Naval Warfare: Strategic Battles and Tactics in Military Science

By Fouad Sabry

What is Naval Warfare

Naval warfare is combat in and on the sea, the ocean, or any other battlespace involving a major body of water such as a large lake or wide river.

How you will benefit

(I) Insights, and validations about the following topics:

Chapter 1: Naval warfare

Chapter 2: Battleship

Chapter 3: Navy

Chapter 4: Battle of Tsushima

Chapter 5: Yi Sun-sin

Chapter 6: Imperial Japanese Navy

Chapter 7: Battle of the Yalu River (1894)

Chapter 8: Warship

Chapter 9: Line of battle

Chapter 10: Age of Sail

(II) Answering the public top questions about naval warfare.

Who this book is for

Professionals, undergraduate and graduate students, enthusiasts, hobbyists, and those who want to go beyond basic knowledge or information for any kind of Naval Warfare.

• Language: English
• Publisher: One Billion Knowledgeable
• Release date: May 29, 2024

Book preview

Chapter 1: Naval warfare

Combat in and on the sea, the ocean, or any other battlespace including a sizable body of water, such as a sizable lake or wide river, is referred to as naval warfare. Over 3,000 years ago, wars were waged on the water.

The navy is the branch of the armed forces assigned to naval combat. Although these divisions are more about strategic scope than tactical or operational division, naval activities can be broadly classified as riverine and littoral applications (brown-water navy), open-ocean applications (blue-water navy), and something in between (green-water navy). Naval warfare's strategic offensive goal is to project force through water, and its strategic defensive goal is to thwart an enemy's attempt to do the same.

More than 3,000 years of human history are devoted to sea conflicts. Before the construction of significant railways, transportation relied heavily on rivers, canals, and other navigable waterways, even in the interior of huge landmasses.

Due to their ability to facilitate the mass transportation of commodities and raw materials, which aided the emerging Industrial Revolution, the latter were vital in the formation of the modern world in northern Germany, the Low Countries, the United States, and the United Kingdom. Materials were primarily transported by sea vessels or river barges before 1750. As a result, throughout history, river valleys have served as a source of food, ammunition, and fodder for armies due to their enormous needs.

The sea is emphasized in classical literature like The Odyssey and pre-recorded history like the Homeric Legends (such as Troy). In many attempts to annex the Greek city states, the united and powerful Persian Empire was unable to defeat the Athenian fleet's combined might with that of smaller city states. Power in Phoenicia, Egypt, Carthage, and even Rome was largely based on dominance over the oceans.

The Venetian Republic also controlled the city states of Italy for centuries, defeated the Ottoman Empire, and dominated trade on the Silk Road and throughout the Mediterranean. Vikings carried out raids and plunder for three centuries, reaching as far as faraway Constantinople and central Russia (both via the Black Sea tributaries, Sicily, and through the Strait of Gibraltar).

The capacity of a fleet to engage in maritime wars has been crucial to gaining control of the sea. Throughout the majority of naval history, boarding and anti-boarding have been the two main foci of naval conflict. Only when gunpowder technology had advanced significantly in the late 16th century did the tactical emphasis at sea change to heavy ordnance.

Shipwrecks from numerous historical naval wars are a reliable source for underwater archaeology. One such instance is the study of numerous vessels' wrecks in the Pacific Ocean.

The Battle of the Delta was the earliest known maritime conflict, the Ancient Egyptians defeated the Sea Peoples in a sea battle c. 1175 BC.

as written on the temple walls of Ramesses III's mortuary temple at Medinet Habu, Using a naval ambush and archers firing from both ships and the beach, this successfully repelled a significant marine invasion close to the coastlines of the eastern Nile Delta.

Phoenician combat ships with two levels of oars, fighting soldiers on a sort of bridge or deck above the oarsmen, and some sort of ram jutting from the bow are seen in Assyrian reliefs from the eighth century BC. It appears that no documented references to strategy or tactics have persisted.

In Antiquities IX, pages 283-287, Josephus Flavius describes a naval conflict between Tyre and the Assyrian king, who was supported by the other Phoenician cities. Tyre prevailed. Off the coast of Tyre, there was a battle. Despite having a far smaller fleet, the Tyrians were able to beat their opponents.

However, there is evidence of a maritime battle between Corinth and its colony city Corcyra in 664 BC. The Greeks of Homer simply utilized their ships as transportation for land forces.

Large-scale naval operations were first mentioned in ancient accounts of the Persian Wars. These accounts included integrated land-sea operations as well as sophisticated fleet conflicts with several triremes on each side. The idea that all of this was the work of a single intellect or even a single generation appears improbable; it's more possible that the period of development and experimentation was simply not documented by history.

The Persians made the decision to attack mainland Greece after a few initial conflicts while enslaving the Greeks of the Ionian coast. Themistocles of Athens predicted that the Persians would outnumber the Greeks on land, but that Athens could defend itself by constructing a fleet (the well-known wooden walls) and funding them with the proceeds from the silver mines at Laurium.

