The Great Ships

Knifing through the waves, destroyers are amongst the fastest and most deadly warships ever built. Mounting a powerful arsenal of offensive and defensive weapons, they can serve equally well as escorts for other vessels or as formidable attack ships in their own right. From their humble beginnings as stripped-down vessels designed exclusively to destroy torpedo boats, through the WWII models battling the U-boat 'wolf packs' in the North Atlantic to the most modern versions each now more powerful than a whole squadron of WWI dreadnoughts.

With their menacing dark silhouettes belching fire and smoke, the Ironclad warships of the mid 19th century burst onto the naval scene like hulking metal monsters. Combining iron plating, steam propulsion and the biggest and most powerful guns afloat, the Ironclads represented a radical advance over all previous warships. Although pioneered by the French and British with ships like HMS Warrior, today they are best remembered for the part they played in the American Civil War.

A history brief of piracy through eighteen centuries, with emphasis on ship building and maneuvering in the eighteenth century.