Savage Seas?

[onceuponapriori]

Hello everyone. I'm working on a new campaign setting called Streit: Blood and Soil. The campaign setting is my attempt at providing gamers with a realistic, consistent and immersive medieval experience. As of yet, every campaign setting with which I'm comfortably familiar has elements which pose insurmountable stumbling blocks on the path to a true medieval feel; these, I hope to address in my world. Mind you, I'm not trying to replicate Earth's Middle Ages, I'm trying to emulate the culture, politics etc.

Now onto the assistance that I need... I'm trying to understand what makes certain stretches of ocean more rough than others. What factors contribute to the global "roughness" of an ocean? Could those same factors be applied locally, to make a certain region -- or stretch -- of the ocean far more rough than the rest of it?

If anyone knows of a resource they could point me to, I'd be happy to read it. Thanks in advance. I'm sure I'll have more questions as I proceed.

 

[onceuponapriori]

Well, I did a little research and found out that, while there are many factors that contribute to a body of water's turbulence, wind is mostly responsible. The varying wind-related factors that help to cause rougher seas are:

1. Faster winds, which have more energy to transfer.

2. Winds that have blown for longer, since there was more time to transfer energy.

3. How far the waves have travelled with the wind upon them, for the same reason as (2).

Other factors are: volcanic eruptions, landslides, earthquakes and "ship quakes". Also, shallow waters force waves to become "bunched up", providing for steeper, but smaller waves. I'm not sure whether a steep or a "large" wave is harder to navigate. Finally, waves in shallow water travel slower than waves in deeper water.

I'm not sure what to conclude from all of this, but I'll keep thinking and looking. I have at least a part of my answer now: the rougher I'd like the ocean, the stronger I should make the winds (which seems like common sense). It looks like I just have to decide whether to employ shallow or deep water.

Please let me know if you find anything out.