The fleet was lost in a storm, ending the first Persian campaign in 492 BC, but the second, in 490 BC, successfully conquered islands in the Aegean Sea before setting foot on the mainland close to Marathon. The Greek forces repelled these attacks.

Under Xerxes I of Persia, the army marched through the Hellespont during the third Persian campaign in 480 BC, while the fleet marched parallel to them offshore. The Greek fleet repelled several Persian attacks near Artemisium in the constrained waterway separating the mainland from Euboea, with the Persians breaking past a first line of ships but then being flanked by the second line of ships. However, the Greeks were forced to retreat after losing at Thermopylae, and Athens evacuated its citizens to the adjacent island of Salamis.

The subsequent Battle of Salamis was one of history's pivotal battles. Themistocles battled the Persians fiercely while trapping them in a canal that was too small for them to use their superior numbers, ultimately losing 200 Persian ships to only 40 Greek ones. A few years after the fight, Aeschylus wrote The Persians, a play about the defeat that was produced in a Greek theater competition. The play is the oldest one still in existence. In the end, Xerxes still possessed a navy that was more powerful than the Greeks', but he retreated nonetheless. The following year, after losing at Plataea, he returned to Asia Minor and granted the Greeks their freedom. However, the Persian fleet was lay up at Mycale when the Athenians and Spartans stormed, burnt it, and liberated several Ionian towns. The primary objective of these conflicts, which typically utilized triremes or biremes as the combat platform, was to ram the opposing ship with the help of the boat's reinforced prow. The adversary would maneuver to avoid making contact or, on the other hand, rush all the marines to the side where they were likely to be hit, tilting the boat. The hole would then be above the waterline and not seriously harm the ship once the ram withdrew and the marines dispersed.

The Greeks controlled the Aegean for the next fifty years, although not in an efficient manner. After numerous smaller conflicts, the Delian League of Athens and the Spartan Peloponnese erupted into the Peloponnesian War (431 BC). Athens relied on its naval to keep supplies coming while the Spartan army besieged it, walling itself off from the rest of Greece and only opening the port at Piraeus. Although the close quarters probably contributed to the plague that killed many Athenians in 429 BC, this method was successful.

Galleys engaged in a series of maritime fights at Rhium, Naupactus, Pylos, Syracuse, Cynossema, Cyzicus, and Notium. However, Athens' demise occurred at Aegospotami on the Hellespont in 405 BC. There, the Athenians had assembled their fleet on the shore when they were ambushed by the Spartan fleet, who landed and set fire to all the ships. The following year, Athens fell to Sparta.

Next, Navies had a significant impact on the difficult wars fought by Alexander the Great's successors.

Although the Roman Republic had never been much of a maritime power, it had to get better. Romans perfected the art of grappling and boarding enemy ships with men during the Punic Wars with Carthage. Roman involvement in politics in the Mediterranean region led to a progressive expansion of the Roman Navy, which by the time of the Roman Civil War and the Battle of Actium (31 BC) encompassed hundreds of ships, many of which were quinqueremes equipped with catapults and combat towers. Rome took over most of the Mediterranean after the Emperor Augustus transformed the Roman Republic into the Roman Empire. Without any serious maritime adversaries, the Roman fleet was primarily used for transportation and piracy patrols. The navy only continued to engage in actual combat on the periphery of the Empire, in recently conquered provinces or on defensive missions against barbarian invasion.

While the 4th century and later barbarian invasions were primarily on land, there are few important instances of maritime wars that are known. During the reign of Emperor Gallienus in the late third century, a massive raiding expedition made up of Goths, Gepids, and Heruli sailed from the Black Sea into the Aegean Sea, looting mainland Greece (including Athens and Sparta) and traveling as far as Crete and Rhodes. Examples come from Emperor Majorian, who, with the assistance of Constantinople, gathered a sizable fleet in an unsuccessful attempt to drive the Germanic invaders from their recently conquered African territories, as well as the defeat of an Ostrogothic fleet at Sena Gallica in the Adriatic Sea in the late 4th century.

Muslim fleets initially appeared during the Muslim conquests of the 7th century, attacking Sicily in 652 (see History of Islam in southern Italy and Emirate of Sicily), and decimating the Byzantine Navy in 655. Greek fire, a primitive flamethrower that proved deadly to the ships in the besieging fleet, was invented in 678, saving Constantinople from a protracted Arab siege. Throughout the Byzantine-Arab Wars, these were only the first of numerous engagements.

During the so-called Islamic Golden Age, which lasted from the 7th through the 13th century, the Caliphate rose to become the preeminent maritime power in the Mediterranean Sea. The torpedo, developed in Syria by the Arab inventor Hasan al-Rammah in 1275, was one of the most important innovations in medieval naval warfare. His torpedo had three firing sites and was propelled by a rocket engine that was loaded with explosive gunpowder ingredients. It was a weapon that worked well against ships.

The Vikings first appeared in the eighth century, but they were more likely to attack undefended areas because it was how they usually operated. The coastlines of England and France were invaded