About: HMS Hotspur (1870)   Sponge Permalink

An Entity of Type : dbkwik:resource/8Vk4qvWWHqHVaZzlYvTCmQ==, within Data Space : 134.155.108.49:8890 associated with source dataset(s)

It had been recognised since the time of the Roman Empire or before that a ship, while it might carry weaponry, was itself a potent weapon if used as a missile against other ships. In the era of sail-powered warships with their intrinsic limitations of speed and manoeverability the practice of ramming opponents fell by default into disuse, although the concept remained alive. With the advent of steam-powered vessels, with their enhanced speed and lack of dependence for direction on the wind, the ram as a potent weapon of attack gained credibility in Naval circles and in Ship Constructors' departments. This first became apparent in the American Civil War, when many attempts were made by ships on both sides to ram their opponents, with almost uniform lack of success. (The Confederate Virgini

AttributesValues
rdf:type
rdfs:label
  • HMS Hotspur (1870)
rdfs:comment
  • It had been recognised since the time of the Roman Empire or before that a ship, while it might carry weaponry, was itself a potent weapon if used as a missile against other ships. In the era of sail-powered warships with their intrinsic limitations of speed and manoeverability the practice of ramming opponents fell by default into disuse, although the concept remained alive. With the advent of steam-powered vessels, with their enhanced speed and lack of dependence for direction on the wind, the ram as a potent weapon of attack gained credibility in Naval circles and in Ship Constructors' departments. This first became apparent in the American Civil War, when many attempts were made by ships on both sides to ram their opponents, with almost uniform lack of success. (The Confederate Virgini
sameAs
dcterms:subject
dbkwik:military/pr...iPageUsesTemplate
Ship image
module
  • --10-02
abstract
  • It had been recognised since the time of the Roman Empire or before that a ship, while it might carry weaponry, was itself a potent weapon if used as a missile against other ships. In the era of sail-powered warships with their intrinsic limitations of speed and manoeverability the practice of ramming opponents fell by default into disuse, although the concept remained alive. With the advent of steam-powered vessels, with their enhanced speed and lack of dependence for direction on the wind, the ram as a potent weapon of attack gained credibility in Naval circles and in Ship Constructors' departments. This first became apparent in the American Civil War, when many attempts were made by ships on both sides to ram their opponents, with almost uniform lack of success. (The Confederate Virginia (ex-Merrimack) rammed and sank the Federal Cumberland, but lost her ram and suffered significant structural damage.) The battle which most influenced the exaggerated faith in the ram as a weapon was the battle of Lissa between Austria-Hungary and Italy in 1866. The Austrian Ferdinand Max rammed the (stationary) Italian Re d'Italia, which immediately heeled over and sank. This resulted in all ironclad battleships designed for the next forty years being built to carry a ram; a weapon which, while causing the loss of a number of ships accidentally, never sank another major enemy warship of any nationality.
Alternative Linked Data Views: ODE     Raw Data in: CXML | CSV | RDF ( N-Triples N3/Turtle JSON XML ) | OData ( Atom JSON ) | Microdata ( JSON HTML) | JSON-LD    About   
This material is Open Knowledge   W3C Semantic Web Technology [RDF Data] Valid XHTML + RDFa
OpenLink Virtuoso version 07.20.3217, on Linux (x86_64-pc-linux-gnu), Standard Edition
Data on this page belongs to its respective rights holders.
Virtuoso Faceted Browser Copyright © 2009-2012 OpenLink Software