Naval warfare is
combat in
and on
seas,
oceans, or any
other major bodies of water such as large
lakes
and wide
rivers.
History
Mankind has fought battles on the sea for more than 3,000 years.
Land
warfare would seem, initially, to
be irrelevant and entirely removed from warfare on the open ocean,
though this is not necessarily true. Land navigation, until the
advent of extensive railroads was extremely dependent upon river
systems and canals.
The latter
were crucial in the development of the modern world in the United Kingdom
, the Low Countries and
northern Germany
, for they enabled the bulk movement of goods and
raw materials without which the Industrial Revolution would not have
occurred. Prior to 1750, things moved by barge or sea, or
not much at all. Thus armies, with their exorbitant needs for food,
ammunition and fodder, were tied to the river valleys throughout
the ages.
The oceanic influences throughout pre-recorded history (Homeric
Legends, e.g.
Troy
), and
classical works like the Odyssey
underscore the past influences. The Persian Empire — united and strong — couldn't
prevail against the might of the Athenian
fleet
combined with that of lesser city states in several attempts to
conquer the Greek
city
states. Phoenicia
's and Egypt
's power,
Carthage
's and even
Rome
's depended in no mean way upon control of the
seas.
So too did
the Venetian
Republic
dominate Italy
's city
states, thwart the Ottoman Empire,
and dominate commerce on the Silk Road and
the Mediterranean
in general for centuries. For three centuries,
the Northmen commonly called the Vikings
raided and pillaged and went where they willed, far into central
Russia
and the Ukraine
, and even to
far off Constantinople
(both via the Black Sea
tributaries and through the Strait of
Gibraltar
).
The many sea battles through history also provide a reliable source
of
shipwrecks for
underwater archaeology.
A major example,
albeit not very commonly known, is the exploration of the wrecks
of various battleships in the Pacific Ocean
, namely Japanese
warships that sank during the Battle of
Midway
.
Oars people of the Mediterranean Sea
The first
dateable recorded sea battle occurred about 1210 BC: Suppiluliuma II, king of the Hittites, defeated a fleet from Cyprus
, and burned
their ships at sea.
Assyrian reliefs from the 700s BC show Phoenician fighting ships, with two levels of oars, fighting
men on a sort of bridge or deck above the oarsmen, and some sort of
ram protruding from the bow. No written mention of strategy
or tactics seems to have survived.
The
Greeks of Homer just used their ships
as transport for land armies, but in 664 BC there is a mention of a
battle at sea between Corinth
and its colony city Corcyra
.
The
Persian Wars were the first to
feature large-scale naval operations, not just sophisticated fleet
engagements with dozens of
triremes on each
side, but combined land-sea operations. It seems unlikely that all
this was the product of a single mind or even of a generation; most
likely the period of evolution and experimentation was simply not
recorded by history.
After some initial battles while subjugating the Greeks of the
Ionian coast, the Persians determined to
invade Greece proper.
Themistocles of
Athens estimated that the Greeks would be outnumbered by
the Persians on land, but that Athens could protect itself by
building a fleet (the famous "wooden walls"), using the profits of
the silver mines at Laurium
to finance them.
The first
Persian campaign, in 492 BC, was aborted because the fleet was lost
in a storm, but the second, in 490 BC, captured islands in the
Aegean
Sea
before landing on the mainland near Marathon
. Attacks by the Greek armies repulsed
these.
The third
Persian campaign, under Xerxes I of
Persia ten years later (480 BC), followed the pattern of the
first in marching the army via the Hellespont
while the fleet paralleled them offshore.
Near
Artemisium
, in the narrow channel between the mainland and
Euboea
, the Greek
fleet held off multiple assaults by the Persians, the Persians
breaking through a first line, but then being flanked by the second
line of ships. But the defeat on land at Thermopylae
forced a Greek withdrawal, and Athens evacuated its
population to nearby Salamis Island
.
The ensuing
Battle of Salamis was
one of the decisive engagements of history. Themistocles trapped
the Persians in a channel too narrow for them to bring their
greater numbers to bear, and attacked them vigorously, in the end
causing the loss of 200 Persian ships vs 40 Greek.
At the end, Xerxes
still had a fleet stronger than the Greeks, but withdrew anyway,
and after losing at Plataea in the
following year, returned to Asia Minor
, leaving the Greeks their freedom.
Nevertheless, the Athenians and Spartans attacked and burned the
laid-up Persian fleet at
Mycale,
and freed many of the Ionian towns.
During the next fifty years, the Greeks commanded the Aegean, but
not harmoniously.
After several minor wars about which we know
little, tensions exploded into the Peloponnesian War (431 B.C.) between
Athens' Delian League and the Spartan
Peloponnese
. Naval strategy was critical; Athens walled
itself off from the rest of Greece, leaving only the port at
Piraeus
open, and trusting in its navy to keep supplies
flowing while the Spartan army besieged it. This strategy
worked, although the close quarters likely contributed to the
plague that killed many Athenians in 429.
There were a number of sea battles between
galleys; at
Rhium,
Naupactus,
Pylos,
Syracuse,
Cynossema,
Cyzicus,
Notium.
But the end came for Athens in 405 at
Aegospotami in the Hellespont, where the Athenians had drawn up their fleet on
the beach, and were surprised by the Spartan fleet, who landed and
burned all the ships. Athens surrendered to Sparta in the
following year.
Navies next played a major role in the complicated wars of the
successors of
Alexander the
Great.
The
Roman Republic had never been much of
a seafaring nation, but it had to learn, and learn fast, in the
Punic Wars with Carthage, and developed the technique of grappling and
boarding enemy ships with
soldiers. The Roman Navy
grew gradually as Rome found itself involved in more and more
Mediterranean politics; by the time of the Roman Civil War and the Battle of
Actium
in 31 BC, hundreds of ships were involved, many of
them quinqueremes mounting catapults and fighting towers. Following the
Emperor
Augustus transforming the Republic
into the
Roman Empire, Rome gained
control of most of the Mediterranean. Without any significant
maritime enemies, the Roman navy was reduced mostly to patroling
for
pirates and transportation duties. It was
only on the fringes of the Empire, in newly gained provincies or
defensive missions against barbarian invasion, did the navy still
engage in actual warfare.
Ancient China
In
ancient China, the first known
naval battles took place during the
Warring States (481 BC - 221 BC), a period
where regional kings battled against one another. Chinese naval
warfare in this ancient period featured grapple-and-hook, as well
as ramming tactics with ships called "stomach strikers" and
"colliding swoopers" . It was written in the subsequent Han Dynasty
that the Warring States era Chinese had employed
ge chuan
ships (dagger-axe ships, or
halberd ships),
thought to have a simple description of a ship manned by marines
carrying dagger-axe halberds as personal weapons.
The later 3rd century Three Kingdoms era Chinese writer Zhang Yan
asserted in his writing that the Warring States Chinese named the
boats this way because halberd blades were actually fixed and
attached to the hull of the ship in order to rip into the hull of
another ship while ramming, to stab enemies in the water that had
fallen overboard and were swimming, or simply to clear any possible
dangerous marine animals in the path of the ship (since the ancient
Chinese did believe in sea monsters, see
Xu Fu
for more info).
Qin Shi Huang, the first emperor of the
Qin Dynasty (221 BC - 207 BC), owed much
of his success in unifying China
(specifically southern China) to naval power, although an official
navy was not yet established (see Medieval Asia section
below). Zhou Dynasty era Chinese were known to use
temporary pontoon bridges for general
means of transportation, but it was during the Qin and later Han
Dynasty that large permanent pontoon bridges were assembled, and
used for purposes of warfare (first written account of a pontoon
bridge in the West being the oversight of the Greek Mandrocles of Samos in aiding a military
campaign of Persian Emperor Darius I over
the Bosporus
).
During the
Han Dynasty (202 BC - AD
220), the Chinese discovered the use of the
stern-mounted steering
rudder,
as well as designed a new ship type, the
junk.
During the late Han Dynasty into the
Three Kingdoms period, significantly
large naval battles like the Battle of Chibi
marked the advancement of naval warfare in the
East. In the latter engagement, the Chinese military
strategist
Zhuge Liang from the
Kingdom of Shu is well known for his fire
attack upon the massive naval fleet of Prime Minister
Cao Cao.
In terms
of seafaring abroad, arguably one of the first Chinese to sail into
the Indian
Ocean
and to reach Sri Lanka
and India
by sea was
the Buddhist monk
Fa Xian in the early 5th century (although
diplomatic ties and land trade to Persia and India was established
during the earlier Han Dynasty). However, Chinese naval
maritime influence would not present itself in the Indian Ocean
until the medieval period.
