Predecessors Henri Grace à Dieu, from the
Anthony Roll '', a contemporaneous engraving by J. Payne The heavily armed
carrack, first developed in Portugal for either trade or war in the
Atlantic Ocean, was the precursor of the
ship of the line. Other maritime
European states quickly adopted it in the late 15th and early 16th centuries. These vessels were developed by fusing aspects of the
cog of the
North Sea and
galley of the
Mediterranean Sea. The cogs, which traded in the
North Sea, in the
Baltic Sea and along the Atlantic coasts, had an advantage over
galleys in battle because they had raised platforms called "castles" at bow and stern that archers could occupy to fire down on enemy ships or even to drop heavy weights from. At the bow, for instance, the castle was called the
forecastle (usually contracted as fo'c'sle or fo'c's'le, and pronounced FOHK-səl). Over time these castles became higher and larger, and eventually were built into the structure of the ship, increasing overall strength. This aspect of the cog remained in the newer-style
carrack designs and proved its worth in battles like that at
Diu in 1509. The
Mary Rose was an early 16th-century
English carrack or "
great ship". She was heavily armed with 78
guns and 91 after an upgrade in the 1530s. Built in
Portsmouth in 1510–1512, she was one of the earliest purpose-built
men-of-war in the English navy. She was over 500 tons
burthen and had a
keel of over and a crew of over 200 sailors, composed of 185 soldiers and 30 gunners. Although the pride of the English fleet, she accidentally sank during the
Battle of the Solent, 19 July 1545.
Henri Grâce à Dieu (English: "Henry Grace of God"), nicknamed "Great Harry", was another early English carrack. Contemporary with
Mary Rose,
Henri Grâce à Dieu was long, measuring 1,000–1,500
tons burthen and having a complement of 700–1,000. She was ordered by
Henry VIII in response to the
Scottish ship
Michael, launched in 1511. She was originally built at
Woolwich Dockyard from 1512 to 1514 and was one of the first vessels to feature
gunports and had twenty of the new heavy bronze
cannon, allowing for a
broadside. In all, she mounted 43 heavy guns and 141 light guns. She was the first English
two-decker, and when launched she was the largest and most powerful warship in Europe, but she saw little action. She was present at the
Battle of the Solent against
Francis I of France in 1545 (in which
Mary Rose sank) but appears to have been more of a diplomatic vessel, sailing on occasion with sails of gold cloth. Indeed, the great ships were almost as well known for their ornamental design (some ships, like the
Vasa, were gilded on their stern
scrollwork) as they were for the power they possessed. Carracks fitted for war carried large-
calibre guns aboard. Because of their higher
freeboard and greater load-bearing ability, this type of vessel was better suited than the galley to wield gunpowder weapons. Because of their development for conditions in the
Atlantic, these ships were more weatherly than galleys and better suited to open waters. The lack of oars meant that large crews were unnecessary, making long journeys more feasible. Their disadvantage was that they were entirely reliant on the wind for mobility. Galleys could still overwhelm great ships, especially when there was little wind and they had a numerical advantage, but as great ships increased in size, galleys became less and less useful. Another detriment was the high
forecastle, which interfered with the sailing qualities of the ship; the bow would be forced low into the water while sailing before the wind. But as guns were introduced and gunfire replaced boarding as the primary means of naval combat during the 16th century, the medieval forecastle was no longer needed, and later ships such as the
galleon had only a low, one-deck-high forecastle. By the time of the 1637 launching of England's
Sovereign of the Seas, the forecastle had disappeared altogether. During the 16th century the
galleon evolved from the carrack. It was a narrower ship, with a much reduced forecastle, and was much more manoeuvrable than the carrack. It was particularly favored from an early date by the Spanish for their
trans-Atlantic trade. The main ships of the English and Spanish fleets in the
Battle of Gravelines of 1588 were galleons; all of the English and most of the Spanish galleons survived the battle and the great storm on the voyage home, even though the Spanish galleons had suffered the heaviest attacks from the English while regrouping their scattered fleet. By the 17th century every major European naval power was building ships like these. With the growing importance of colonies and exploration and the need to maintain trade routes across stormy oceans, galleys and
galleasses (a larger, higher type of galley with side-mounted guns, but lower than a galleon) were used less and less, and only in ever more restricted purposes and areas, so that by about 1750, with a few notable exceptions, they were of little use in naval battles.
