Steamship
A steamship referred to as a steamer, is a type of steam powered vessel ocean-faring and seaworthy, propelled by one or more steam engines that move propellers or paddlewheels. The first steamships came into practical usage during the early 1800s. Steamships use the prefix designations of "PS" for paddle steamer or "SS" for screw steamer; as paddle steamers became less common, "SS" is assumed by many to stand for "steam ship". Ships powered by internal combustion engines use a prefix such as "MV" for motor vessel, so it is not correct to use "SS" for most modern vessels; as steamships were less dependent on wind patterns, new trade routes opened up. The steamship has been described as a "major driver of the first wave of trade globalization" and contributor to "an increase in international trade, unprecedented in human history." The steamship was preceded by smaller vessels designed for insular transportation, called steamboats. Once the technology of steam was mastered at this level, steam engines were mounted on larger, ocean-going vessels.
Becoming reliable, propelled by screw rather than paddlewheels, the technology changed the design of ships for faster, more economic propulsion. Paddlewheels as the main motive source became standard on these early vessels, it was an effective means of propulsion under ideal conditions but otherwise had serious drawbacks. The paddle-wheel performed best when it operated at a certain depth, however when the depth of the ship changed from added weight it further submerged the paddle wheel causing a substantial decrease in performance. Within a few decades of the development of the river and canal steamboat, the first steamships began to cross the Atlantic Ocean; the first sea-going steamboat was an ex-French lugger. The first iron steamship to go to sea was the 116-ton Aaron Manby, built in 1821 by Aaron Manby at the Horseley Ironworks, became the first iron-built vessel to put to sea when she crossed the English Channel in 1822, arriving in Paris on 22 June, she carried passengers and freight to Paris in 1822 at an average speed of 8 knots.
The American ship SS Savannah first crossed the Atlantic Ocean, although most of the voyage was made under sail. The first ship to make the transatlantic trip under steam power may have been the British-built Dutch-owned Curaçao, a wooden 438 ton vessel built in Dover and powered by two 50 hp engines, which crossed from Hellevoetsluis, near Rotterdam on 26 April 1827 to Paramaribo, Surinam on 24 May, spending 11 days under steam on the way out and more on the return. Another claimant is the Canadian ship SS Royal William in 1833; the first steamship purpose-built for scheduled trans-Atlantic crossings was the British side-wheel paddle steamer SS Great Western built by Isambard Kingdom Brunel in 1838, which inaugurated the era of the trans-Atlantic ocean liner. The SS Archimedes, built in Britain in 1839 by Francis Pettit Smith, was the world's first screw propeller-driven steamship for open water seagoing, it had considerable influence on ship development, encouraging the adoption of screw propulsion by the Royal Navy, in addition to her influence on commercial vessels.
The first screw-driven propeller steamship introduced in America was on a ship built by Thomas Clyde in 1844 and many more ships and routes followed. The key innovation that made ocean-going steamers viable was the change from the paddle-wheel to the screw-propeller as the mechanism of propulsion; these steamships became more popular, because the propeller's efficiency was consistent regardless of the depth at which it operated. Being smaller in size and mass and being submerged, it was far less prone to damage. James Watt of Scotland is given credit for applying the first screw propeller to an engine at his Birmingham works, an early steam engine, beginning the use of a hydrodynamic screw for propulsion; the development of screw propulsion relied on the following technological innovations. Steam engines had to be designed with the power delivered at the bottom of the machinery, to give direct drive to the propeller shaft. A paddle steamer's engines drive a shaft, positioned above the waterline, with the cylinders positioned below the shaft.
SS Great Britain used chain drive to transmit power from a paddler's engine to the propeller shaft - the result of a late design change to propeller propulsion. An effective stern tube and associated bearings were required; the stern tube contains the propeller shaft. It should provide an unrestricted delivery of power by the propeller shaft; the combination of hull and stern tube must avoid any flexing that will bend the shaft or cause uneven wear. The inboard end has a stuffing box; some early stern tubes were made of brass and operated as a water lubricated bearing along the entire length. In other instances a long bush of soft metal was fitted in the after end of the stern tube; the Great Eastern had this arrangement fail on her first transatlantic voyage, with large amounts of uneven wear. The problem was solved with a lignum vitae water-lubricated bearing, patented in 1858; this is in use today. Since the motive power of screw propulsion is delivered along the shaft, a thrust bearing is needed to transfer that load to the hull without excessive friction.
