Battle Ships


by Elizabeth Morgan - Date: 2007-01-30 - Word Count: 342 Share This!

The word battleship refers to ships that were built for war between the 15th and 20th century. These ships had powerful guns, armor, and were mostly used in times when major world powers were trying to expand their colonies and establish their trade routes. The word "battleships" is often used interchangeably with "warships," which is incorrect. Warship is the category of naval vessels that are built to fight wars, whereas battleships had typical specifications and belonged to a particular period of time.

The earlier battleships used to make "castles" aboard ships, which were raised platforms used by archers, and later they were strengthened enough to mount large guns. The British naval supremacy was maintained over the other rival naval powers, such as France, Spain and Netherlands, for a considerable time due to constant improvements to their shipbuilding technology. In the 17th century, a fleet would consist of two-decker, three-decker and four decker ships that later went on to be used in the historical Napoleonic wars. The 18th century battleships used the revolutionary exploding-shell technology, which not only resulted in the introduction of iron/steel armor, but also rendered other ships obsolete. The irony however, is that even though British naval superiority was widely prevalent, the French were almost always the first to produce better versions, such as the largest three decker Valmy, the first steam battleship Le Napoléon, or the first "Ironclad" La Gloire. The last decades of the 18th century saw a number of experimental ships being built, which resulted in the induction of the turbine engines that laid foundation for the "Dreadnought" class of warships.

During World War I, the German and British battleships hardly left their ports, for they were considered too expensive to be sunk. They waited for each other to attack first. Due to agreements such as the Washington Naval Treaty of 1922, the production was cut down, before the full-fledged arms race in preparation for the Second World War. Yamato and Musashi, the Japanese warships sunk by American forces were two of the biggest battleships to be ever constructed.


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