Europe, Middle East and North Africa
The
barbarian invasions of the 4th century and later mostly occurred by
land, but there are mentions of a Vandal
fleet fighting with the Romans, and a defeat of an Ostrogothic fleet at Sena Gallica
in the Adriatic Sea
.
During the
Muslim conquests of the
7th century,
Arab fleets begin to make an
appearance, raiding
Sicily in 652 (see
History of Islam in
southern Italy and
Emirate of
Sicily), and defeating the
Byzantine
Navy in 655.
Constantinople is saved from a prolonged Arab
siege in 678 by the invention of Greek
fire, an early form of flamethrower
that was devastating to the ships in the besieging fleet.
These were just the first of many encounters during the
Byzantine-Arab Wars.
The
Islamic Caliphate, or Arab Empire, became the dominant naval power in
the Mediterranean Sea
from the 7th to 13th centuries, during what is
known as the Islamic Golden
Age. One of the most significant inventions in
medieval naval warfare was the torpedo,
invented in Syria
by the
Arab inventor Hasan
al-Rammah in 1275. His torpedo ran on water with a
rocket system filled with
explosive gunpowder
materials and had three firing points. It was a very effective
weapon against
ships.
In the 8th century the
Norse Vikings begin to make an appearance, although their
usual style is to appear quickly, plunder, and disappear,
preferably undefended locations.
King Alfred
the Great of England
built a fleet and was able to stay the Viking
incursions, establishing the boundaries of Danelaw
in a 884 treaty.
The Norse also fought several sea battles among themselves. This
was normally done by binding the ships on each side together, thus
essentially fighting a land battle on the sea. However the fact
that the losing side could not easily escape meant that battles
tended to be hard and bloody. The
Battle of Svolder is perhaps the most
famous of these battles.
As Arab
power in the Mediterranean began to wane, the Italian trading towns of Genoa
, Pisa
, and
Venice
stepped in
to seize the opportunity, setting up commercial networks and
building navies to protect them. At first the navies
fought with the Arabs (off Bari
in 1004, at
Messina
in 1005), but then they found themselves contending
with Normans moving into Sicily, and finally
with each other. The Genoese and Venetians fought four naval
wars, in 1253–1284, 1293–1299,1350–1355, and 1378–1381. The last
ended with a decisive victory for Venice, which gave them almost a
century to enjoy Mediterranean trade domination before other
European countries started exploring to the south and west.
In the
north of Europe, the near-continuous conflict between England and France
rarely
entails naval activity more sophisticated than carrying knights
across the English
Channel
, and perhaps trying to attack the
transports. The Battle of Dover
in 1217, between a French fleet of 80 ships
under Eustace the Monk and an
English fleet of 40 under Hubert de
Burgh, is notable as the first recorded battle using sailing
ship tactics.
East and South Asia
The
Sui Dynasty (581 - 618) and Tang Dynasty (618 - 907) of China were involved
in several naval affairs over the triple-set of polities ruling
medieval Korea
(Three Kingdoms of Korea), along with
engaging naval bombardments on the peninsula from Asuka period Yamato Kingdom (Japan). A
prominent factor in the sudden decline and collapse of the Sui
Dynasty was its pouring of state funds into the
Goguryeo-Sui Wars, where the Chinese
assembled an enormous naval fleet that in the end was
unsuccessful.
The succeeding
Tang Dynasty of China
took on a different foreign policy, aiding the
Silla Dynasty (see also
Unified Silla) in expelling the armies and
naval forces of the Japanese (see
Battle of Baekgang) and conquering
Silla's other Korean rivals,
Baekje and
Goguryeo by 668.
In addition, the
Chinese Tang Dynasty had maritime trading, tributary, and
diplomatic ties as far as modern-day Sri Lanka, India, Islamic Iran
and
Arabia, as well as Somalia
in East
Africa.
From the
Axumite Kingdom in modern-day Ethiopia
, the Arab traveller Sa'd ibn Abi-Waqqas sailed from there to
Tang China during the reign of Emperor
Gaozong. Two decades later, he returned with a copy
of the Quran, establishing the first Islamic
mosque in China, the Mosque of Remembrance in
Guangzhou
. What followed was a rising rivalry between
Arab and Chinese for dominant control of sea lanes of trade in the
Indian Ocean. In his book
Cultural Flow Between China and the
Outside World, Shen Fuwei notes that maritime Chinese
merchants in the 9th century were landing regularly at Sufala in
East Africa to cut out Arab middle-men traders.