SS Great Britain had a 2 ft diameter gunmetal plate on the forward end of the shaft which bore against a steel plate attached to the engine beds. Water
Battleship
A battleship is a large armored warship with a main battery consisting of large caliber guns. During the late 19th and early 20th centuries the battleship was the most powerful type of warship, a fleet of battleships was considered vital for any nation that desired to maintain command of the sea; the term battleship came into formal use in the late 1880s to describe a type of ironclad warship, now referred to by historians as pre-dreadnought battleships. In 1906, the commissioning of HMS Dreadnought into the United Kingdom's Royal Navy heralded a revolution in battleship design. Subsequent battleship designs, influenced by HMS Dreadnought, were referred to as "dreadnoughts", though the term became obsolete as they became the only type of battleship in common use. Battleships were a symbol of naval dominance and national might, for decades the battleship was a major factor in both diplomacy and military strategy. A global arms race in battleship construction began in Europe in the 1890s and culminated at the decisive Battle of Tsushima in 1905, the outcome of which influenced the design of HMS Dreadnought.
The launch of Dreadnought in 1906 commenced a new naval arms race. Three major fleet actions between steel battleships took place: the decisive battles of the Yellow Sea and Tsushima during the Russo-Japanese War, the inconclusive Battle of Jutland during the First World War. Jutland was the largest naval battle and the only full-scale clash of battleships in the war, it was the last major battle fought by battleships in world history; the Naval Treaties of the 1920s and 1930s limited the number of battleships, though technical innovation in battleship design continued. Both the Allied and Axis powers built battleships during World War II, though the increasing importance of the aircraft carrier meant that the battleship played a less important role than had been expected; the value of the battleship has been questioned during their heyday. There were few of the decisive fleet battles that battleship proponents expected, used to justify the vast resources spent on building battlefleets. In spite of their huge firepower and protection, battleships were vulnerable to much smaller and inexpensive weapons: the torpedo and the naval mine, aircraft and the guided missile.
The growing range of naval engagements led to the aircraft carrier replacing the battleship as the leading capital ship during World War II, with the last battleship to be launched being HMS Vanguard in 1944. Four battleships were retained by the United States Navy until the end of the Cold War for fire support purposes and were last used in combat during the Gulf War in 1991; the last battleships were stricken from the U. S. Naval Vessel Register in the 2000s. A ship of the line was the dominant warship of its age, it was a large, unarmored wooden sailing ship which mounted a battery of up to 120 smoothbore guns and carronades. The ship of the line developed over centuries and, apart from growing in size, it changed little between the adoption of line of battle tactics in the early 17th century and the end of the sailing battleship's heyday in the 1830s. From 1794, the alternative term'line of battle ship' was contracted to'battle ship' or'battleship'; the sheer number of guns fired broadside meant a ship of the line could wreck any wooden enemy, holing her hull, knocking down masts, wrecking her rigging, killing her crew.
However, the effective range of the guns was as little as a few hundred yards, so the battle tactics of sailing ships depended in part on the wind. The first major change to the ship of the line concept was the introduction of steam power as an auxiliary propulsion system. Steam power was introduced to the navy in the first half of the 19th century for small craft and for frigates; the French Navy introduced steam to the line of battle with the 90-gun Napoléon in 1850—the first true steam battleship. Napoléon was armed as a conventional ship-of-the-line, but her steam engines could give her a speed of 12 knots, regardless of the wind condition; this was a decisive advantage in a naval engagement. The introduction of steam accelerated the growth in size of battleships. France and the United Kingdom were the only countries to develop fleets of wooden steam screw battleships although several other navies operated small numbers of screw battleships, including Russia, the Ottoman Empire, Naples and Austria.
