"Naval Combat Strategies" Topic

"The earliest forms of naval combat were generally primitive and uncomplicated, and it was simply an extension of land combat that relied on the quality of soldiers and marines rather than the particilar nautical qualities of the ship or the abilities of the commander or sailors and required little in the experise of manuevering or seamanship.

Basically, it was a close boarding form of combat – where the ships simply provided a floating platform for soldiers to battle at close quarters in a traditional fashion. This type of combat had an enormous advantage in that ships received very little in the way of damage and it allowed the victor to increase the size of it's the fleet at little cost.

In the early days of naval combat, the primary fighting force was the military solider, and combat at sea was not significantly different from that on land. Naval actions typically took place near the land so they could eat, sleep, and stick to narrow waters to outmaneuver the opposing fleet. It was not uncommon for ships to beach and battle on land as well…"
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Amicalement
Armand

Very misleading in general and in detail. Value of posting it here ? Nil.

Sorry, Plasticviking3, can you elaborate on why that is? As it currently stands, the only valueless posting I see here is yours. You make a pretty bold statement, and provide no elucidation whatsoever… We would love to hear why exactly the article is so terrible.

Here is a confused example that would take a lot of scribbling to sort out. Use your own time to check why almost everything stated here is wrong. I assume anyone visiting here has an interest in ancient galley warfare and has read at least one book about it, which was not the 'Ladybird Book of Ben Hur'. If one is insecure about the value of a webpage then why broadcast it ? If one is not expected to check, at least cursorily, the value of a webpage before broadcasting it then why not just save time and put up a universal link to the entire web ? Quality, not quantity Tango?

'Naval Ordinance
During the classical and Hellenistic periods, naval combat still was characterized by an absence of recourse to the use of war machinery. However, this began to change as ships became much larger with "poly" decks known by the Greeks as "giants of the sea" appeared, and artillery became one of the prinicipal components of naval combat. This artillery was made up of the entire classic arsenal of antiquity -- ballistae, onagers, scorpions, and catapults that hurled heavy bolts, balls of stone or lead, containers for flaming materials and even poisonous snakes upon the enemy. In addition, towers were added at the bow of the ship from which archers and javelin throwers could riddle their adversaries.

By the 9th century BC with frequent regularity incendiary arrows and pots containing combustible substances, including a number of sulphur-, petroleum-, and bitumen-based mixtures were used in naval warfare.

The defense against this mechanism of warfare, was to put armour plating on the ship, and build strong screens above the planking to protect the crew. A ship equipped in this manner was refered to as a cataphract, or armoured ship. With this, tactics changed again, as the heavy units acted as fortresses, as it were, with the smaller ships coming in around them to take cover, and the moving off again to attack. When it came to boarding procedures, fighting intensified by the increasing the number of fighters, and with a great the use of grapnel hooks, and "dolphins", which were heavy masses of lead hurled down on the decks of the enemy ship in the hopes of smashing it.

New methods of ordiance were devloped and Thucydides mentions that in the siege of Delium in 424 b.c a long tube on wheels was used which blew flames forward using a large bellows.'

Ladybird book of Ben Hur, now that did make me chuckle. For what it's worth I don't know a great deal about naval combat so I took a look at these boards to scratch an intellectual itch. Any and all information gratefully accepted.