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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Most of the communication was done with signaling flags. Either they would hoist a string of various flags up in the mast where each flag represents a character but often a special signal determined beforehand. You could also have sailors standing on deck waving two flags like a semaphore. Sometimes the ships would be close enough that in a silent moment the captains could shout to each other.
But a lot of it was down to organization beforehand. Each captain would be responsible for their own ship and make decisions based on what they observed and what the plans were before the battle. A common tactic was to fight in a line with the Admiral in the front. The stern of one ship would be close to the bow of the next making it easy to pass orders down the line. So the line of ships could maneuver and fight like one. If they had to quickly turn around there was a Rear Admiral at the rear of the line who could take over command and lead the line.
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