Ship of the line

HMS English Line Ship Herculein battle against the French frigate Poursuivante

In nautical terms, the ship of the line is a type of warship with three masts, rigged with square sails and two to three gunned decks.

Description

It was named so because it was the type of ship used in a new combat formation of naval squadrons, the battle line formation, used between the centuries XVII and XIX, in which the ships lined up one behind the other others to form an artillery wall that could simultaneously fire dense salvoes against the enemy fleet.

History

English divers attack the French battle line at the Battle of the Nile on August 1, 1798 (Thomas Whitcombe's view)

The concept of a ship appeared at the end of the XVI century, in England, as an evolution of existing ships, such as the galleon, given the advances in naval artillery and technical improvements in sailing ships. The fleets had to present a line of ships with more and more artillery, to dismast and destroy enemy ships, coming to boarding as a last resort, overcoming the existing concept until then that naval combat was an extension of land combat, in which it was necessary to always approach the enemy to fight hand to hand. In the XVII century the concept developed, which will reach its peak in the XVIII with the ship of the line, designed to form these naval artillery lines and maneuver together with the rest of the squadron.

In the Spanish Armada of the XVIII ships were classified into three classes, according to their number of cannons: among the 100 that at least he had to carry a first class and the 60 that a third class armed. The ship of the line with the most cannons ever built^{[citation required]} was the Spanish Santísima Trinidad, armed with 136 cannons and 4 mortars, which was launched in 1769 in Havana (Cuba), and sank south of Cádiz, after its capture in the battle of Trafalgar (1805).

The ships used a large quantity of wood and other materials for their construction and maintenance. To protect against enemy impacts, the hull was formed by overlapping thick planks of oak or holm oak, to form layers up to half a meter thick, or more on the bridges. The living work was lined with metallic copper plates to prevent the action of marine parasites and layers of tow and tar were alternated to increase the durability of the materials. The heaviest artillery (pieces of 42 to 32 pounders) went on the lower bridge and increasingly lighter pieces were placed on the upper ones. Their displacement ranged from 1,200 to 3,500 tons. Being a slow ship that required a large number of crew members to maneuver, the navies had a large number of smaller ships, such as frigates, corvettes, schooners or brigantines, for missions that required mobility and independent action from the fleet.

French engineer Charles Henri Dupuy de Lôme began the last stage of the ship of the line with the Napoléon, a huge ship that was supported by a steam engine.

The ship gradually disappeared from the navies in the second half of the XIX century, after the entry into service of the armored frigates, whose first example was the French La Gloire, curiously also designed by Dupuy de Lôme, in 1859, followed the following year by the English HMS Warrior; although it would be used one last time in combat in the battle of Lissa in the context of the Third Italian War of Independence in which the Austrian ship of the line SMS Kaiser, although it was not the flagship of Admiral Tegetthoff, had an intense participation in front of to the Italian armored frigates.

Ship Types

The following types of ship can be distinguished:

• Ship of three bridges: the one that has three bridges or batteries run from popa to proa and that regularly does not mount less than 120 cannons. There was also a four battery ship called Most Holy Trinity, Spanish, who was the only one in his class and came to dispose, during the battle of Trafalgar, of 140 cannons.
• Line ship: any of the simple or three bridges that are considered by this circumstance on purpose to enter the formation of a line of combat. The general thing is that it does not mount less than 74 cannons of thick caliber, but there have been in another time line ships with less than 60 cannons.
• Propeller ship: the one that besides the gear that corresponds to him had a steam machine with which he could move through the propeller element.
• Reduced ship, enhanced, high board, head, line or column tail, etc.
• Flagship, insignia or General ship: the one who assembles the general of a squad or division.
• Guard ship: the one in a squad or port is destined to attend to all the occurrences offered in the 24 hours of this service.

The Napoléon (1852), the first steam line ship ever built specifically for military use. The Queen Isabel II ship of 84 cannons, photographed by Charles Clifford in Cartagena in 1862, was the last line ship of the Spanish Navy. The HMS Victory, launched in 1765 and photographed here in 1884, is the only line ship that has arrived to this day.