The adoption of steam power was only one of a number of technological advances which revolutionized warship design in the 19th century. The ship of the line was overtaken by the ironclad: powered by steam, protected by metal armor, armed with guns firing high-explosive shells. Guns that fired explosive or incendiary shells were a major threat to wooden ships, these weapons became widespread after the introduction of 8-inch shell guns as part of the standard armament of French and American line-of-battle ships in 1841. In the Crimean War, six line-of-battle ships and two frigates of the Russian Black Sea Fleet destroyed seven Turkish frigates and three corvettes with explosive shells at the Battle of Sinop in 1853. In the war, French ironclad floating batteries used similar weapons against the defenses at the Battle of Kinburn. Wooden-hulled ships stood up comparatively well to shells, as shown in the 1866 Battle of Lissa, where the modern Austrian steam two-decker SMS Kaiser ranged across a confused battlefield, rammed an Italian ironclad and took 80 hits from Italian ironclads, many of which were shells, but including at least one 300-pound shot at point-blank range.
Despite losing her bowsprit and her foremast, bei
Volley fire
Volley fire, as a military tactic, is in its simplest form the concept of having soldiers shoot in turns. In practice, it consists of having a line of soldiers all fire their weapons at the enemy forces on command; this is to make up for the inaccuracy, slow rate of fire, limited range of a weapon which requires extensive effort to reload. The volley fire the musketry volley technique known as the countermarch, requires lines of soldiers to fire on command and march back into a column to reload while the next row shoots and, repeat fire. While this tactic is associated with Dutch military thinkers in the late 16th century, its principles have been applied to crossbow infantry since at least the Tang dynasty. Although volley fire is most associated with firearms, the concept of continuous and concerted rotating fire may have been practiced using crossbows since at least the Han dynasty as described in the Han-Xiongnu Wars in the Records of the Grand Historian, although it was not until the Tang dynasty that detailed illustrations appeared.
During the An Lushan Rebellion the Tang general Li Guangbi deployed a spear crossbow formation against the rebel cavalry forces under Shi Siming. In 756 Shi Siming raced ahead of the main army with his mounted troops to intercept Li Guangbi's Shuofang army near the town of Changshan. Li took Changshan in advance and set up his men with their backs to the town walls to prevent a sneak attack; the spearmen formed a dense defensive formation while 1,000 crossbowmen divided into four sections to provide continuous volley fire. When Shi's cavalry engaged Li's Shuofang army they were unable to close in on his troops and suffered heavy losses, forcing a withdrawal; the 759 CE text, Tai bai yin jing by Tang military official Li Quan, contains the oldest known depiction and description of the volley fire technique. The illustration shows a rectangular crossbow formation with each circle representing one man. In the front is a line labeled "shooting crossbows" and behind that line are rows of crossbowmen, two facing right and two facing left, they are labeled "loading crossbows".
The commander is situated in the middle of the formation and to his right and left are vertical rows of drummers who coordinate the firing and reloading procedure in procession: who loaded their weapons, stepped forward to the outer ranks and retired to reload. According to Li Quan, "the classics say, it is said that its noise is so powerful that it sounds like fury, that's why they named it this way," and by using the volley fire method there is no end to the sound and fury, the enemy is unable to approach. Here he is referring to the word for "crossbow" nu, a homophone for the word for fury, nu; the encyclopedic text known as the Tongdian by Du You from 801 CE provides a description of the volley fire technique: " should be divided into teams that can concentrate their arrow shooting.… Those in the center of the formations should load while those on the outside of the formations should shoot. They take turns and returning, so that once they've loaded they exit and once they've shot they enter.
In this way, the sound of the crossbow will not cease and the enemy will not harm us."While the virtues of the rotating volley fire were understood during the Tang dynasty, the Wujing Zongyao written during the Song dynasty notes that it was not utilized to its full effectiveness due to their fear of cavalry charges. The author's solution was to drill the soldiers to the point where rather than hide behind shield units upon the approach of melee infantry, they would "plant the feet like a firm mountain, unmoving at the front of the battle arrays, shoot thickly to the middle, none among them will not fall down dead." The Song volley fire formation was described thus: "Those in the center of the formation should load while those on the outside of the formation should shoot, when close they should shelter themselves with small shields, each taking turns and returning, so that those who are loading are within the formation. In this way the crossbows will not cease sounding." In addition to the Tang formation, the Song illustration added a new label to the middle line of crossbowmen between the firing and reloading lines, known as the "advancing crossbows."
