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Thursday 4 April 2019

Warship

The warship is a fighting ship armed and manned for war.

Pixiebay

The Phoenicians developed the war galley, with a sharp battering ram in the bow.

Galleys were the warships used by the early Mediterranean naval powers, including the Greeks and Romans. They remained the dominant types of vessels used for war and piracy in the Mediterranean Sea until the last decades of the 16th century.

The Battle of Lepanto was a naval engagement that took in 1571 between a fleet of the Holy League (a coalition of Spain, Venice, and the Papal States arranged by Pope Pius V) and the fleet of the Ottoman Empire. Lepanto was the last major naval battle in the Mediterranean fought entirely between galleys and has been assigned great symbolic and historical importance by several historians.

'The Battle of Lepanto', painting by Andries van Eertvelt

Henry Grace à Dieu, built at the new Woolwich Dockyard in England, was launched on June 13, 1514, during the reign of King Henry VIII. The ship was an impressive feat of naval engineering for its time and was considered the largest warship in the world at that point, weighing over 1,000 tons (907,000 kgs) .

Henry Grace à Dieu featured numerous advancements and innovations, including multiple gun decks, heavy artillery, and improved structural design. It served as a symbol of King Henry VIII's naval power and played a prominent role in several military campaigns. However, despite its impressive size, the ship's service life was relatively short, and it was eventually destroyed in 1553.

At over 1,000 tons (907,000 kgs) it was the largest warship in the world at the time,

Until the 17th century it was common for merchant ships to be pressed into naval service and not unusual for more than half a fleet to be composed of merchant ships.

The word truck, which is now the American term for a lorry, first appeared in English around 1611 meaning small wheel or roller, specifically the sort mounted under cannons aboard warships.

Vasa Syndrome, a term for problems in communication and management that can cause projects to fail, is named after the Vasa, one of the largest and most spectacular warships ever built. The Swedish vessel sank in 1628 on its maiden voyage because it was too unstable to withstand a gust of wind.

HMS Victory, Lord Horatio Nelson's flagship, was launched at Chatham Dockyard in Kent in 1765. The world's oldest naval ship still in commission, every warship salutes her as they pass her berth in Portsmouth Naval Base.

HMS Victory in Portsmouth, 1900

A fifth-rate warship of the 1790s putting to sea with a crew of 590, was provisioned for five months. In its holds were 41 tons of biscuit, 407 barrels of beer, 23 tons of beef, 12 tons of pork, 10 tons of pease, four tons of oatmeal, two tons of butter and four tons of cheese.

Napoleon passed up the opportunity of owning the first ever steam warship ever built in 1803. The inventor, Robert Fulton, had been experimenting in France with the encouragement of the French leader. Fulton had also designed a cigar shaped submarine but again Napoleon would have nothing to do with the scheme. Either one would probably have resulted in the invasion of Britain.

Launched in 1859, the Gloire was the brainchild of Henri Dupuy de Lôme, a French naval engineer. It revolutionized naval warfare by becoming the first oceangoing ironclad warship. Its hull was completely constructed of iron, covered in teak for protection from underwater attacks, and its armament consisted of 36 heavy cannons.

The British Royal Navy launched the world's first iron-hulled armoured battleship, HMS Warrior on December 29, 1860, It was built to counter the French Navy's La Gloire. Designed by Isaac Watts, it pushed the boundaries of naval technology further:

The first American ironclad warship, the USS Monitor was launched by the Union on January 30, 1862. It was the first U.S. ship to have a flush toilet.

Launch of USS Monitor, 1862

The world's first major battle to take place between two powered ironclad warships was fought during the American Civil War in March 1862. The USS Monitor and the CSS Virginia battled to a draw near the mouth of Hampton Roads in Virginia.

The HL Huntley became the first submarine to sink an enemy warship in February 1864. It is now on display in Charleston.

HMS Spiteful was a Spiteful-class torpedo boat destroyer built at Jarrow, England, by Palmers Shipbuilding and Iron Company for the Royal Navy and launched in 1899.

In 1904, HMS Spiteful became the first warship to be powered solely by fuel oil. Tests were conducted by the Royal Navy in that year, comparing her performance using oil directly with that of a similar ship using coal, in which it was proved that burning oil offered significant advantages.

'Joe' is an American nickname for coffee. The nickname is derived from the name of Secretary of the Navy Josephus Daniels, who in 1913 banned alcohol from being served on U.S. Navy warships. The sailors began to drink more coffee, which they then nicknamed "Joe."

The German High Seas Fleet surrendered to the Royal Navy on November 21, 1918, ten days after World War I had ended. After they had last met at Jutland, 70 German warships met well over 100 allied warships and sailed into captivity. It was the largest gathering of warships in close company in history.


When the destroyer HMS Porcupine was blown in half by a German torpedo on  December 9, 1942, the two halves were towed back to the United Kingdom and recommissioned as two ships; HMS Pork and HMS Pine.

The battleship, supreme at the beginning of the 20th century, is not used anymore, as they are expensive to operate and hard to keep safe from enemy attacks. It was superseded during World War I by the development of submarine attack and was rendered obsolete in World War II with the growth of long-range air attack.

The large scale aircraft carrier was also temporary out of favour in the mid 20th century, as too vulnerable, until the resumption of building, especially by the USSR in the late 1970s and 80s.

In the earlier 1970s the mini carrier evolved, using both vertical take-off aircraft such as the Harrier Jump Jet, and helicopters with a wide range such as the Sea King.

Today aircraft carriers are often called "floating cities" because they can hold hundreds of planes, and thousands of sailors. US Nimitz class carriers can weigh over 100,000 ton (90 million kgs).

A destroyer is a fast, small, and manoeuvrable warship. Destroyers were first used in the late 1800s to defend against torpedo boats and were used extensively during World War I and World War II. Today, most naval warships are destroyers.

Destroyer Pixiebay

The first nuclear powered submarine was the Nautilus in 1955; the first Polaris was the George Washington in 1960 and the first British nuclear powered submarine was the Dreadnought in 1963.

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