Shipbuilding
SIZE AND TONNAGE
In assessing the capabilities of warships, the most basic parameter is size, usually given in tons. Unfortunately, pre-modern usage was inconsistent and modern authors all too frequently fail to specify which ton they are using and how. The ton has its origins in the English tun, a barrel with a capacity of 252 gallons used in the French wine trade…
Most Recent
Royal Navy Ships 1714–1815 II
HMS Victory 104-guns on ‘The Fleet Offshore’, 1780-90, an anonymous piece of folk art now at Compton Verney. The Royal Navy’s transformation in the 1750s and 1760s into a superficially French-style fleet based on seventy-four-gun line-of-battle ships and 12-pounder frigates was a belated recognition that the Dutch Wars were over.…
George Crouch PT 1-4 and Scott Paine PT-9
The unusual hull shape of the Crouch-designed PT 1 is clearly visible in this view of the boat on the deck of a seaplane carrier. The whale-back form was carried along the full hull length, as in the CMBs. On 11 July 1938, invitations to builders and designers (with the…
The First Three Deckers
The most visible expression of seapower was the battleship. From the emergence of this distinctly strongly built and heavily armed type of warship during the first half of the seventeenth century, naval power was measured by the number of these vessels a state possessed. Typically, at the height of their…
Power struggles around the Baltic Sea
Excavations in the major Nordic Viking towns of Hedeby, also known as Haithabu (in Schleswig), and Birka (near Stockholm), and at other sites have revealed an extensive trade in the Viking Age from the Baltic region and further down towards the Black Sea along the many river systems. Novgorod in…
Genoa Naval Strength 15th Century
Genoa, 1481, by Cristoforo Grassi. A display of naval strength in a celebration of the recapture of Otranto from the Ottomans. Genoa was a major maritime power but, like Venice, was under pressure from the Ottomans, losing its bases of Amasra (1460) and Kaffa (1475) on the Black Sea, and…
Major Surface Combatants Modern US Navy
The US Navy has brought sixty-two Arleigh Burke class destroyers into service to date. The earlier ships – Arleigh Burke (DDG-51) herself is shown at the top – lacked a helicopter but the later Flight IIA ships – depicted by Gravely (DDG-107) above – were modified to provide this facility…