Wooden Sailing Ship
A ship-of-the-line was a type of naval warship constructed from the 17th century through the mid-19th century, to take part in the naval tactic known as the line of battle, in which two columns of opposing warships would manoeuvre to bring the greatest weight of broadside guns to bear. Since these engagements were almost invariably won by the heaviest ships carrying the most powerful guns, the natural progression was to build sailing vessels that were the largest and most powerful of their time.
From the end of the 1840s, the introduction of steam power brought less dependence on the wind in battle and led to the construction of screw-driven but wooden-hulled ships-of-the-line; a number of pure sail-driven ships were converted to this propulsion mechanism. However, the introduction of the ironclad frigate in about 1859 led swiftly to the decline of the steam-assisted ships-of-the-line, though the ironclad warship became the ancestor of the twentieth-century battleship, whose very designation is itself a contraction of the phrase "line-of-battle ship."
History
Predecessors
The origin of the ship-of-the-line can be found in the great ships built by the English in the 15th and 16th centuries, the Nau built by the Portuguese and the similar large carracks built by other European nations at the same time. These vessels, developed from the cogs, which traded in the North Sea and the Baltic, had an advantage over galleys because they had raised platforms called "castles" at bow and stern which could be occupied by archers, who fired down on enemy ships. Over time these castles became higher and larger, and eventually started to be built into the structure of the ship, increasing overall strength.
Mary Rose was an English carrack, being well equipped with 78 guns (91 after an upgrade in the 1530s). Built in Portsmouth, England 1510-12, she was one of the earliest purpose-built warships to serve in the English Navy; it is thought that she never served as a merchant ship. She was over 500 tons burthen with a keel of over 32 m (106 ft) and a crew that consisted of 200 sailors, 185 soldiers, and 30 gunners. Although she was the pride of the English fleet she accidentally sank during the battle of the Solent against French forces on 19 July 1545.
Henri Grâce à Dieu (French, "Henry Grace of God"), nicknamed "Great Harry", was an English great ship of the 16th century. Contemporary with Mary Rose , Henri Grâce à Dieu was 165 feet (50 m) long, weighing 1,000–1,500 tons and having a complement of 700–1,000. It is said that she was ordered by Henry VIII in response to the Scottish ship Michael , launched in 1511. She was originally built at Woolwich Dockyard from 1512 to 1514 and was one of the first vessels to feature gunports and had twenty of the new heavy bronze cannon, allowing for a broadside. In all she mounted 43 heavy guns and 141 light guns. She was the first English two-decker, and when launched she was the largest and most powerful warship in Europe, but she saw little action. She was present at the Battle of the Solent against Francis I of France in 1545 (in which Mary Rose sank) but appears to have been more of a diplomatic vessel, sailing on occasion with sails of gold cloth. Indeed, the great ships were almost as well known for their ornamental design (some ships, like the Vasa , were gilded on their stern scrollwork) as they were for the power they possessed.
These ships were the first used in experiments with carrying large-calibre guns aboard. Because of its higher freeboard and greater load-bearing ability, this type of vessel was better suited to gunpowder weapons than the galley. Because of their development from Atlantic seagoing vessels, the great ships were more weatherly than galleys and better suited to open waters. The lack of oars meant that large crews were unnecessary, making long journeys more feasible. Their disadvantage was that they were entirely reliant on the wind for mobility. Galleys could still overwhelm great ships, especially when there was little wind and they had a numerical advantage, but as great ships increased in size, galleys became less and less useful.
Another detriment was the high forecastle, which interfered with the sailing qualities of the ship; the bow would be forced low into the water while sailing before the wind. But as guns were introduced and gunfire replaced boarding as the primary means of naval combat during the 16th century, the mediaeval forecastle was no longer needed, and later ships such as the galleon had only a low, one-deck-high forecastle. By the time of the 1637 launching of Britain's powerful Sovereign of the Seas , the high forecastle was gone altogether.
From the 16th to 18th century, the great ship and carrack evolved into the galleon, a longer, more manoeuvrable type of ship, with all the advantages of the great ship. The opposing British and Spanish fleets of the 1588 Spanish Armada were both largely composed of galleons. By the 1710s every major European naval power was building ships like these.
With the growing importance of colonies and exploration and the need to maintain trade routes across stormy oceans, galleys and galleasses (a larger, higher type of galley with side-mounted guns, but lower than a galleon) were used less and less, and by about 1750 had little impact upon naval battles.
Large sailing junks of the Chinese Empire, described by various travellers to the East such as Marco Polo and Niccolò Da Conti, and used during the travels of Admiral Zheng He in the early 15th century, were contemporaries of such European vessels. Chinese junks carried cannon as well as other weapons unfavoured in the West but because of their construction and wider beam ends, were not as vulnerable to being fired on at the bow and stern as European ships were, and as a result there was no impetus to develop similar tactics. By the time European powers were capable of sending ships to Chinese waters, Chinese isolationism had resulted in these developments being abandoned and forgotten, and construction halted on all but the smallest types of junks so that what they encountered were coastal defence ships comparable to European sloops and not the 137-metre-long (450 ft) and 55-metre-wide (180 ft) treasure ships Admiral Zheng He commanded.
Line-of-battle adoption
In the early to mid 17th century, new fighting techniques came to be used by several navies, in particular those of England and the Netherlands. Previously battles had usually been fought by great fleets of ships closing with each other and fighting it out in whatever arrangement they found themselves in, often using boarding. However, the further development of guns and the adoption of broadside arrangements of guns required a change of tactics. With the broadside the decisive weapon, tactics evolved to ensure as many ships could fire broadside as possible. The line-of-battle tactic required ships to form long single-file lines and close with the enemy fleet on the same tack, battering the other fleet until one side had had enough and retreated. Any manoeuvres would be carried out with the ships remaining in line for mutual protection.
"In order that this order of battle, this long thin line of guns, may not be injured or broken at some point weaker than the rest, there is at the same time felt the necessity of putting in it only ships which, if not of equal force, have at least equally strong sides. Logically it follows, at the same moment in which the line ahead became definitively the order for battle, there was established the distinction between the ships 'of the line', alone destined for a place therein, and the lighter ships meant for other uses." Examples of the latter include acting as scouts and relaying signals between the flagship and the rest of the fleet since, from the flagship, only a small part of the line would be in clear sight.
The adoption of line-of battle-tactics had consequences for ship design. The height advantage given by the castles fore and aft was reduced, now that hand-to-hand combat was less essential. The need to manoeuvre in battle made the top-weight of the castles more of a disadvantage. So they shrank, making the ship-of-the-line lighter and more manoeuvrable than its forebears for the same combat power. As an added consequence, the hull itself grew larger, allowing the size and number of guns to increase as well.
Evolution of design
In the 17th century fleets could consist of almost a hundred ships of various sizes, but by the middle of the 18th century, ship-of-the-line design had settled on a few standard types: older two-deckers (i.e., with two complete decks of guns firing through side ports) of 50 guns (which were too weak for the battle-line but could be used to escort convoys), two-deckers of between 64 and 90 guns which formed the main part of the fleet, an
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