Line-of-battle adoption depicts an early 18th-century Dutch man-of-war. In the early to mid-17th century, several navies, particularly those of the
Netherlands and England, began to use new fighting techniques. Previously battles had usually been fought by great fleets of ships closing with each other and fighting in whatever arrangement they found themselves in, often boarding enemy vessels as opportunities presented themselves. As the use of
broadsides (coordinated fire by the
battery of
cannon on one side of a
warship) became increasingly dominant in battle, tactics changed. The evolving
line-of-battle tactic, first used in an ad hoc way, required ships to form single-file lines and close with the enemy fleet on the same tack, battering the enemy fleet until one side had had enough and retreated. Any manoeuvres would be carried out with the ships remaining in line for mutual protection. In order that this order of battle, this long thin line of guns, may not be injured or broken at some point weaker than the rest, there is at the same time felt the necessity of putting in it only ships which, if not of equal force, have at least equally strong sides. Logically it follows, at the same moment in which the line ahead became definitively the order for battle, there was established the distinction between the ships 'of the line', alone destined for a place therein, and the lighter ships meant for other uses. The lighter ships were used for various functions, including acting as scouts, and relaying signals between the
flagship and the rest of the fleet. This was necessary because from the flagship, only a small part of the line would be in clear sight. The adoption of line-of-battle tactics had consequences for ship design. The height advantage given by the castles fore and aft was reduced, now that hand-to-hand combat was less essential. The need to manoeuvre in battle made the top weight of the castles more of a disadvantage. So they shrank, making the ship of the line lighter and more manoeuvrable than its forebears for the same combat power. As an added consequence, the hull itself grew larger, allowing the size and number of guns to increase as well.
Evolution of design In the 17th century
fleets could consist of almost a hundred ships of various sizes, but by the middle of the 18th century, ship-of-the-line design had settled on a few standard types: older
two-deckers (i.e., with two complete decks of guns firing through side ports) of 50 guns (which were too weak for the battle line but could be used to escort
convoys), two-deckers of between 64 and 90 guns that formed the main part of the fleet, and larger
three- or even four-deckers with 98 to 140 guns that served as admirals' command ships. Fleets consisting of perhaps 10 to 25 of these ships, with their attendant
supply ships and scouting and messenger
frigates, kept control of the sea lanes for major European naval powers while restricting the sea-borne trade of enemies. The most common size of sail ship of the line was the
"74" (named for its 74 guns), originally developed by France in the 1730s, and later adopted by all battleship navies. Until this time the British had six sizes of ship of the line, and they found that their smaller 50- and 60-gun ships were becoming too small for the battle line, while their 80s and over were three-deckers and therefore unwieldy and unstable in heavy seas. Their best ships were 70-gun three-deckers of about long on the gundeck, while the new French 74s were around . In 1747 the British captured a few of these French ships during the
War of Austrian Succession. In the next decade
Thomas Slade (Surveyor of the Navy from 1755, along with co-Surveyor William Bately) broke away from the past and designed several new classes of 74s to compete with these French designs, starting with the and classes. Their successors gradually improved handling and size through the 1780s. Other navies ended up building 74s also as they had the right balance between offensive power, cost, and manoeuvrability. Eventually around half of Britain's ships of the line were 74s. Larger vessels were still built, as command ships, but they were more useful only if they could definitely get close to an enemy, rather than in a battle involving chasing or manoeuvring. The 74 remained the favoured ship until 1811, when
Seppings's method of construction enabled bigger ships to be built with more stability. In a few ships the design was altered long after the ship was launched and in service. In the Royal Navy, smaller two-deck 74- or 64-gun ships of the line that could not be used safely in fleet actions had their upper decks removed (or
razeed), resulting in a very stout, single-gun-deck warship called a
razee. The resulting razeed ship could be classed as a frigate and was still much stronger. The most successful razeed ship in the
Royal Navy was , commanded by Sir
Edward Pellew. The Spanish ship , was a Spanish first-rate ship of the line with 112 guns. This was increased in 1795–96 to 130 guns by closing in the
spar deck between the
quarterdeck and
forecastle, and around 1802 to 140 guns, thus creating what was in effect a continuous fourth gundeck although the extra guns added were actually relatively small. She was the heaviest-armed ship in the world when rebuilt, and bore the most guns of any ship of the line outfitted in the
Age of Sail. (1829), ordered by the
Ottoman Sultan
Mahmud II and built by the
Imperial Naval Arsenal on the
Golden Horn in
Istanbul, was for many years the largest warship in the world. The ship of the line was armed with 128 cannons on three decks and was manned by 1,280 sailors. She participated in the
Siege of Sevastopol (1854–1855) during the
Crimean War (1854–1856). She was decommissioned in 1874. The second largest sailing three-decker ship of the line ever built in the West and the biggest French ship of the line was the , launched in 1847. She had vertical sides, which increased significantly the space available for upper batteries, but reduced the stability of the ship; wooden stabilisers were added under the waterline to address the issue.
