With air-ships, why use sea-ships?
Without considerable amounts of Dust, air-ships cannot lift off, let alone move, and moving towards their destinations requires even more considerable amounts of Dust. Air-ships are expensive, and only become more so the bigger they are and the more heavily they are loaded.
Aquatic vessels are cheaper. With sails or oars or even just water currents going in the right direction, waterborne vehicles can reach their destinations without using any Dust. Sea-ships can be built to sizes infeasible even for for cutting-edge Atlesian air-ships, which allows them to carry commensurately more cargo.
What's more, as bad as it is for a waterborne vessel to go dead in the water because its engine runs dry or stalls out, at least it already sits safely upon the water rather than falling from the sky. This has always been a chief concern with air-ships; even modern-day models continue the original tradition of designing flying vessels for some degree of sea-worthiness, in case they need to make an emergency water-landing.
In fact, ancient shipwrights likely intended their creations to land in any available body of water along their journeys, to continue traveling with the least expenditure of Dust. The first transoceanic air-ships probably conserved their fuel by flying over only the deepest and most dangerous stretches of the sea, and swimming through the safer shallows. But while they could bypass more obstacles than ships which couldn't fly at all, they still consumed so much more Dust, and classed so much smaller in size.
Even unto the present day, ocean-going vessels present far less risk and far more cost-efficiency for long-distance transportation, especially of large quantities of heavy materials, such as Dust, metal, food, and massive numbers of people carrying all of their worldly possessions.
Historically, the chief advantage air-ships have for transporting cargo or passengers is over-land speed, which makes them primarily employed for delivering messages, vitally important packages, and quick-response combat or medical specialists. As air-ships became faster and more reliable, they also began to offer greater safety from encounters with the Grimm, creating a demand for the conveyance of small groups of civilians willing to pay highly for the convenience and security of fast travel.
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