Both Tang and Song manuals made aware to the reader that "the accumulated arrows should be shot in a stream, which means that in front of them there must be no standing troops, across no horizontal formations."The volley fire technique was used to great effect by the Song during the Jin-Song Wars. In the fall of 1131 the Jin commander Wuzhu invaded the Shaanxi region but was defeated by general Wu Jie and his younger brother Wu Lin; the History of Song elaborates on the battle in detail: Jie ordered his commanders to select their most vigorous bowmen and strongest crossbowmen and to divide them up for alternate shooting by turns. They were called the "Standing-Firm Arrow Teams", they shot continuously without cease, as thick as rain pouring down; the enemy fell back a bit, attacked with cavalry from the side to cut off the supply routes. Crossed the encirclement and retreated, but set up ambushes at Shenben and waited; when the Jin troops arrived, ambushers shot, the many were in chaos. The troops were released to attack at night and defeated them.
Wuzhu was struck by a flowing arrow and escaped with his life. After losing half
Cannon
A cannon is a type of gun classified as artillery that launches a projectile using propellant. In the past, gunpowder was the primary propellant before the invention of smokeless powder in the 19th century. Cannon vary in caliber, mobility, rate of fire, angle of fire, firepower; the word cannon is derived from several languages, in which the original definition can be translated as tube, cane, or reed. In the modern era, the term cannon has fallen into decline, replaced by guns or artillery if not a more specific term such as mortar or howitzer, except for high calibre automatic weapons firing bigger rounds than machine guns, called autocannons; the earliest known depiction of cannon appeared in Song dynasty China as early as the 12th century, however solid archaeological and documentary evidence of cannon do not appear until the 13th century. In 1288 Yuan dynasty troops are recorded to have used hand cannons in combat, the earliest extant cannon bearing a date of production comes from the same period.
By 1326 depictions of cannon had appeared in Europe and immediately recorded usage of cannon began appearing. By the end of the 14th century cannon were widespread throughout Eurasia. Cannon were used as anti-infantry weapons until around 1374 when cannon were recorded to have breached walls for the first time in Europe. Cannon featured prominently as siege weapons and larger pieces appeared. In 1464 a 16,000 kg cannon known as the Great Turkish Bombard was created in the Ottoman Empire. Cannon as field artillery became more important after 1453 with the introduction of limber, which improved cannon maneuverability and mobility. European cannon reached their longer, more accurate, more efficient "classic form" around 1480; this classic European cannon design stayed consistent in form with minor changes until the 1750s. Cannon is derived from the Old Italian word cannone, meaning "large tube", which came from Latin canna, in turn originating from the Greek κάννα, "reed", generalised to mean any hollow tube-like object.
The word has been used to refer to a gun since 1326 in Italy, 1418 in England. Both Cannons and Cannon are correct and in common usage, with one or the other having preference in different parts of the English-speaking world. Cannons is more common in North America and Australia, while cannon as plural is more common in the United Kingdom; the cannon may have appeared as early as the 12th century in China, was a parallel development or evolution of the fire-lance, a short ranged anti-personnel weapon combining a gunpowder-filled tube and a polearm of some sort. Co-viative projectiles such as iron scraps or porcelain shards were placed in fire lance barrels at some point, the paper and bamboo materials of fire lance barrels were replaced by metal; the earliest known depiction of a cannon is a sculpture from the Dazu Rock Carvings in Sichuan dated to 1128, however the earliest archaeological samples and textual accounts do not appear until the 13th century. The primary extant specimens of cannon from the 13th century are the Wuwei Bronze Cannon dated to 1227, the Heilongjiang hand cannon dated to 1288, the Xanadu Gun dated to 1298.
However, only the Xanadu gun contains an inscription bearing a date of production, so it is considered the earliest confirmed extant cannon. The Xanadu Gun weighs 6.2 kg. The other cannon are dated using contextual evidence; the Heilongjiang hand cannon is often considered by some to be the oldest firearm since it was unearthed near the area where the History of Yuan reports a battle took place involving hand cannon. According to the History of Yuan, in 1288, a Jurchen commander by the name of Li Ting led troops armed with hand cannon into battle against the rebel prince Nayan. Chen Bingying argues there were no guns before 1259 while Dang Shoushan believes the Wuwei gun and other Western Xia era samples point to the appearance of guns by 1220, Stephen Haw goes further by stating that guns were developed as early as 1200. Sinologist Joseph Needham and renaissance siege expert Thomas Arnold provide a more conservative estimate of around 1280 for the appearance of the "true" cannon. Whether or not any of these are correct, it seems that the gun was born sometime during the 13th century.