Valmy was thought to be the largest sort of sailing ship possible, as larger dimensions made the manoeuvre of riggings impractical with mere manpower. She participated in the Crimean War, and after her return to France later housed the
French Naval Academy under the name
Borda from 1864 to 1890. File:HMS Victory 2007.jpg| at drydock in Portsmouth Harbour, 2007 File:Warship diagram orig.jpg|A contemporary diagram illustrating a first- and a third-rate ship File:Ottoman ship of the line Mahmudiye.png|alt=|
Mahmudiye (1829) File:Valmy watercolour Roux.jpg| (1847) File:Weight Growth of RN First Rate Line-of-Battle Ships 1630-1875.svg|Weight growth of RN
first-rate ships of the line 1630–1861, including for comparison large early ironclads. Steam allowed an increase in the rate of growth.
Steam power The first major change to the ship-of-the-line concept was the introduction of steam power as an auxiliary propulsion system. The first military uses of steamships came in the 1810s, and in the 1820s a number of navies experimented with
paddle steamer warships. Their use spread in the 1830s, with paddle-steamer warships participating in conflicts like the
First Opium War alongside ships of the line and frigates. Paddle steamers, however, had major disadvantages. The paddle wheel above the waterline was exposed to enemy fire, while itself preventing the ship from firing broadsides effectively. During the 1840s, the
screw propeller emerged as the most likely method of steam propulsion, with both Britain and the US launching screw-propelled warships in 1843. Through the 1840s, the British and French navies launched ever larger and more powerful screw ships, alongside sail-powered ships of the line. In 1845,
Viscount Palmerston gave an indication of the role of the new steamships in tense Anglo-French relations, describing the
English Channel as a "steam bridge", rather than a barrier to French invasion. It was partly because of the fear of war with France that the Royal Navy converted several old 74-gun ships of the line into 60-gun steam-powered blockships (following the model of
Fulton's ), starting in 1845. They subsequently gave good service in the
Crimean War. The
French Navy, however, developed the first purpose-built steam battleship with the 90-gun in 1850. She is also considered the first true steam battleship, and the first screw battleship ever.
Napoléon was armed as a conventional ship of the line, but her steam engines could give her a speed of , regardless of the wind conditionsa potentially decisive advantage in a naval engagement. Eight sister ships to
Napoléon were built in France over a period of ten years, but the United Kingdom soon took the lead in production, in number of both purpose-built and converted units. Altogether, France built 10 new wooden steam battleships and converted 28 from older battleship units, while the United Kingdom built 18 and converted 41. In the end, France and Britain were the only two countries to develop fleets of wooden steam screw battleships, although several other navies made some use of a mixture of screw battleships and paddle-steamer frigates. These included Russia,
Turkey,
Sweden,
Naples,
Prussia,
Denmark, and
Austria. In the 1860s unarmoured steam line-of-battle ships were replaced by
ironclad warships. In the
American Civil War, on March 8, 1862, during the first day of the
Battle of Hampton Roads, two unarmoured
Union wooden frigates were sunk and destroyed by the
Confederate ironclad . However, the power implied by the ship of the line would find its way into the ironclad, which would develop during the next few decades into the concept of the
battleship. Several navies still use terms equivalent to the "ship of the line" for battleships, including the
German (
Linienschiff) and
Russian (
lineyniy korabl` (лине́йный кора́бль) or
linkor (линкор) in short) navies. == Combat ==