The
Chola Dynasty of medieval India was a
dominant seapower in the Indian Ocean, an avid maritime trader and diplomatic entity with
Song China. Rajaraja Chola I (reigned 985 to 1014) and
his son Rajendra Chola I (reigned 1014-42), who were from the
Dravidian kingdom in southern India, sent out a great naval
expedition that occupied parts of Myanmar
, Malaya, and
Sumatra
. While many believe the Cholas were the
first rulers noted to have a naval fleet in the Indian
subcontinent, there are at least two evidences to cite use of
navies. Narasimhavarman
Pallava I
transported his troops to Sri Lanka to help Manavarman to reclaim
the throne. Shatavahanahas were known to possess a navy that was
widely deployed to influence Southeast Asia. What is not known is
the extent of use.
Some argue that there is no evidence to support naval warfare in a
contemporary sense. Others say that ships routinely carried bands
of archers to keep pirates at bay. However, since the Arabs were
known to use catapults, naptha, and devices attached to ships to
prevent
boarding parties, one can
reasonably conclude that Chola navies not only transported troops
but also provided support, protection, and attack capabilities
against enemy targets.
12th century
In the 12th century, China's first permanent standing navy was
established by the
Southern Song
Dynasty, the headquarters of the Admiralty stationed at
Ding-hai.
This came about after the conquest of
northern China by the Jurchen people
(see Jin Dynasty) in 1127,
while the Chinese court fled south from Kaifeng
to Hangzhou
. Equipped with the magnetic
compass and knowledge of
Shen
Kuo's famous treatise (on the concept of
true north), the Chinese became proficient
experts of navigation in their day. They raised their naval
strength from a mere 11 squadrons of 3,000 marines to 20 squadrons
of 52,000 marines in a century's time.
Employing
paddle wheel crafts and
trebuchet's throwing
gunpowder bombs from the decks of their ships, the
Chinese became a formidable foe to the Jin Dynasty during the
12th-13th centuries (see also
Battle of
Caishi and
Battle of Tangdao).
With a powerful navy, China dominated maritime trade throughout
South East Asia as well. Until 1279,
the Chinese were able to use their naval power to defend against
the Jin to the north, until the
Mongols
finally conquered all of China.
After the Song Dynasty, the Mongol-led
Yuan
Dynasty
of China was a powerful maritime force in the
Indian Ocean.
The Yuan Emperor
Kublai Khan attempted
to invade Japan twice with enormous fleets (of both Mongols and
Chinese), in 1274 and again in 1281, both attempts being
unsuccessful (see
Mongol
invasions of Japan). Building upon the technological
achievements of the earlier Chinese Song Dynasty, the Mongols also
employed early
cannons upon the decks of
their ships.
While the Chinese Song Dynasty built its naval strength, the
Japanese also had considerable naval prowess. The strength of
Japanese naval forces could be seen in the
Genpei War, in the large-scale
Battle of Dan-no-ura on
April 25,
1185. The forces of
Minamoto no Yoshitsune were
850 ships strong, while
Taira no
Munemori had 500 ships under his command.
In the mid 14th century, the rebel leader
Zhu Yuanzhang (1328-1398) seized power in the
south amongst many other rebel groups. His early success was owed
to the aid of capable officials such as
Liu Ji and
Jiao
Yu, and their gunpowder weapons (see
Huolongjing).
Yet the decisive
battle that cemented his success and his founding of the Ming Dynasty
(1368-1644) was the Battle of Lake Poyang, considered one
of the largest naval
battles in history.
In the
15th century, the Chinese Ming Dynasty Admiral Zheng He was assigned to assemble a massive fleet
for several tributary missions abroad, sailing throughout the
waters of the South East Pacific
and the Indian Ocean. During his maritime
missions, on several occasions Zheng's fleet came into conflict
with
pirates. Zheng's fleet also became
involved in a conflict in Sri Lanka, where the King of Ceylon
traveled back to Ming China afterwards to make a formal apology to
the Emperor.
