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Fighting Ships By Richard Hough Approx 200 illistrations w/ dust jacket
Fighting Ships By Richard Hough Damaged dust jacket - missing front piece is attached inside the front cover, folded over
Hardcover With Dustjacket - 304 Pages
Copyright 1969
Containing 48 pages of plates in full color and 150 illustrations in monochrome, Fighting Ships is an informative and illuminating account of warfare at sea through the ages.
Contents
Color Plates
Preface
PART ONE : The Oar-driven Fighting Ship
CHAPTER IEgyptian Origins
CHAPTER 2The Galley
CHAPTER 3The Venetians
CHAPTER 4The Vikings
PART TWO: The Sailing Fighting Ship
CHAPTER 5 thru CHAPTER 12
Prelude to the Three-master
The Fighting Ship as a Gun platform
The Spanish Armada: the Importance of Materiel
The 1600s : Dutch and French Paramountcy
The 17oos : a Century of Conflict
The Frigate and Smaller Fighting Ships
American Frigates
Trafalgar and the Last Years of Sail
PART THREE: The Steam Fighting Ship
CHAPTER 13 thru CHAPTER 18
Transition and Compromise
The Age of the Ironclad
The Torpedo-carrier
The Cruiser
The Dreadnought
The Aircraft Carrier
Bibliography
List of Illustrations Acknowledgments Index
PREFACE
Ever since the days of Phoenician sea power, the fighting ship has been the noblest and most splendid of all the weapons of war, inspiring reassurance and courage in those who sailed in them, and discouragement and fear in their enemies. Unlike the tank and the military aircraft, the fighting ship has always possessed in its design a measure of both the functional and the decorative. During some periods of extravagance, the decorator - the carver, the gilder, the painter has in the past been allowed to exercise too great an influence, and bluff sea captains were known to chop off and with relish hurl into the sea heavy carvings, perhaps of saints, in order to improve their vessel's sailing qualities. On the other hand, to go into battle behind carved figureheads of fierce beasts has enflamed the fighting spirit of seamen over thousands of years of naval warfare. Right up to the last generation of battleship, the skill of the naval architect has had to consider how best the rig and silhouette of his ship may most effectively intimidate the foe. (The French quite recently made their guns look longer and more fearful by siting them in inconveniently small turrets.)
When the loving skill of the artist has been equally matched by the practical wisdom of the shipwright, the fighting ship has been an object of peerless beauty. When a Humphreys-designed frigate sails in all its elegance from the mouth of the Delaware, when a great Dreadnought of this century fires a full broadside at 3o knots, the proof is complete that the fighting ship is one of history's most beautiful and fearful creations.
It seems, then, that the visual quality of men-of-war is something to be cherished, and that a fully illustrated history of the fighting ship through the ages is a worthwhile object. But the number and range of illustrations in this book has demanded an economy of text which has represented something of a challenge. The subject of naval architecture and development is so vast that this cannot attempt to be much more than a summary of the most important trends and developments, with reference to the fighting ship's construction and embellishment, her weapons and how they were used, and her activities in war. Some omissions, especially among the smaller classes of ships, will be noted, and the medieval period is considered very briefly because the fighting ship was then really only a converted merchantman, and little is known about it anyway.
There are two obvious ways of extending knowledge beyond what is provided here. First, the world is full of maritime museums and preserved fighting ships, like the Constitution at Boston, the Victory at Portsmouth, and the wonderful Wasa at Stockholm. Second, the literature of the fighting ship and its battles in all languages is vast and fascinating - from Hakluyt to Jane. A few of the books to which I have most often referred are to be found on pages 293-4.
This strikingly illustrated volume traces the history of the fighting ship from its early origins in the primitive Nile craft of 3000 B.C. to the modern American nuclear-powered aircraft carrier. In re-creating this long and illustrious past, Richard Hough emphasizes that the fighting ship has always been not merely a weapon of war, but a beautiful and intensely personal creation, possessing (apart from a few notable exceptions) a supreme combination of functional and decorative qualities.
Major developments in the evolution of the fighting ship have always been slow. The author points out the reasons for this in such processes as the change from oar- to sail-propulsion, or the development of the three-masted sailing ship, which took place in the -fifteenth century when the urge to explore the world forced the ship to be developed to meet the mariners' needs, and led the mariner to learn how to handle the sailing ship safely and efficiently. The invention of gunpowder in the fourteenth century started the far-reaching revolution in fighting ship design, which by the seventeenth century had completed the split between fighting ship and merchantman. The shell-firing, ship-destroying gun led to the creation of ship-protecting armour, the nineteenth century ironclad, and thereafter to all the terrible sea weapons of modern warfare.
Writing of famous ships and great battles at sea, Mr Hough has captured all the color and excitement of the combat vessels which have plowed the oceans of the world.
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