Naval warfare: Encyclopedia II - Naval warfare - Sails and empire

Naval warfare - Sails and empire

The late Middle Ages was important as the time of the development of the cogs and caravels, 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.

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 Gujerati/Egyptian force surprised a Portuguese squadron at Dabul, and only two Portuguese ships escape. In the following February, the Portuguese viceroy destroys the allied fleet at Diu, thus confirming Portuguese domination of the Indian Ocean.

In 1582, the Battle of Punta Delgada in the Azores, in which a Spanish fleet defeated a French 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 her admiral Sir Francis Drake defeated and scattered the force, beginning the rise to prominence of the Royal Navy.

During the Seven-Year War, Korean-Chinese naval forces fought against Japanese armadas in order to stop a Japanese invasion, which was eventually halted.

In the 17th century competition between English and Dutch commercial fleets came to a head in the Anglo-Dutch Wars, the first wars to be conducted entirely at sea.

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. 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 the rivalry rather than diminish it, 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.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Sails and empire", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki