Though the refugees who'd fled to the Refugee Continent had crossed thousands of kilometers of harsh seas to reach their new home, upon arriving their maritime technology and aptitudes for sailing in most cases regressed after arrival. There were three main factors for this: capacity, priorities and fear. Capacity is the most direct one. While many of the refugees who fled south were carpenters, yard workers or shipwrights who'd helped complete the craft that had spirited them away and kept them afloat along the way once they arrived they found themselves on undeveloped shores without slipways, docks, timber drying kilns, looms for making sails and so forth. Afterwards, the main priority of the first colonies was simple survival. There was little effort that could be spared for activities which did not directly contribute towards getting by. But finally was the matter of fear. Fear of the perils of the high sea but more importantly of returning to find the evil which had destroyed their ancestral kingdom and alerting them of their hidden sanctuary. Ships were generally beached and scuttled as much to eliminate that temptation as to salvage their timbers. Few craft bigger than fishing boats were built during the first century after landfall. As such the art of shipbuilding had to be largely relearned over subsequent centuries.By the onset of the Havenite Civil War much of what had been lost had been relearned, though it was still largely applied to coastal craft. Also added to the equation was the matter of gunpowder weapons. Captains were at first and quite understandably reluctant to have cannon on their ships as the weapons could be quite temperamental. Even so in 315 during the Havenese Invasion the Respitians had begun to experiment with naval gunnery, though this was only used three times in the conflict before it's conclusion and it's significance to repulsing the Havenese was marginal, though in latter conflicts it would prove its worth. Between the Northwestern States and the Kingdom of Haven from the third to the fifth century the primary weapon of war was the galley, be it armed with a ramming prow or a small battery of guns. Smaller galiots were used by scouts and (more commonly) pirates. This would change in the late 5th century.This change would begin around the year 400 AL with the pirate Doan Frenn, captain of the privateer galley Goddess of Luck. Hailing from the Five Cities' Federation, he (along with several other pirate ships) launched raids on Havenese ships making the voyage from the City of Haven to the King Tellervan river delta, rounding the continent from the west and then sailing east. There are a wide variety of tales on the subject some of which are fanciful but what can generally be gleened is this. On his third voyage he had captured a Havenese Caravel which he was escorting home when he was confronted by a trio of Havenese Galleys. In desperation he sailed due south into the open ocean in hopes of evading them. This was successful, but a storm from the north blew them further south then they had intended. Much to their supprise, they had stumbled upon the Corsair Islands.On the largest of these islands, Frenn set up a camp to begin repairs to his ships. After two months of work, he decided to sail back to the mainland in the captured Caravel, leaving it's original crew of fifty and twenty of his own men behind. As local fishing was good and they had some animals to breed and grain and potatoes to plant, they were able to set up some basic food production which sufficed until the Frenn returned a few months latter with some additional supplies (as well as a number of women) and thus was born Frennstown. For several years he used these islands as a base from which to launch repeated attacks against Havenese shipping. Much of the plunder (including the ships) he sold in the growing Southern Settlements while he kept a couple of ships and took those captured sailors and passengers that he could not ransom to bolster his base of operation. Even so, eventually Frenn cultivated too many enemies back home through a series of scandals which forced him to abandon his original nation for his growing pirate den. Eventually word of the den and the islands spread and a few more pirates would set up shop on the islands. The natives to these islands were exceptionally primitive. By the time the Havanese had managed to discover the islands in 431, the pirate foothold on them was already strong. In 444 the Royal Havenese Navy launched an attack with a fleet of ten galleys to try to scour these islands. Three of which would founder en route and while they were able to raise one pirate enclave, this was enough to force the other five that had been established by this time to pull together, shatter the Havense fleet in a night raid. One galley was destroyed, one ran aground, three were taken and the remaining two were forced to retreat back to the mainland. They never made it back to home ports.In any case the significance of the failed Havanese Scouring showed two developments: one political and one technological. The political one was the emergence of the Corsair Kingdom, when the captains decided to elect one of their ranks to become a King. Unified in that cause the Corsair Kingdom would launch frequent raids on the mainland for the better part of a century. The second was the critical shortcoming of galleys: they were coastal craft ill suited to sailing beyond sight of the coast. Even Frenn began to take note of this and eventually switched over from using galleys to using cannon armed caravels which could take storms much better even if they lacked for maneuverability. By the time of the Corsair Kingdom this had become standard practice. Galleys still had some advantages in terms of maneuverability and being able to go against the wind, but this would eventually be offset by another advantage of sailing ships: firepower. Sailing ships could carry more artillery than their oar equipped counterparts. The exploitation of these advantages took some time and there were still instances in which galleys had the edge but gradually the Corsair Kingdoms honed their abilities.At first the pirates of the Corsair Island simply armed captured ships, but as time went on they commissioned ships and their enclaves grew in wealth and population they eventually began building their own. The Lady Alcessia was one of the most infamous of these ships. She was built for speed, but had reinforced construction and a heavy forecastle. She was built for Captain Mallim "The Green Scourge" Urion. In her twenty six years she had captured no less than twelve prizes, including three war galleys. Even so, while the Corsair Kingdom would pioneer the use of sailing ships as weapons of war others would follow their example.