In the
late 16th century, Toyotomi
Hideyoshi of Momoyama-era
Japan gathered an enormous fleet to assault the Joseon
Dynasty
of Korea when the Korean King Seonjo refused to allow Japanese
armies to invade Ming Dynasty China via the Korean Peninsula as a
staging ground. During the
Japanese invasions of
Korea , the Japanese employed clever close-range tactics on
land with
arquebus rifles, but also relied
upon close-range firing of muskets in grapple-and-board style naval
engagements.
The
Japanese were successful in first capturing the Korean port at
Busan
, the capital at Hanseong
(In modern-day Seoul
) fell to
their forces, and then proceeded to move far north into the Korean
peninsula. Military aid sent by Chinese
Wanli Emperor of Ming assisted the Koreans
somewhat, but the farther firing range of Korean cannons, along
with the brilliant naval strategies of the Korean Admiral
Yi Sun-sin, were the main detrimental factors in
ultimate Japanese defeats.
Admiral Yi is credited
Turtle ship
(Geobukseon). Turtle Ships were used mostly to spearhead attacks.
They were best used in tight areas and around islands rather than
the open sea.
Admiral Yi effectively cut off the possible
Japanese supply line that would have run through the Yellow Sea
to China, as well as severely weakened the Japanese
strength and fighting morale in several heated engagements (where
many regard the most critical Japanese defeat to be the Battle of Hansan
Island).
Sails and empires
- Main article: Age of
sail
The late Middle Ages was important as the time of the development
of the
cogs,
caravels and
carracks ships
capable of surviving the tough conditions of the open ocean, with
enough backup systems and crew expertise to make long voyages
routine. In addition, they grew from 100 tons to 300 tons
displacement, enough to carry cannons as armament and still have
space left over for profitable cargo. One of the largest ships of
the time, the
Great Harry displaced over
1,500 tons.
The voyages of discovery were fundamentally commercial rather than
military in nature, although the line was sometimes blurry in that
a country's ruler was not above funding exploration for personal
profit, nor was it a problem to use military power to enhance that
profit. Later the lines gradually separated, in that the ruler's
motivation in using the navy was to protect private enterprise so
that they could pay more taxes.
Like the Egyptian Shia-Fatimids and Mamluks, the Sunni-Islamic
Ottoman Empire centered in modern-day Turkey dominated the eastern
Mediterranean Sea. The Ottomans built a powerful navy, rivaling the
Italian city-state of Venice during the
Ottoman-Venetian Wars
.
Although
they were sorely defeated in the Battle of
Lepanto 
by the Holy
League, the Ottomans quickly rebuilt their naval strength, and
afterwards successfully defended the island of Cyprus so that it
would stay in Ottoman hands. However, with the concurrent
Age of Discovery, Europe had far surpassed the Ottoman Empire, and
successfully bypassed their reliance on land-trade by discovering
maritime routes around Africa and towards the Americas.
The first naval action in defense of the new colonies was just ten
years after
Vasco da Gama's epochal
landing in India.
In March 1508, a combined Gujarati/Egyptian
force surprised a Portuguese
squadron at Dabul
, and only two Portuguese ships escaped.
The
following February, the Portuguese viceroy destroyed the allied
fleet at Battle of
Diu
, thus confirming Portuguese domination of the
Indian Ocean.
In 1582,
the Battle of Ponta Delgada in the Azores, in which a Spanish
fleet defeated a combined Portuguese, French, English and Dutch
force,
thus suppressing a revolt in the islands, was the first battle
fought in mid-Atlantic
.
In 1588, Philip II of Spain sent his Spanish Armada to subdue
Elizabeth I of England, but Admiral Sir Charles Howard forced its
retreat, beginning the rise to prominence of the
Royal Navy. However it was unable to follow up
with a decisive blow against the Spanish navy, which remained the
most important for another half century. After the war's end in
1604 the English fleet went through a time of relative neglect and
decline.
In the 16th century, the Barbary Coast|Barbary states of North
Africa rose to power and they collectively became a dominant naval
power in the Mediterranean Sea due to the
Barbary pirates.
The coastal villages
and towns of Italy, Spain and
List of islands in the Mediterranean|Mediterranean islands were
frequently attacked by them and long stretches of the Italian and
Spanish coasts were almost completely abandoned by their
inhabitants; after 1600 Barbary pirates occasionally entered the
Atlantic and struck as far north as Iceland
.