Main parts of a ship of the line

Schematic representation of a three-bridge line ship:
1) Gun of ammunition.
2) Santabárbara.
3) Antepañol. Fourth where the cartridges were loaded with gunpowder.
4) Tapabalazo. Waterway covered with wooden boards and lead plates.
(5) Double shot. Required to break the helmet of the enemy ship.
6) Healing and mating cannon. 7) Main cover.

Diagram illustrating a first-class ship, and section of a third-class ship (Cyclopaedia, 1728).

These were the main parts of a ship of the line (based on a 2-deck, 74-gun ship from 1805):

• Cover of the first battery: located just above the floating line, and therefore the lower one. On this deck was the warehouse of the gunpowder, called the santabárbara, which made it one of the most dangerous places on the ship. An impact on the santabárbara could make the entire ship jump through the air in a matter of seconds. This cover was the most heavy cannons of the ship, usually of 36 pounds. In a "74 cannons" this cover was about 28 cannons.
• Second battery cover: just above the first deck was the second deck, where there were important departments such as the rooms of the officers or warehouses and food pantry. It was about 30 cannons, smaller than those of the first battery and used to be 24 pounds.
• Main roof: the highest of the decks, where most important tasks were performed on board: observation, manoeuvre, guards, combat, etc. This cover was about 16 cannons, the lightest of the ship, which used to be 18 pounds. Also on this deck were the shells, a type of cannon lighter than the rest, of English design, which were used mainly to sweep with shrapnel the upper decks of the enemy. In the Spanish Navy little was used, and only first-class ships like the Santa Ana or Most Holy Trinity They came to incorporate them.
• Palo trinquete: of the three masts that composed a line ship, the trim was the most proa. The main candles that he rode were (belower than above): the flank sail, the sailboat or trim gawk and the proa juanete.
• Palona: the one located more aft, its main candles were (belower than above): the crab, where the flag of the nation, the overmeaning, and the overmeaning party or dogquet.
• Palo mayor: the largest and most important of the three, located between the trim and the tablene, assembled the most important sails of the ship and was practically indispensable for navigation. This is why it was one of the main objectives in case of combat, as it could leave the ship immobilized. The main candles he rode were (belower than above): the main sail, the sail of gavia and the major juanete.
• Castle of proa: an elevation located to the bow and equipped with its own cover. Here were mainly observational tasks, and sometimes combat. The anchor was also located here. From the castle of proa and the amps of proa were projected forward the beque, which served to sustain the bauprés, the stick that is more proa, and also served to retrete the marineria (the officers enjoyed the intimacy of cabins-retrete located in the lateral galleries of popa. Wastes were evacuated directly at the sea).
• Pop castle: opposite the castle of proa, to stern, is this other elevation of decks. Originally the first roof of the castle was the alcazar, a word that is also synonymous with castle, but that in the centuryXVIII already referred to the back of the main deck. The highest deck of a century shipXVIII it was, therefore, the next in elevation: the awning.
• Combes: located between the pickle stick and the big stick. It was divided into two parts: the hole of the cubes, where the goods were moved from the upper deck or from the port to the lower decks of the ship, and the handrail, which bordered the hole of the combes and allowed the passage from the alcazar to the proa castle.
• Alcázar: the alcazar was the part of the upper deck located between the elve and the stern, understanding the part of the stern castle that reached the awning. On the stern part of the alcazar was built the mentioned awning, a cover that stretched from the dove to the crowning stern. Under the awning was installed the captain's units and the cabins of the senior officers. The alcazar and the awning constituted the nerve centre of the ship. The officers went up to the awning table to get a better perspective of the deck and the proximity; but when the battle began, they went down to the alcazar, as in the awning were too exposed to the shrapnel. In it only the sailors in charge of the artillery pieces and the flag officer remained to izar and torque the sign banders.

Combat

In the North Sea and the Atlantic Ocean, the fleets of the Royal Navy, the Netherlands, France, Spain and Portugal fought numerous battles. In the Baltic, the Scandinavian kingdoms and Russia followed suit, while in the Mediterranean Sea, the Ottoman Empire, Spain, France, Great Britain, and the various Barbary Pirates also battled.