References to cannon proliferated throughout China in the following centuries. Cannon featured in literary pieces. In 1341 Xian Zhang wrote a poem called The Iron Cannon Affair describing a cannonball fired from an eruptor which could "pierce the heart or belly when striking a man or horse, transfix several persons at once."By the 1350s the cannon was used extensively in Chinese warfare. In 1358 the Ming army failed to take a city due to its garrisons' usage of cannon, however they themselves would use cannon, in the thousands on during the siege of Suzhou in 1366; the Korean kingdom of Joseon started producing gunpowder in 1374 and cannon by 1377. Cannon appeared in Đại Việt by 1390 at the latest. During the Ming dynasty cannon were used in riverine warfare at the Battle of Lake Poyang. One shipwreck in Shandong had a cannon dated to 1377 and an anchor dated to 1372. From the 13th to 15th centuries cannon-armed Chinese ships travelled throughout Southeast Asia; the first of the western cannon to be introduced were breach-loaders in the early 16th century which the Chinese began producing themselves by 1523 and began improving on.
Japan did not acquire a cannon until 1510 when a monk brought one back from China, did not produce a
Seventy-four (ship)
The "seventy-four" was a type of two-decked sailing ship of the line which nominally carried 74 guns. It was developed by the French navy in the 1740s and spread to the British Royal Navy where it was classed as third rate. From here, it spread to the Spanish, Dutch and Russian navies; the design was considered a good balance between firepower and sailing qualities, but more it was an appealing ideal for naval administrators and bureaucrats. Seventy-fours became a mainstay of the world's fleets into the early 19th century when they began to be supplanted by new designs and by the introduction of steam powered ironclads; as a standard type, the seventy-four was only an ideal construction. There was great variation between seventy-fours of different navies. In the period 1750–1790, different ships could have displacements of anything at just under 2,000 tonnes up to 3,000 tonnes; the armament could vary with everything from 24-pounder to long 36-pounder guns, some seventy-fours of the Danish navy had only 70 guns.
The first 74-gun ships were constructed by the French as they rebuilt their navy during the early years of the reign of Louis XV. The new ship type was a large two-decker big enough to carry the largest common type of gun on the lower gun deck, something only three-deckers had done earlier; this great firepower was combined with good sailing qualities compared to both the taller three-deckers and the shorter old-style 70-gun two-deckers, making the 74 the perfect combination of the two. A disadvantage of the 74 was that it was expensive to build and man compared to the older type of two-decker; the 74-gun ship carried 28 on the lower gun deck, 28–30 on the upper gun deck, 14–18 on the upper works. Crew size was around 500 to 750 men depending on design and nationality, with British ships tending to have smaller crews than other navies; the French had large and small seventy-fours, called "grand modèle" and "petite modèle", the waterline length of a "grand modèle" seventy-four could be up to 182 feet.
This was copied by the Royal Navy in about two dozen such ships of its own, such as HMS Colossus where they were known as Large, while the other seventy-fours built to be between 166–171 feet were known as Common. Given the construction techniques of the day, the seventy-four approached the limits of what was possible; such long hulls made from wood had a tendency to sag over time. Increased maintenance could counter this to some extent; this limited the success of the bigger two-deck 80-gun ships that were built in small numbers after the seventy-four had been introduced. Three-deckers did not have the same problem due to their additional deck giving more rigidity; the significance of the 74s however is hard to overstate, as a summary of the ships of the line for all nations that were in commission at any time during the Revolutionary/Napoleonic Wars period. 1st & 2nd rates 156 3rd rate 74s 408 4th rate 199 The Royal Navy captured a number of the early French 74-gun ships during the War of the Austrian Succession and the Seven Years' War and was impressed by them compared to its own smallish 70-gun ships.
