Ship

A boat is considered a ship if it weighs 500 tonnes or more. A more general distinction is that ships can carry boats but boats cannot carry ships.

HISTORY

The earliest known ships with oars date from around 3,500 BC.

As early as the 14th and 15th centuries BC small Mediterranean cargo ships were carrying exotic cargo from Canaan, Greece, Egypt, and Africa.

The Greeks and Phoenicians built wooden ships, propelled by oar or sail.

The Romans and Carthaginians fought in galleys equipped with rams and rowed by tiers of oarsmen.

Sternpost-mounted rudders started to appear on Chinese ships in the 1st century AD. However, the Chinese continued to use the steering oar long after they invented the rudder, since the steering oar still had limited practical use for inland rapid-river travel.

The oaken ships of the Norsemen were built for rough seas and propelled by oars and sail.

The invention of the compass in the 14th century lead to a great age of exploration by sailing ship, resulting in the discovery of 'new worlds.'

The largest European sailing ship of the 15th and 16th centuries was the Spanish carrack. The Madre de Deus, built in Lisbon, Portugal in 1589 was the largest ship in the world in her time. The carrack was 165 feet in length, had 47 feet of beam and could carry 900 tons of cargo.The Madre de Deus had seven decks, 32 guns in addition to other arms and contained 600 to 700 crew members.

Model of the Madre de Deus, in Lisbon's Maritime Museum By User:Marco2000

The carrack remained the standard vessel of Atlantic trade and adventure, until English Elizabethan naval commander John Hawkins transformed the top-heavy vessel into the more seaworthy galleon.

In 1604, shipwright Phineas Pett constructed at Chatham Dockyard "a miniature pleasure ship" for Prince Henry, the eldest son of King James I. "Garnished with painting and carving," the royal family cherished it although inexplicably it bore the ominous name Disdain.

Early in colonization, "Disposable Ships" were a type of craft built for a single voyage, after which they would be disassembled, the wood reused to build actual ships. Some disposables were the largest ships ever built.

By the turn of the 18th century, Holland and England were producing the magnificent ocean-going merchant vessels known as East Indiamen.

By 1760, over 30 per cent of Britain's ship tonnage was being built in the American colonies. This was due to the abundance of timber that made shipbuilding costs only half of what they were in Europe.

When the Columbia returned to Boston Harbor after a three-year global voyage in 1790, it became the first ship to carry the American flag around the world.

In October 1832 a Japanese sailing ship travelling from Nagoya to Tokyo was blown off course by a typhoon. It eventually ran aground on the northernmost tip of the Olympic Peninsula where current day Washington state is sometime in January 1834, with 3 out of 14 crew members surviving.

In the 1840s, iron began replacing wood in shipbuilding. SS Great Britain, the first ocean-going ship that had both an iron hull and a screw propeller, was launched from Bristol, England, in 1843. Isambard Kingdom Brunel's steamship was the largest vessel afloat in the world at the time and in 1845 it became the first propeller-driven ship to cross the Atlantic.

A painting of the launch in 1843

Swedish-American inventor, John Ericsson (July 31, 1803 – March 8, 1889) came to New York in 1839 with a commission to build a ship for the U.S. Navy. His propulsion system was used by commercial steamers and by the USS Princeton (1844), the world's first screw-propelled war vessel.

The sailing ship Marco Polo, built in Saint John, New Brunswick, Canada, was declared the fastest ship in the world in 1852. The ship had sailed from Liverpool, England, to Melbourne, Australia, and back in 140 days. The trip usually took 240 days.

The square-rigged clipper Andrew Jackson was built by the firm of Irons & Grinnell in Mystic, Connecticut in 1855. The vessel was designed for the shipping firm of J.H. Brower & Co. to carry cargo intended for sale to participants in the California Gold Rush.

Time was money, and the clipper ships were built for speed. The Andrew Jackson arrived at the Farallon Islands, the pilot boat entry point to the harbor of San Francisco on March 23, 1860. The run around Cape Horn from New York City to San Francisco, had taken the vessel 89 days and 4 hours. Andrew Jackson's journey was, by four hours, widely acclaimed in the newspapers as the fastest in history.

The Union ironclad, USS Monitor, was designed by John Ericsson in 1861. It was the first U.S. ship to have a flush toilet.

The British clipper Cutty Sark was built on Scotland's River Clyde in 1869 for the Jock Willis Shipping Line. Launched on November 22, 1869, it was one of the last clippers built for the 19th century tea trade, and one of three to survive to this day. The ship's name is Scots for a short petticoat and was taken from Robert Burns’s poem Tam O’Shanter, in which Tam spies on beautiful witch Nannie Dee, who wore one. The ship’s figurehead depicts her.

Cutty Sark with sails set.

The first attempts to ship refrigerated meat from the southern hemisphere were made in mid 1870s after French engineer Charles Tellier produced a chilled storeroom for the steamship Le Frigorifique. A cargo of 80 tons of mutton, using Tellier's mechanical refrigeration, was transported from France to Buenos Aires, in Argentina, onboard the Le Frigorifique, mainly to demonstrate the practicability of the intercontinental transport of frozen foods. On the return voyage the Argentine meat arrived at Le Havre in perfect condition despite a two month delay when Le Frigorifique run aground on the coast of Senegal.