According to Robert Davis between 1 million and 1.25 million
Europeans were captured by Barbary pirates and
sold as slaves in
North Africa and the
Ottoman Empire between the 16th and 19th
centuries.
These slaves were captured mainly from
seaside villages in Italy, Spain and
Portugal, and from farther places like France, England, the Netherlands, Ireland
and even Iceland and North America. The
Barbary pirates were also able to successfully defeat and capture
many European ships, which was largely due to advances in sailing
technology by the Barbary states. The earliest
naval trawler,
xebec and
windward ships were employed by
the Barbary pirates from the 16th century.
From the middle of the 17th century competition between the
expanding English and Dutch commercial fleets came to a head in the
Anglo-Dutch Wars, the first wars to
be conducted entirely at sea. Most memorable of these battles was
the
raid on the Medway, in which
the Dutch
admiral Michiel de Ruyter sailed up the river
Thames, and destroyed most of the British
fleet. This remains to date the greatest naval defeat of England
and her consecutive countries, and established Dutch supremacy at
sea for over half a century. The English and Dutch wars were also
known for very few ships being sunk, as it was very difficult to
hit ships below the water level; the water surface deflected cannon
balls, and the few holes produced could be patched quickly. Naval
forces were severely weakened by casualties to the men and damage
to the sails more than by loss of ships.
The 18th century developed into a period of seemingly continuous
world wars, each larger than the last.
At sea, the British
and French were bitter rivals; the French aided the fledgling
United
States
in the American Revolutionary War, but
their strategic purpose was to capture territory in India and the
West
Indies
--which they did not achieve. In the Baltic Sea,
the final attempt to revive the Swedish Empire led to Gustav III's Russian War, with its
grande finale at the Second Battle of Svensksund
. The battle was unrivalled in size until
the 20th century, was a decisive Swedish tactical victory but its
strategical result was poor (due to poor army performance and
previous lack of initiative from the Swedes) and the war ended
without any territorial changes.
Even the
change of government due to the French
Revolution seemed to intensify rather than diminish the
rivalry, and the Napoleonic Wars
included a series of legendary naval battles, culminating in the
Battle of
Trafalgar
in 1805, by which Admiral Horatio Nelson broke the power of the French
and Spanish fleets, but lost his own life in so doing.
From wood and wind to steel and steam
Trafalgar ushered in the
Pax
Britannica of the 19th century, marked by general peace in
the world's oceans, under the ensigns of the Royal Navy. But the
period was one of intensive experimentation with new technology;
steam power for ships appeared in the
1810s, improved
metallurgy and machining
technique produced larger and deadlier guns, and the development of
explosive
shells, capable of
demolishing a wooden ship at a single blow, in turn required the
addition of iron armour.
Although
naval power during the Song, Yuan, and Ming dynasties established
China as a major world seapower in the East, the Qing Dynasty
lacked an official standing navy. They were
more interested in pouring funds into military ventures closer to
home (China proper), such as Mongolia, Tibet, and Central Asia
(modern
Xinjiang). However, there were some
considerable naval conflicts during the Qing Dynasty before the
Opium Wars (such as the
Battle of Penghu, or the conflict against
Koxinga).
The insignificant naval effort that the
Manchus/Chinese pitted against the more advanced
British steam-powered ships during the first of the Opium Wars in
the 1840s was sorely defeated. This left China open to virtual
foreign domination (from European powers and then Japan) via
spheres of influence over regions of China for economic gain.
Although the Qing Dynasty attempted to modernize the Chinese navy,
China's
Beiyang Fleet was dealt a
severe blow by the
Imperial
Japanese Navy in the
First
Sino-Japanese War (1894-1895).
The famous battle of the
CSS
Virginia and
USS
Monitor in the
American
Civil War was the duel of
ironclads
that symbolized the changing times.
The first fleet action between ironclad
ships was fought in 1866 at the Battle of Lissa
between the navies of Austria
and Italy.
Because the decisive moment of the battle occurred when the
Austrian flagship the
Erzherzog Ferdinand Max successfully
sank the Italian flagship
Re d'Italia by ramming, in
subsequent decades every navy in the world largely focused on
ramming as the main tactic.
As the century came to a close, the familiar modern
battleship began to emerge; a steel-armored ship,
entirely dependent on steam, and sporting a number of large shell
guns mounted in turrets arranged along the centerline of the main
deck. The ultimate design was reached in 1906 with the
HMS Dreadnought which entirely
dispensed with smaller guns, her main guns being sufficient to sink
any existing ship of the time.