As a result, it started building them in great numbers from about 1760. Navies that were restricted by shallow waters, such as the Dutch and Scandinavian navies, at least early on tended to avoid the 74-gun ship to a certain degree due to its size and draught, preferring smaller two-deckers instead. So, the seventy-four was a standard feature in all European navies around 1800. Only a handful of 74-gun ships were commissioned into the United States Navy; the type fell into disuse after the Napoleonic Wars, when improved building techniques made it possible to build bigger two-deckers of 84 or 90 guns without sacrificing hull rigidity. The last seventy-four, the French Trafalgar veteran Duguay-Trouin, was scuttled in 1949, her stern ornamentation is on display at Greenwich. In addition, dozens of ship models exist, produced as part of constructing the real ships, thus believed accurate both externally and internally. Dublin-class ship of the line Hercules-class ship of the line Valiant-class ship of the line Bellona-class ship of the line Arrogant-class ship of the line Canada-class ship of the line Ramillies-class ship of the line Albion-class ship of the line Elizabeth-class ship of the line Royal Oak-class ship of the line Culloden-class ship of the line Alfred-class ship of the line Ganges-class ship of the line Courageux-class ship of the line Mars-class ship of the line Ajax-class ship of the line Pompée-class ship of the line America-class ship of the line Fame-class ship of the line Repulse-class ship of the line Swiftsure-class ship of the line Vengeur-class ship of the line Black Prince-class ship of the line Annibal-class ship of the line Téméraire-class ship of the line César-class ship of the line Séduisant-class ship of the line Yaroslav-class ship of the line Tsar Constatine-class ship of the line Svyatoy Petr-class ship of the line Selafail-class ship of the line Anapa-class ship of the line Three Saints-class ship of the line Ezekiel-cla
Firepower
Firepower is the military capability to direct force at an enemy. Firepower involves the whole range of potential weapons; the concept is taught as one of the three key principles of modern warfare wherein the enemy forces are destroyed or have their will to fight negated by sufficient and preferably overwhelming use of force as a result of combat operations. Through the ages firepower has come to mean offensive power applied from a distance, thus involving ranged weapons as opposed to one-on-one close quarters combat. Firepower is thus something employed to keep enemy forces at a range where they can be defeated in detail or sapped of the will to continue. In the field of naval artillery, the weight of a broadside was long used as a figure of merit of a warship's firepower; the earliest forms of warfare that might be called firepower were the slingers of ancient armies, archers. The feared Huns employed the composite bow and light cavalry tactics to shower arrows on the enemy forces, a tactic that appeared in a less mobile form in Britain, with its famed longbowmen, used during the various Anglo-French conflicts collectively known as the Hundred Years' War during the Middle Ages.
The Battle of Crécy is thought of as the beginning of the "age of firepower" in the west, where missile weapons enabled a small force to defeat a numerically superior enemy without the need for single combat. Firepower was used to dramatic effect in a similar fashion during the Battle of Agincourt. Firepower of military units large and small has increased since the introduction of firearms, with technical improvements that have, with some exceptions, diminished the effectiveness of fortification; such improvements made close order formation useless for middle to late 19th century infantry, the use of machine guns early in the 20th stymied frontal assaults. Military uniforms changed from gaudy to drab, making soldiers less visible to the increasing firepower. At sea, improved naval artillery ended the use of prize crews, naval aviation brought an end to armored battleships; the use of firepower in achieving military objectives became one of several conflicting schools of military thought, or doctrines.
The Battle of Vimy Ridge used massed artillery to help win an Allied victory, but dramatic improvements in siege weapon technology had gone hand in hand with small scale infantry tactics. Operation Desert Storm relied on massed firepower as did the 2003 Invasion of Iraq, but firepower was integrated with advances in small-unit training. Small arms, such as the M249 SAW, have been employed on a squad level to provide an overwhelming volume of fire in close quarters situations; the idea is that a large volume of accurate suppressive fire will immobilize the enemy, degrading their ability to perform. In addition, grenade launchers such as the M79, those that can be underslung on an assault rifle, such as the M203 or M320, are used to provide units with a disproportionate amount of firepower; these weapons are useful in situations where a unit is outnumbered and needs to respond with fire superiority, such as in an ambush by forces not equipped. Bidwell and Graham, Dominick. Fire-Power: The British Army Weapons and Theories of War, 1904-1945