By the 18th century, the United Kingdom had established itself as the world's foremost naval power. Napoleon's attempts to challenge the Royal Navy's dominance at sea proved a colossal failure. During the Napoleonic Wars, Britain decisively defeated French and allied fleets around the world, including in the Caribbean at the Battle of Cape St. Vincent, Aboukir Bay off the Egyptian coast in the Battle of the Nile in 1798, near of Spain at the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805, and at the second Battle of Copenhagen (1807). The United Kingdom emerged from the Napoleonic Wars in 1815 with the largest and most professional navy in the world, made up of hundreds of wooden ships of all sizes and classes of sail.

Overwhelming firepower was useless if it couldn't be used, which wasn't always possible against the smaller, leaner ships used by Napoleon's privateers, who operated from French territories in the New World. The Royal Navy made up for it by deploying numerous Bermuda sloops. Similarly, many of the East India Company's merchant ships became lightly armed and quite combat proficient during this period, operating a convoy system under one armed merchant ship, rather than relying on a small number of more. heavily armed ships that, while effective, slowed down the flow of trade.

The biggest ships in history

The largest ships of the line were built when these ships were already in decline, also having steam propulsion, and the few built in this way were known as propeller ships, but they were soon surpassed by better conditions sailors of the screw frigates, and later by the armored and armored frigates

Some examples of these vessels would be:

• HMS Victory (1859), British, 3556 tons of displacement, 79 meters of ridge, 104 cannons.
• Bretagne, French, 6875 tons of displacement at full load, 81 meters of ridge.
• HMS Duke of Wellington (1852), British, 6071 tons of displacement, 73 meters long.
• Napoléon (1852), French, 5120 tons of displacement, 77.8 meters of ridge.
• Valmy (1850), French, 5826 tons of displacement, 64.05 meters of ridge.

The largest ship of the line without steam propulsion was the Santísima Trinidad, of the Royal Spanish Navy, with a displacement of 4,902 tons, 61.40 meters in length and armed with 140 cannons.

Ships of the line preserved to the present day

The HMS Victory at Portsmouth Pier (2005)

Few ships of the line have survived scrapping or the passage of time. Today the only surviving ship is HMS Victory, which was Lord Horatio Nelson's flagship during the Battle of Trafalgar. She is moored in Portsmouth Harbor and has been turned into a museum. Although the Victory has been in dry dock since the 1920s, she is still a fully commissioned warship in the Royal Navy and is the oldest commissioned warship of any navy worldwide..

Regalskeppet Vasa sank in Lake Mälaren in 1628 and was lost until 1956. It was then raised intact, in very good condition, in 1961 and is currently on display in the Vasa Museum in Stockholm, Sweden. At the time, she was the largest Swedish warship ever built.Today, the Vasa Museum is the most visited museum in Sweden.

The last ship of the line afloat was the French ship Duguay-Trouin, renamed HMS Implacable after being captured by the British, which survived until 1949. The last ship of the line sunk by action enemy was HMS Wellesley, which was sunk by air raid in 1940, during World War II; she was briefly re-floated in 1948 before being disbanded.

Replicas

True and faithful replicas of ships of the line are, for example, the following, all of them replicas of ships from the 18th century: HMS Rose (replica of the English frigate of the same name but renamed HMS Surprise for having been used in the movie Master and Commander), Götheborg (en) (a Swedish ship) and HMS Blandford (en) (British frigate from the Battle of Trafalgar but whose replica has gone through two different names: in 1996 it was named Grand Turk for having been built in Turkey but in 2010 it was bought by a French shipowner and renamed Étoile du Roy, "King's Star").

"Replication" of the Holy Trinity. Amarrado in the Port of Alicante since April 2011, the ship has a restaurant, a bar, a disco and a museum.

The Spanish Navy has not preserved any of its ships, nor has a replica of any Spanish ship been built yet. However, in 2006 a merchant ship was accommodated to give it the appearance of the four-deck ship Santísima Trinidad. She was moored for a few years in the port of Malaga and can currently be visited in the port of Alicante. This floating set is not historically accurate enough to be considered a replica, but it serves as a tourist attraction: it houses a restaurant, a nightclub and an exhibition hall.