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Naval warfare is combat in and on seas and oceans. Mankind has fought battles on the sea for more than 3,000 years.
The many sea battles through history also provide a reliable source for shipwrecks and underwater archaeology. A major example, albeit not very commonly known, is the exploration of the wrecks of various ships in the Pacific Ocean, namely Japanese warships that sank during the Battle of Midway.
Naval history is the area of military history concerning war at sea. The focus is on direct combat between ships at sea rather than the use of ships to transport armies or military supplies, although frequently naval strategy hinges on the need to protect transport shipping.
Naval history is of special interest not only because of the value of learning how societies of the past dealt with the double challenge of human enemies and the implacable sea, but also because ships were the first technology to enable a global civilization. In the days before radio, naval officers at remote locations were frequently called upon to singlehandedly decide the fates of their nations.
The first dateable recorded sea battle occurred about 1210 BC: Suppiluliumas II , king of the Hittites, defeated a fleet from CyprusCyprus (in Greek Kypros Κυπρος; and in Turkish Kibris is an island in the eastern Mediterranean Sea, 113 kilometres (70 miles) south of Turkey and around 120 km west of Syrian coast. Name and position The English-langua, and burned their ships at sea.
AssyrianNote This article has been the subject of contention and is currently being completely re-edited at Assyrian/Revision For the ancient Mesopotamian kingdom, see Assyria. Assyrians are the indigenous people of north Iraq members of the Assyrian Church of th reliefs from the 700s BCCenturies: 9th century BC 8th century BC 7th century BC Decades: 750s BC 740s BC 730s BC 720s BC 710s BC 700s BC 690s BC 680s BC 670s BC 660s BC 650s BC Events and Trends ca. 708 BC Spartan immigrants founded Taranto. 705 BC Sennacherib succeeds his broth show PhoenicianPhoenician can mean: The Phoenician ancient civilization The Phoenician alphabet The Phoenician languages. fighting ships, with two levels of oars, fighting men on a sort of bridge or deck above the oarsmen, and some sort of ram protruding from the bow. No written mention of strategy or tactics seems to have survived.The GreeksGreece formally called the Hellenic Republic (in Greek: ) Hellenike Demokratia , is a country in the southeast of Europe on the southern tip of the Balkan peninsula. It is bounded on land by Bulgaria, the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia and Albania of HomerFor other uses, see Homer (disambiguation). Homer ( Greek Ὅμηρος Hómēros was a legendary (or perhaps mythical) early Greek poet traditionally credited with authorship of the major Greek epics Iliad a just used their ships as transport for land armies, but in 664 BC there is a mention of a battle at sea between CorinthCorinth or Korinth is a Greek city, on the Isthmus of Corinth, the original isthmus, the narrow stretch of land that joins the Peloponnesus to the mainland of Greece. To the west of the isthmus lies the Gulf of Corinth. Corinth is about 48 miles (78 km) w and its colony city Corcyra.
The Persian Wars were the first to feature large-scale naval operations, not just sophisticated fleet engagements with dozens of triremes on each side, but combined land-sea operations. It seems unlikely that all this was the product of a single mind or even of a generation; most likely the period of evolution and experimentation was simply not recorded by history.
After some initial battles while subjugating the Greeks of the Ionian coast, the Persians determined to invade Greece proper. Themistocles of Athens estimated that the Greeks would be outnumbered by the Persians on land, but that Athens could protect itself by building a fleet (the famous "wooden walls"), using the profits of the silver mines at Laurium to finance them.
The first Persian campaign, in 492 BC, was aborted because the fleet was lost in a storm, but the second, in 490 BC, captured islands in the Aegean Sea before landing on the mainland near Marathon. Attacks by the Greek armies repulsed these.
The third Persian campaign, under Xerxes I of Persia ten years later ( 480 BC), followed the pattern of the first in marching the army via the Hellespont while the fleet paralleled them offshore. Near Artemisium, in the narrow channel between the mainland and Euboea, the Greek fleet held off multiple assaults by the Persians, the Persians breaking through a first line, but then being flanked by the second line of ships. But the defeat on land at
Thermopylae forced a Greek withdrawal, and Athens evacuated its population to nearby Salamis Island.The ensuing Battle of Salamis was one of the decisive engagements of history. Themistocles trapped the Persians in a channel too narrow for them to bring their greater numbers to bear, and attacked them vigorously, in the end causing the loss of 200 Persian ships vs 40 Greek. At the end, Xerxes still had a fleet stronger than the Greeks, but withdrew anyway, and after losing at Plataea in the following year, returns to Asia Minor, leaving the Greeks their freedom. Nevertheless, the Athenians and Spartans attack and burn the laid-up Persian fleet at Mycale, and free many of the Ionian towns.
During the next fifty years, the Greeks command the Aegean, but not harmoniously, and after several minor wars about which we know little, in 431 BC, tensions exploded into the Peloponnesian War between Athens' Delian League and the Spartan Peloponnese. Naval strategy was critical; Athens walled itself off from the rest of Greece, leaving only the port at Piraeus open, and trusting in its navy to keep supplies flowing while the Spartan army besieged it. This strategy worked, although the close quarters likely contributed to the plague that killed many Athenians in 429.
There were a number of sea battles; at Rhium , Naupactus, Pylos, Syracuse, Cynossema, Cyzicus, Notium. But the end came for Athens in 405 at Aegospotami in the Hellespont, where the Athenians had drawn up their fleet on the beach, and were there surprised by the Spartan fleet, who landed and burned all the ships. Athens surrendered to Sparta in the following year.
Navies next played a major role in the complicated wars of the successors of Alexander the Great. (need more?)
Rome was never much of a seafaring nation, but it had to learn, and learn fast, in the Punic Wars with Carthage, and developed the technique of grappling and boarding enemy ships with soldiers. Romans ships and fleets grew gradually as Rome found itself involved in more and more Mediterranean politics; by the time of the Roman Civil War and the Battle of Actium in 31 BC, hundreds of ships were involved, many of them quinqueremes mounting catapults and fighting tower s. The Roman Empire however had little use for navies beyond periodic piracy suppression.| Politics | Business | Finance |
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