Freight and passenger canal narrow-boats

Cost freight boat:  200gp

Cost passenger, modest basic accommodations boat:  250gp

Cost passenger, middle-range accommodations boat:  300gp

Cost passenger, luxury accommodations creating a positive impression with most visiting, non-player characters boat:  350gp

These numbers are for wooden hulled boats.  Add an additional 100gp for metal hulled boats.  Add an additional 100gp for double hulled boats.

Weight:  6600lbs

Freight boat carrying capacity: 66000 / 66500lbs*

Passenger boat, freight carrying capacity: 6000 / 6500lbs*

Specialized boats built to carry vehicles such as chariots, wagons, or caravans and their pulling animals determined by DMs discretion.

*At the DMs discretion the flat roof can in safety give a freight or passenger boat an extra 500lbs worth of external storage space.  A roof load of more than 500lbs gives a slight change of overturning the boat during stormy weather.

Narrow boats have an AC of 30 and 40 damage will penetrate the walls. You should double AC and damage threshold numbers to penetrate if the boat is made of metal.  For double hulled boats, an enemy must have two successful attacks on the same area to break through both hulls.

Freight canal boats have a large cargo hold, with a common room for the crew.  Passenger canal boats provide 6 cramped, yet comfortable cabins for character parties.  A cabin can be made to be a small workshop.  Access to the cabins is a narrow hallway on one side of the boat.  Canal boats give the party members the comforts of home, out in the unforgiving wilderness.

Modest Cabin

Passenger canal boat cabins have 2 bunk beds, chair and table, a chest and 2 pull out drawers under the bottom bunk bed for personal storage space*, as well as a three gallon barrel, with a spigot, for safe to drink water, or alcoholic drinks, kept fresh and cold by a preservation spell.  There is also a wall-mounted lantern for light, while bolted to the floor is a wood, coal, or dried peat burning stove, or a magically heated stove - for heating and cooking.  A bed roll can be rolled out on the floor to accommodate a second guest.

In the common language, one drawer has a brass nameplate label “upper”, while the other is labeled “lower”.

Horse pulling narrow boat

Before the internal combustion engine, moving freight and passengers by water was far less expensive than moving the same freight and passengers by draft animals, wagons, and seldom paved rural roads.  For example, a typical Conestoga wagon is four feet wide and 18 feet long.  These wagons needed two draft animals to transport about six tons of cargo.  On the other hand, the United Kingdom’s narrow-boats are seven feet wide and 70 feet long.  These need one draft animal to pull a boat that can carry about 30 tons of cargo.

By using canal boats you save a significant amount of money by using one draft animal, while transporting five times the cargo.  A narrow boat can also tow a second narrow boat without a loss of travel speed.  This is why the Industrial Revolution started on canal boats and ships.

Narrow boats move at the walking pace of the average draft animal.  However, some parties have installed steam engines fueled by wood, coal, or other combustible materials.  Some higher skilled parties create magically powered engines for their narrow boats.  Because narrow boats were pulled by draft animals, few narrow boats used folding masts.  Yet, some narrow boats used sails to cross rivers and lakes.

3 narrow boats with stone walls

In my home campaign, my players usually use one freight boat to move their equipment and one passenger boat as their mobile bastion.  They have in storage a boat designed to transport their passenger caravan and freight wagon.  My player characters have also installed on their boats two bullseye lanterns  in front, and two additional lanterns in the rear that are lit during night or stormy weather.