The German SS Kaiser Wilhelm der Grosse became the first ocean liner to have a commercial wireless telegraphy system when the Marconi Company installed one in February 1900. This new technology allowed the ship to transmit telegraphic messages to shore, emphasizing her image of security. The first ship-to-shore message was sent on March 7, 1900.

The RMS Olympic was a British ocean liner that was built by the Harland and Wolff shipyard in Belfast. She was the lead ship of the Olympic class of liners, and was sister ships to the Titanic and Britannic. The Olympic was launched in 1910, and entered service in 1911.

During World War I, the Olympic was used as a troopship. On May 12, 1918, while en route to France with U.S. troops, the Olympic sighted a surfaced German U-boat, U-103. The Olympic's gunners opened fire, but the U-boat was able to dive below the surface. The Olympic then turned and rammed the U-boat, slicing through its hull. The U-103 sank with the loss of nine crewmen. The Olympic was not seriously damaged, and was able to continue on its journey.

The sinking of U-103 made the RMS Olympic the only merchant ship in World War I to have sunk an enemy vessel. The Olympic was decommissioned in 1935, and was scrapped in 1937.

HMT Olympic in dazzle camouflage while in service as a troopship during WW1

In both World Wars, allies ships were painted with bright black and white lines. This was designed as the "opposite of camouflage." It was supposed to confused the enemy, mask their direction, and hide their speed.

The converted World War II T-2 oil tanker, SS Ideal X, was the world's first commercially successful container ship. She left Port Newark, New Jersey on her first voyage in her new configuration, on April 26, 1956. The Ideal X carried 58 containers from Port Newark to Port of Houston, Texas, where 58 trucks were waiting to be loaded with the containers.

NS Savannah, the first nuclear-powered cargo-passenger ship, was christened on July 21, 1959 as a showcase for Dwight D. Eisenhower's Atoms for Peace initiative. The U.S. President wanted the ship to serve as an ambassador for the peaceful use of atomic power.

It took another two and a half years years to complete the reactor installation and initial trials before the ship was moved to Yorktown, Virginia, under temporary oil-fired power, where the reactor was started and tested. The completed NS Savannah was launched on August 20, 1962.

NS Savannah passing under the Golden Gate Bridge in 1962

The NS Savannah was 181 metres long, cost $46.9 million to build and included a swimming pool, cinema and dance floor.

Only three other nuclear merchant ships were built. None is in service today.

The Soviet nuclear-powered icebreaker Arktika was the first surface vessel to reach the North Pole on August 17, 1977. The Arktika was built at the Baltic Shipyard in Leningrad, Soviet Union, and was launched in 1975. It is 173 meters long and 34 meters wide, and it has two nuclear reactors that power its engines. The Arktika can break through ice up to 2.8 meters thick, and it can travel at speeds of up to 18 knots. The Arktika continued to serve in the Soviet and Russian navies for many years, and it was retired in 2008.

The longest ship ever built was a supertanker built in Japan in 1979 for a Greek business mogul who, by the time she was ready, changed his mind and refused to take delivery. Named the Seawise Giant, it was 1,500 foot long, had a 36 tonne anchor and it weighed 564,000 tonnes. It was eventually sold for scrap to a Indian breaking yard.

The RMS Queen Mary 2, the largest ocean liner ever built, was christened by her namesake's granddaughter, Queen Elizabeth II on January 8, 2004.

Queen Mary 2 crosses Suez Canal in 2009. By أشرف العناني from alshekh zwaed, egypt 

FUN SHIP FACTS

The USS Constitution, a wooden frigate first launched in 1797 and still active for ceremonial and educational purposes, is the only active ship in the U.S. Navy fleet to have sunk an enemy vessel in combat.

On steam powered paddle ships, visibility was greatly hindered by the two large arches on either side of the ship. To combat this, a literal bridge would be built between them so the captain and helmsman could still get good visibility, thus why a ship's command center is called a "bridge".

The PS Skibladner paddle steamer made her maiden voyage on August 2, 1856. She is currently operating in Norway on Lake Mjøsa, making her the world's oldest paddle steamer still in timetabled service (though it sank twice while in storage).

Skibladner in Hamar 2015.

The U.S. Navy’s Wasp vessels are the largest amphibious ships in the world, with a length of 257m (844 ft). They can carry up to 1,894 marines, have on- board monorails to transfer cargo and kit around the holds, while two aircraft elevators move aircraft between the flight deck and the hangar.

Yugoslav frigate Split is the only ship in the world which shelled the city it is named after. During the Croatian War of Independence Split took part in the Battle of the Dalmatian Channels where it was noted for shelling the city of Split.

Filipinos make up more than one third of all container ship crews worldwide, with 250,000 at sea.

Ships are referred to as "she" from long tradition that they are female figures (e.g., mothers) who guide and protect its passengers and crew.

The use of the term "starboard" to denote the right side of a ship is so-called because they were originally navigated with a steering oar on that side. “stéor bord” in Old English literally means “steering side”. When tying up, the dock always had to be positioned on the left, hence “port”.

The 'SS' prefix in a ship's name refers to 'Screw Steamer', a propeller-driven steamship.

A single cargo ship can produce as much pollution as 50 million cars.

Sources Isaac Asimov's Book Of Facts, History World