forum How would a Sandship move?

Started July 22, 2018 by @Yamatsu

tune

I've got a Caravan that moves through a desert, and I want it to be a massive boat. Aside from magic and crabs, how would something the size of a small cruise liner move (I'm thinking 3 stories tall for the boat proper)?

Treads, like a tank…

That could work. They'd be retractable for those rare cases when it would actually go into the water, but then it's less of a boat and more of a, well, tank. I keep thinking of the Sandcrawler from Star Wars, and I was thinking about an actual boat that could sail. I know the bottom would have to be super smooth, but would sails be enough? Maybe like a steamship with paddlewheel kicking up massive clouds of sand? I'm not sure.

Thank you for your input, I think I finally realized that I'm the creator of my world, and my word is Gospel!

No, seriously, that helped.

I was just thinking of magic and then I saw "without magic", so you know, tank treads…

And to ease confusion about whether it's a boat or land vehicle, you could still refer to parts of it using boat lingo e.i. helm, bough, assorted decks!

Well, I could go full Pirates of the Caribbean and use crabs if all else fails. They seemed to work well enough.

True. They are an all purpose animal, for both transportation and emergency food.

You could alter your world's laws of physics, or maybe make gravity a little different so you can actually sail on the sand like a boat.

You could take a technological approach and use some sort of anti-gravity device to keep the boat hovering above the ground.

maybe use the crab design to create a sort of mechanical system for moving? Like a bunch of legs that carry it.

Or maybe just the one set of legs that carries the boat like a big crab?

the irl type of boat I think would be the most plausable boat would be a two hulled sailboat. It's made to kinda float on the water. That could be useful, because then you could probably justifying using just wind to move it. On the downside: it might not fit into the aesthetic.

if all else fails: don't explain how it moves and let the reader figure it out. SW, for example, doesn't explain what exactly the blade of a lightsaber it made of or how the handle is able to not break cuz of it, but no one questions it all that much. You can trust the reader to believe the impossible at times.

"What do you know?! Haven't you ever heard of suspension of disbelief?!"

Think. How do boats move in water. How do old planes move in the sky. Propellers. Maybe design a series of propellers that can move through sand dunes and water.
Another idea is to make the ship flat on the bottom and wide, so it "floats" across the sand. While a giant wheel moves it along. This wheel could look like it was torn off a bucket-wheel excavator and crammed in. This would be good if you want a post-apocalyptic style world.

Oh my gosh. A SAND STEAMSHIP! That's awesome!

Just an idea maybe you could have a long giant screw that went along the bottom of the ship and as it spun it would pull the ship forward like when a regular screw goes into wood.

Just an idea maybe you could have a long giant screw that went along the bottom of the ship and as it spun it would pull the ship forward like when a regular screw goes into wood.

that is straight up brilliant