During medieval navy wars, there was a lot of smoke and noise from cannon fire. The weather was sometimes stormy. The visibility and sound wouldn’t have been that good. How were they able to command ships during such conditions and keep updated with rapidly changing events during battle?
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Judging by your description, I think you’re talking about the age of sail. ie. big sailing ships loaded with cannons. Those weren’t the medieval days but the between the 16th and 18th century.
Secondly, those engagements weren’t as big as you think. Most were skirmishes between hands full of ships or tens of ships at most. The biggest naval engagements still numbered less than 100 ships total.
But you’re right, communication is hard in those conditions. That’s why it required clear roles, clear plans and clear chains of command.
The ships themselves had roles. A ship of the line is basically a floating bunker filled with cannons. Astounding firepower but not much speed or manoeuvrability. That ship has a very clear idea of what it can and cannot do.
A frigate is a warship build for speed. They’re much faster and more agile and their role was defined around that. On their own, frigates made fantastic patrol ships that could easily chase down merchant ships and pirates while outgunning them.
In larger fleets, those frigates would act as scouts. And in larger battles, a frigate would either engage opposing frigates or act as a signal ship. That means the frigate maintains a position outside the battle where it maintains line of sight with its fleet commander and the rest of the fleet.
When the fleet commander raises signal flags. The frigate will repeat those signals to the rest of the fleet. Cannon smoke might obscure the command ship and opposing ships. But a frigate could sit out to the sides where friendly ships could easily see them and their repeated signals.
It was actually considered very bad form for a large ship of the line to fire upon a smaller ship like a frigate. It’s simply unsporting.
A plan is of course also very helpful. When a fleet goes into battle, it has a goal. Stop an enemy fleet, sink a particular ship, capture a particular enemy, wholesale destruction, break through a blockade. Everyone goes into battle knowing the plan and knowing what their role in the plan is.
That means that while the battle develops, each captain can evaluate the situation and adapt their tactics to best serve their role in the plan.
This is a big part of why we romanticize captains so much. These men were not just the absolute law on their ships. They were also solely responsible for figuring out how to fulfil their duty under punishing conditions. Whether that’s complete isolation in the middle of the ocean or during the chaos of battle. A captain had to find a way to perform his duty no matter what and with little to no support or communication at times.
It’s also why you see captains and their officers on the rear deck peering about with their monoculars all the time in movies. Sailing ships move with the wind and tides. They can’t just reverse direction. That means that it’s of paramount importance for a captain to try and predict their opponents so they can outsmart and thus outsail them. They’re constantly looking at the opposing ships, how their sails are set, what their men are doing to their rigging to try and predict how to best sail his own ship.
And at the end of the day, sailing battles weren’t nearly as fast as you think they are. Ideally, sailing ships wanted to manoeuvre into a better firing position than their opponent and then quickly and decisively end that engagement. Ideally without destroying the opposing ship because it represents a valuable prize.
But outside of enormous fleet actions where ships of the line just line up and batter away at each other, most naval engagements were more like games of cat and mouse between individual ships or smaller fleets.
Ships could chase each other for hours or even days trying to get the upper hand on each other. And a lot of the time, military ships spend their time chasing down opposing merchantmen or pirates. Ships either escaped or surrendered. There’s not much point in trying to trade broadsides with a frigate if you’re sailing a sloop.
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