The
Russo-Japanese War and
particularly the Battle of Tsushima
in 1905 was the first test of the new concepts,
resulting a stunning Japanese victory and the destruction of most
Russian ships.
With the advent of the
steamship, it
became possible to create massive gun platforms and to provide them
with heavy armor protection. The Dreadnought battleships and their
successors were the first capital ships that combined technology
and firepower with a mobile platform. However, in the first half of
the 20th century, the effect of airpower on the effectiveness and
usability of large capital ships became clear.
World War I pitted the old Royal Navy against
the new navy of Imperial
Germany, culminating in the 1916 Battle of
Jutland
. (The future was heralded when seaplane
carrier HMS
Campania missed
the battle.)
Between wars, the first
aircraft
carrier, HMS
Argus,
appeared.
Many nations agreed to the Washington Naval Treaty and scrapped
many of their battleships and cruisers while still in the
shipyards, but the growing tensions of the 1930s restarted the
building programs, with even larger ships than before; Yamato
, the largest battleship ever, displaced 72,000
tons and mounted guns.
Above and below the surface
The
victory of the Royal Navy at the Battle of
Taranto
was a pivotal point as this was the first true
demonstration of naval air power. Following 7 December 1941 when the
United
States came into World War II,
the sinking of HMS Prince of
Wales and HMS Repulse marked the end
of the era of the battleship, and the new importance of aircraft and their transportation, the aircraft carrier, came to the
fore.
During
the Pacific War, battleships and
cruisers spent most of their time bombarding shore positions, while
the carriers were the stars of the key Battle of the Coral Sea, Battle of
Midway, Battle of
the Philippine Sea, and the climactic Battle of
Leyte Gulf
. Air power remained key to navies throughout
the 20th century, moving to jets launched from ever-larger
carriers, and augmented by cruisers armed with
guided missiles and
cruise missiles.
Roughly parallel to the development of
naval aviation was the development of
submarines to travel underneath the sea,
at first for short dives, then later to be able to spend weeks or
months underwater powered by a
nuclear
reactor. In both World Wars, submarines (
U-boats in Germany) primarily exerted their power by
using
torpedoes to sink merchant ships, as
well as other warships. In the 1950s the
Cold
War inspired the development of
ballistic missile submarines, each one
loaded with dozens of nuclear-armed missiles and with orders to
launch them from sea should the other nation attack.
Against
the backdrop of these developments, World War II had seen the
United
States become by far the largest Naval power in the
world. Throughout the rest of the 20th century The
United States Navy would maintain a
tonnage greater than that of the next 17 largest navies
combined.Work, Robert O.
"Winning the Race:A Naval Fleet Platform
Architecture for Enduring Maritime Supremacy".
Center for
Strategic and Budgetary Assessments Online. Accessed
April 8 2006.
The only
major naval conflict that took place in the second half of the 20th
century was the well known Falklands
War, pitting Argentina
against the United Kingdom. The Falklands showed the vulnerability of
modern ships to sea-skimming
missiles like the
Exocet.
One hit from an Exocet sank HMS
Sheffield
, a modern anti-air warfare destroyer.
Important lessons about ship design, damage control and ship
construction materials were learnt from the conflict.
At the present time, large naval wars seem to be very rare affairs,
with the main function of the modern navy being to exploit its
control of the seaways to project power ashore.
Power projection has been the
primary naval feature of conflicts like the Korean War, Suez
Crisis, Vietnam War, Konfrontasi, Gulf War, Kosovo War and
both campaigns of the War on
Terrorism in Afghanistan
and Iraq
.
Naval history
See also
Lists:
Notes
- Needham, Volume 4, Part 3, 678.
- Shen, 155.
- Davis, Robert. Christian Slaves, Muslim Masters: White
Slavery in the Mediterranean, the Barbary Coast and Italy,
1500-1800.[1]
References
- Shen, Fuwei (1996). Cultural Flow Between China and the
Outside World. China Books & Periodicals. ISBN
978-7119004310
- Needham, Joseph (1986). Science and Civilization in China:
Volume 4, Part 3. Taipei: Caves Books, Ltd.
- Giuseppe Gagliano-Giorgio Giorgerini-Michele
Cosentino,Sicurezza internazionale e potere
marittimo,New Press 2002
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