When a ship like the one pictured below is at berth (is that right, at berth, at its berth, in berth?) and it's unloading its cargo, is the plank used for the cargo just called a gangplank, or does it have another name? Or is there just the one plank for people and cargo alike?
Its just the gang plank, (or gang way) although you might expect more than one. Also a ship of that size would unload some stuff from its holds via deck hatches using its yards as a crane It also wouldn't be that common for a ship of that size to come along side given the risk of getting marooned on a falling tide and then toppling over (not to mention the difficulty in manoeuvring in closed waters under sail alone for a square rigged ship) - it would be more common for it to drop anchor out in the roads (the deep water part of the port) and then unload its cargo into lighters or barges for transfer to the shore
Would it make more sense if there were a pier or other such? I've got this image in my head of Victoria coming down to the docks, she sees that the provisions for the N.W. are arriving and being tallied as the ship gets ready for her next outing. Victoria notices that the provisions seem like too much. There's also a team of carpenters doing something she's not sure of, and they shouldn't be there anyway because if the ship were in need of repair of some kind it would have headed over to the shipyards, which are on the other end of town. She's having a conversation with a crewman with whom she is familiar, Chippy, but all of this is overcomplicated if the ship isn't alongside some sort of more permanent structure where this scene is playing out...
You need a deepwater port with berths - it is possible , sailing ships used to go alongside at port of London for example, and at New york but it wasn't usual for most harbours to be deep enough in the days of sale unless they were on a major river Random point at English Harbour Antigua they used to deliberately put sailing ships aground on the tide so that they could be tipped over and the weed scraped off their bottoms. Its not easy to manoeuvre a big ship under sail into a berth - generally it would be aided by ships boats - motors made life a lot easier. ETa anchors could also be used - the ship would moor to its anchor off the pier and be warped (that is winched) closer to the mooring by ropes run from a mooring bollard to the ships capstan
Aye, true. But that's not what's happening just now. I guess I'm picturing something akin to this as regards the setting of the scene. And, no, my ship doesn't look like that. This is thing is clearly a warship. The Northern Wave is not a warship. She's a flagship for a fishing fleet... that doesn't exist on Earth... because this isn't Earth... and it's not really the 15th - 16th century. It's more like the 27th or 28th century as measured from our current era.
And is it on water? ... When you mentioned merfolk and such I got a little worried. I wrote one of those, should show you one day, entered the script in a contest...but, I don't think I won. Wrote another one, a 19c voyage to Australia, but got so frustrated I finished them all off at South Africa, midway...here we are, (attempted) usage of [edit] ... I enjoy following your progress, btw, good luck.
Yeah, that was a cringey name for sure. They're actually the descendents of modified who dolphins. I renamed them because merfolk is just...
that'll do .. I'd forgotten you were in a fantasy universe ... that being the case I'd just write it moored to the dock and not worry too much about the technicalities... you can always have the boat helped to its mooring by a bunch on sentient octopi or something