"The Royal Navy’s End of Fighting Sail –" Topic

…Sidon, Beirut and Acre, 1840

"Though steam propulsion was first applied to warships, on a small scale, in the late 1830s, it was to take another half-century before sail was finally abandoned by the world's navies. The process was paralleled with the replacement of wood by metal – initially iron and later steel – for construction. 1840 was however to see the last major action by the Royal Navy in which a sailing wooden line-of-battle ship, of a type almost identical to those which fought under Nelson at Trafalgar in 1805, was to play the leading role. It was however supported by small steamers. The scene was to be Sidon the coast of Lebanon, then regarded as part of the Ottoman province of Syria, in 1840.

Present conflicts in the Middle East are only the latest in a long series of struggles for power which go back to the dawn of history. In the last two centuries however these clashes have arisen from the weakening and eventual demise of the Ottoman Empire – a development which still has massive influence on events today…"
Main page
link

Amicalement
Armand