Gold!!!!

[Super Squirrel]

Re: Gold!!!!

 

I've decided for simplicity to use the following:

 

1 SP / Day of River Travel

2 SP / Day of Sea Travel

100 SP Chartering Fee / Person*

 

*A chartering fee is imposed any time a vessel is chartered to go to a location outside of their normal trading course.

[Basil]

Re: Gold!!!!

 

Hmm. Volume of a sphere (4/3) [pi] r^{3}

 

radius of a golf ball about 2 cm

 

Volume of a golf ball about 31 cubic cm

 

Gold weighs about 19.3 grams per cubic cm if I recall correctly, so you're looking at about about 589 grams or a little over a pound.

 

 

cheers, Mark

More exactly: A regulation golf ball has a diameter of 1.68", thus a radius of 2.1336 cm. Gold's sg is 19.32. So, mass is 786 g.; 27.73 oz. avdp. if you insist on staying in the Dark Ages . (25.27 oz. troy; however, judging by everything I've read from HeroGames, they don't understand, or don't care about, the difference between oz. avdp. and oz. troy, and are using oz. avdp. throughout).

 

Valdorian Age, page 19, says "One ounce of gold is worth roughly 400... coins", so your golden golfball is worth circa 11,090 coins. IF, of course, it is pure and you can get its full worth from a moneychanger.

 

 

BTW, those 0.5 oz. avdp. coins? If they are 10% copper and 90% silver, with a total, final mass of 0.5 oz. avdp, and are one-twentyth as thick as they are broad, will have a diameter of 4.12 cm. That is somewhat larger than the old Eisenhower "silver" dollar!

 

Another BTW: Once you've gotten sorted out on avoirdupois vs. troy weights, don't forget the THIRD system, apothecaries' weights. Which you should not confuse with apothecaries' measure; that's a series of units of capacity.

 

And people wonder why I stick with the metric system.

[Basil]

Re: Gold!!!!

 

Historically, princes were free to alter the carat of their coinage (that is, change the proportion of precious metal in their coins), and this was abused many times in history (in particular in France; by contrast England was very good about avoiding debasement of their coinage, keeping sterling at 92.5% silver from the 12th Century until 1920) when the prince borrowed at one value, then debased his currency (sometimes drastically) and paid off in coin of the lower precious-metal content.

 

What many people don't realize is that devaluing the currency hit the intrinsic value two ways. You see, the same dies (blank-cutting and impressing) were used, so the devalued coins had the same volume as the old coins. Since the alloying metal had a lower density, the coins landed up massing less. Thus, the coins were a lower fraction, of a lesser mass, of silver/gold.

 

No wonder people hated it when coins were devalued.

[Cancer]

Re: Gold!!!!

 

Cancer have you read rogers warfare under oars.

 

now the sea cow a 400 ton merchant (national Geograpic spell ah) that sank in the BCE. crew 5 and captain. now a man could get a drachma (silver piece) a day with the Athenian navay (6 month of work) as a rower.

 

so on the cow the crew would make 5 silver a day the cow would cost about (from memory I ran a Greek game long ago) 6,000 silver and last 6 years so if you use it 10 months thats a 100 silver cost. so that 200 silver a month plus as a bottom line. a passenger is profit over cargo so I would bill 2 silver a day for passage (no pay but work could go, some work and some pay good)

 

I don't think I've read that book by Rogers (I've read one or two others of his). The one I've read is by Casson, and I went browsing through it yesterday looking for useful tidbits. That book wasn't concerned with the economics of maritime commerce, rather the technical aspects of ships and sailing. I'll have to find that book you mention.

 

The "speed record" for an extended voyage by galley in the Mediterranean in ancent times is 9 knots. That was a case for a fast ship and where the wind was remarkably steady and usefully strong and from dead astern for the whole trip. This was from Italy to Alexandria (in two days), which is "downhill" in the sense that the prevaling winds in the Mediterranean blow out of the northwest. More typical speeds for that trip, for fleets of several ships (and you usually sailed in fleets for protection against pirates), were more like 4 to 6 knots.

 

The trip going the other way always is a lot slower. Against a wind the ships had to tack, and single-masted ships like galleys don't do that very well. The average for fleets for that seems to be in the range of less than 2 to about 2.5 knots.

 

These averages are simply great-circle distance divided by duration of voyage. The ships' instantaneous speed is somewhat higher than that, but going against the wind you have to do a lot of zig-zags.