Has there been any lore provided about why our ships have been able to sail underwater and resurface just fine?
I know it’s just a game, but I love lore connections to gameplay features. lol how come I can sail as long as needed underwater to mm or to get to where I need to go, but a hole in the hull will end me ☹️
Skelly ships have always had the ability to dive and travel underwater. When the PoTC tall tales were added Davvy Jones did his trademark diving and coming out of the water and if I'm not mistaken the Black Pearl also did it.
When we got the ability to dive the storyline was that Athena and Reapers had finally gone into open war against each other. The Pirate Lord and Flameheart basically had an arms race and both rushed to give their side the ability to dive. For a time it was exclusive to hourglass so you could head-cannon that as being the time when this ability was only given to the military branches of Athena and Reapers.
Now as time has passed the ability trickles down to more and more pirates and thus we have the PvE diving. You could think of this as the equivalent of having a piece of technology that was originally invented for military purposes - for example like mobile phones, X-ray scanners, the internet, etc - and now it is a mainstay in civilian life.
What I've got so far is that somehow the Warsmith may have figured it out, or Flameheart had the knowledge on how to dive, and that's why skeleton ships have been able to, and also why the Servants were given the ability when it was required.
With the Pirate Lord's vast knowledge on artifacts and cursed of the Seas, he got this knowledge in some way and gave it to the Guardians as was required.
After some time, the 'secret' trickled down to the Trading Companies, as regular pirates could have access, and therefore they would be researched.
The problem is that there is no real explanation or tangible object that this relates to. The voyage table menu is just another in a long list of immersion-breaking menus, even if the system is good.
My head-canon is that the Breath of the Sea is how diving is possible, and after turning them in to the Trading Companies for so long, they learned this secret of the Pirate Lord and Flameheart on their own or they worked with the Pirate Lord. I would like to say that the War Map is an item enchanted by a Breath of the Sea, allowing both a ship and her crew to go underwater. It would have been nice if the quest table menu was just an animation of you unfurling the quest map and seeing your options on the scroll, and then having the scroll power the transport. But clearly Rare doesn't think "immersive" and "menu" can exist in the same phrase...
