Naval
Part II Battle of Tassafaronga
USS Minneapolis at Tulagi with torpedo damage a few hours after the battle on December 1, 1942. New Orleans near Tulagi the morning after the battle, showing everything missing forward of turret two. The Fletcher, with its modern SG radar, rode at the head of the line. If this was an improvement over Callaghan’s approach two weeks before, the urge…
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U-Boot Aces II
Kapitänleutnant Prien. From Bundesarchiv – CC BY-SA 3.0 de With Norway conquered and the torpedoes running true and exploding when they were supposed to again, Doenitz sent his U-boats back to the North Atlantic. He divided them into two battle groups: Prien and Roesing. Prien was given the task of…
Imperial Russian Baltic fleet shipyards
A representation of St Petersburg in 1716 by the contemporary architect Marcelius (no first initial available), showing the administrative and logistical hub of the Baltic fleet in its early years. The view is taken from the banks of the Neva looking across towards the centre of the city, with an…
Medieval Navy of France
Facing the North Sea and the Atlantic, the kingdom of France possessed, in theory, around 2500 kilometres of coastline, stretching from the estuary of the Zwyn in Flanders to Hendaye on the frontier with Castile. At the beginning of the thirteenth century, however, only the counties of Ponthieu and Artois…
Breech-Loading Heavy Guns at Sea
Ordnance experiments in the 1870s involving testing pressures in gun bores revealed that performance could be significantly enhanced by utilizing slower-burning gunpowder and longer barrels. Slow-burning large-grain powder, known as prismatic powder, prolonged the length of time that the charge acted on the projectile and thus increased both muzzle velocity…
Captain Nathaniel Brown Palmer
Four months before the Battle of the Barges on Lake Borgne, a British force, including the 74-gun Ramillies, the 44-gun Pactobus, the bomb-ship Terror, and the brig Dispatch, appeared off Stonington, Connecticut, the bustling shipbuilding, shipping, and fishing town on Long Island Sound. The British Commodore was Sir Thomas Masterman…
Deception at Sea I
 The CSS Alabama in Singapore harbour The Alabama under sail  Captain Semmes and First Lieutenant Kell on the Alabama, 1863 Vegetius, writing in the fourth century AD, describes how Roman skiffs used for reconnaissance had their sails and rigging dyed Venetian blue which resembles the ocean waves; the wax used…