gem suffered). Certainly Pitchwife(or "a" pitchwife) could repair severe damage, but to build a stone ship wholesale probably required quantities of pitch and setrock beyond that probably carried on a tour.

Thus the Giants of Seareach needed to use the materials and skills at hand. The very concept of a Gildenlode keel or rudder would have almost certainly been unheard of by the original shipwrights.

I've always assumed that Starfare's Gem was rather special. That most giant ships are wood, but that they can make a stone ship for exceedingly important purposes. The Search was pretty important to the Giant's of Home, so they gave the First the biggest, strongest, most durable, most capable ship they could find.

It can't be easy to make a ship of stone. Certainly it would have been beyond the means of the Unhomed. I can imagine it required a certain kind of rare granite, unavailable just anywhere, too.

I can even believe that a stone ship is just not worth the effort for most purposes. Why build a vessel for fishing out of stone, for example?

Finally, it's possible that the lore of stone ships is something that the Giant's acquired after the Unhomed departed. 4,500 years is a long time. Above all other possibilities, I believe in this one the most.

I belive the vessel on which The First's father was captain was also of stone - after all Pitchwife fused the unfortunate captain to the ship's hull when he mended the hole in it.

Seeker, Hyrim and the Bloodguard were headed to Coercri, the City of the Unhomed. They had been shipwrecked there, so to speak, and the ships they had built to try and find their Home beyond the Sunbirth Sea were made of wood. Perhaps they left their home in a wooden ship, and the technology to make stone ones came into being after they had been long gone from Home. And perhaps being in a wooden ship had something to do with them being stranded there. All I can say for sure is the Giants of Coercri built ships of wood, whereas the Giants in the Second Chronicles, many times many generations after that, had stone ships. But I do wonder that if the ancient, much more ancient than EITHER of these times, Giants had the technology to build Revelstone, how could they not build stone ships? It seems to be inconsistent in a way. Perhaps because Revelstone was fashioned out of "gutrock" that already existed in a certain place, which they didn't need to remove? I don't know. Discussion?

I wonder if the gift of stone shipmaking was something the Elohim had given them for a simple 3+ day giantish tale.

the fact that they could create revelstone gave proof to their expert stone crafting,and pitchwife mentioned the midmast not being able to be replaced by any other than the shiprights of home and even given those shiprights of home without a pitchwife they couldnt do it....they needed stone flexible enough to be seaworthy leading me to believe they had some native stone that doesnt exist anywhere so far except where the Giants were from. and to make a ship they would need a pitchwife...its possible that the unhomed didnt have a pitchwive alive that had been able to pass down the stonecraft or the ability to make stone flexible enough. could be that the last pitchwife died during the lost sea voyage so the craft of shipmaking also was lost..the ability to carve gutrock and cliffsides was still available but a different trade from ship making. like the difference between a construction worker and a blacksmith. the blacksmith knows exactly how to temper metal to make it stronger more pliable etc, where the construction worker knows how to build but not how to create the material needed for building. or like wayfriend said it could have been a recently found skill over the last couple Giant generations......

does anyone know the name of the Land the giants come from?

I really hope SRD goes there in the last Chronicles.

In [u]The One Tree[/u] was wrote:That stone surprised Linden. Instinctively, she had questioned the nature of the Giantship, believing that granite would be too brittle to withstand the stress of the seas. But as her vision sprang into the ship, she saw her error. This granite had the slight but necessary flexibility of bone. Its vitality went beyond the limitations of stone.

Passages like this lead me to believe that a special kind of granite is needed. Perhaps a type that can only be found in the quarries of Home. Perhaps a type that was not discovered until long after the Unhomed had sailed. Perhaps a type that requires special lore to carve into a ship successfully.

Given the longevity of Giants, the fact that at the time of 2nd Chronicles there were still alive those who remember "the Lost", and the fact that the First's Father was Master of a stone ship, I have to conclude that the Giants have been making their ships of stone for a long time.

Perhaps the Gildenlode keels would've been considered as an extra, a feature to exploit the capabilities of the wood, Earthpower etc. Remember Foamfollower was able to propel the boat up to Revelstone by channeling power through the keel (I cannot recall if it was of Gildenlode or not). While I do not think they'd wanted to propel their Giantships the same way maybe they hoped that they'd help them steer the ships properly to find the way home.

I do not remember if the little practice-boat that Honninscrave and Seadreamer did their sailings in was of stone or not?

IrrationalSanity wrote:Given the longevity of Giants, the fact that at the time of 2nd Chronicles there were still alive those who remember "the Lost", and the fact that the First's Father was Master of a stone ship, I have to conclude that the Giants have been making their ships of stone for a long time.

I agree.

Remember Foamfollower was able to propel the boat up to Revelstone by channeling power through the keel (I cannot recall if it was of Gildenlode or not).

The keel and rudder of that small boat was indeed Gildenlode - remember Foamy's exhaustion when he and Covenant arrived at Revelstone?

Foamy. Clever nickname, but he wouldn't have liked it because it shortened his name. Good theory on the Elohim giving the gift of stone shipbuilding lore. I had not considered that. Is there nothing we can do to speed up the publication of the next book???? Jeez, I am only so creative on these posts, and I don't have enough juice for two and a half more years!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I believe all Giants ships were made of stone, even the unhomed. The Gildenlode keels and rudders were to be added to the new ships so the Giants could moved their ships thru the Soulbiter. Like Saltaheart could drive his boat up the Soulseases river in LBF.

Well, I do remember the mission to Seareach, they went through woods containing the teak used to make the Giantships, so the Seareach Giants did not use stone, at least not after they became Lost in the Land. I forgot the other wood mentioned, but two were brought up in the mission's trek to Coercri.