Recently I was thinking about how in the first Pirates of the Caribbean movie The Black Pearl was claimed to be the fastest ship ever and the HMS Intercepter was the fastest ship in the royal navy, and in one scene The Black Pearl is easily catching up to the Interceptor. I understand that these are fictional vessels, but I still didn’t understand how one could be considerably faster than the other, when I can’t really tell the difference between the two designs(to the untrained eye, you wouldn’t be able to tell which one is faster by looking at it.) How is one ship so much faster than another ship that appears to be designed very similarly?
(Edit: thanks, i have a bit better understanding of what can cause this, thank you to everyone who has commented, although feel free to elaborate or provide additional explanations if you wish!)
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Consider cars briefly. A lighter weight car requires much less power to accelerate. Air acts as a liquid (sort of) at higher speeds so more aerodynamic designs make cars slice through the air easier.
If a boat has more sails, larger sails, better designed sails, better placed sails, then it will catch more air and accelerate more quickly. If the boat hull (the part in the water) is designed to be more hydrodynamic, it’ll slice through the water much easier. If the boat is as light weight as possible, it will require much less air to accelerate compared to a larger boat.
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