Uncharted Waters New Horizons

Okay I got more info. I might have mentioned some of those fact last year but anyway here they are:

Around 1200-02, the 4th Crusade was assembling and 20 000 foot soldiers, 9000 squires and 4500 knight were to show up in Venice who got the contract to transport them to the Holy Land at first but it was decided to land in Egypt instead.
The goal was to recapture Jerusalem taken by Saladin.

The Venetians built and assembled 450 round ships (probably Nao or Carrack) and 50 war galleys.
The crusaders were short on money so they didn't pay the entire sum (less than 1/3) so the Doge found a solution, attack the port city of Zara to the south. The Zarains were praying on their merchant ships.
Anyway, to make a long story short, the pope in Rome was mad at them for attacking a Christian city so he excommunicated them all (French,Germans,Venetians) if they went ahead with their plan, which they did. After the capture and the plundering of Zara, they still didn't have enough money to pay Venice for the ships, and food.
So a German delegation joined the Crusaders, telling a story about the Byzantines committing crimes against their people and neighboring territories. They convinced them to attack Constantinople and put the legitimate emperor back on the throne for 100000 silver coins (not sure about the exact amount) which was sufficient to pay back the Venetians.

They finally conquered Constantinople and the different countries divided the territories.
Venice got many Island in Greece and purchased Crete which started the war against Genoa who was supposed to get it.

BTW, some of the characters in the war between Genoa and Venice appears in UWNH. 🙂

I found it:

http://archive.org/search.php?query=shipbuilding%20AND%20mediatype%3Atexts

Look for the Shipbuilding from its beginnings volume 1,2 and 3. There are many drawings of ships from different periods.

In this link I gave in the SNES hack thread.

http://brunelleschi.imss.fi.it/michaelofrhodes/index.html

If you read the Journey Maps section, you get an amazing treasure trove of details about goods traded at the time and the connection to the Silk Road.
For example, the port of Tana (Azov ?) mentioned in the Galley of Romania map as well as Trebizond is significant of the different paths used by the caravans supplying the ports at different periods because of wars between Persian and Mongol Empires.
When the road to Tana (China-India-North-Eastern Black Sea) was compromised, they used Trebizond which was on the road connecting the Egypt-Palestine-Anatolia caravan road:
The goods arriving from China by Sea, passing trough the Strait of Malacca, Indian Ocean, Red Sea, to Alexandria.

Also, the port of Moncastro was probably connected to the rivers (Dniper,Don,etc.,leading to the Fair of Champagne, Germany and Sweden, even though it's not mentioned in the description.

This is stuff I read previously in the many books I borrowed and bought over the years but it all starts to make sense now and I get a clearer picture of the entire trading business and UWNH. 😀

That's why the Age of Exploration happened.
The European countries were trying to bypass the middlemen (Arab,Ottoman) to save on the cost of the goods coming from China and India. You know the West Indies, Christopher Columbus, Magellan, the Spanish Conquistadors,etc.

Man I love this! 😀 😀 😀

All right then, next time I see Pallah Abdul, Wallid Kemal and company, Catalina Erantzo will sink their fleets and make them pay for what the Turks did in 1453! 😀