Naval warfare

The latter were crucial in the development of the modern world in the United Kingdom, America, the Low Countries and northern Germany, because they enabled the bulk movement of goods and raw material, which supported the nascent Industrial Revolution.

For three centuries, Vikings raided and pillaged far into central Russia and Ukraine, and even to distant Constantinople (both via the Black Sea tributaries, Sicily, and through the Strait of Gibraltar).

[citation needed] Josephus Flavius (Antiquities IX 283–287) reports a naval battle between Tyre and the king of Assyria who was aided by the other cities in Phoenicia.

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.

As Muslim power in the Mediterranean began to wane, the Italian trading towns of Genoa, Pisa, and Venice stepped in to seize the opportunity, setting up commercial networks and building navies to protect them.

The last ended with a decisive Venetian victory, giving it almost a century to enjoy Mediterranean trade domination before other European countries began expanding into the south and west.

In the north of Europe, the near-continuous conflict between England and France was characterised by raids on coastal towns and ports along the coastlines and the securing of sea lanes to protect troop–carrying transports.

[7] However the battle of Sluys, fought two years later, saw the destruction of the French fleet in a decisive action which allowed the English effective control of the sea lanes and the strategic initiative for much of the war.

In addition, the Tang had maritime trading, tributary, and diplomatic ties as far as modern Sri Lanka, India, Islamic Iran and Arabia, as well as Somalia in East Africa.

In his book Cultural Flow Between China and the Outside World, Shen Fuwei notes that maritime Chinese merchants in the 9th century were landing regularly at Sufala in East Africa to cut out Arab middle-men traders.

The Kedukan Bukit inscription is the oldest record of Indonesian military history, and noted a 7th-century Srivijayan sacred siddhayatra journey led by Dapunta Hyang Sri Jayanasa.

[17]: 145 [14]: 107–110  Although with only scarce information, travellers passing the region, such as Ibn Battuta and Odoric of Pordenone noted that Java had been attacked by the Mongols several times, always ending in failure.

Equipped with the magnetic compass and knowledge of Shen Kuo's famous treatise (on the concept of true north), the Chinese became proficient experts of navigation in their day.

[27]: 228–231 In the 15th century, the Chinese admiral Zheng He was assigned to assemble a massive fleet for several diplomatic missions abroad, sailing throughout the waters of the South East Pacific and the Indian Ocean.

Zheng's fleet also became involved in a conflict in Sri Lanka, where the King of Ceylon traveled back to Ming China afterwards to make a formal apology to the Yongle Emperor.

Nobunaga invented the Tekkosen (large Atakebune equipped with iron plates) and defeated 600 ships of the Mōri navy with six armored warships (Battle of Kizugawaguchi).

The late Middle Ages saw the development of the cogs, caravels and carracks ships capable of surviving the tough conditions of the open ocean, with enough backup systems and crew expertise to make long voyages routine.

However, with the concurrent Age of Discovery, Europe had far surpassed the Ottoman Empire, and successfully bypassed their reliance on land-trade by discovering maritime routes around Africa and towards the Americas.

The coastal villages and towns of Italy, Spain and Mediterranean islands were frequently attacked, and long stretches of the Italian and Spanish coasts were almost completely abandoned by their inhabitants; after 1600 Barbary pirates occasionally entered the Atlantic and struck as far north as Iceland.

These slaves were captured mainly from seaside villages in Italy, Spain and Portugal, and from farther places like France, England, the Netherlands, Ireland and even Iceland and North America.

The Qing navy proved woefully undermatched during the First and Second Opium Wars, leaving China open to de facto foreign domination; portions of the Chinese coastline were placed under Western and Japanese spheres of influence.

In the Black Sea, Russian seaplanes flying from a fleet of converted carriers interdicted Turkish maritime supply routes, Allied air patrols began to counter German U-boat activity in Britain's coastal waters, and a British Short 184 carried out the first successful torpedo attack on a ship.

Many nations agreed to the Washington Naval Treaty and scrapped many of their battleships and cruisers while still in the shipyards, but the growing tensions of the 1930s restarted the building programs, with even larger ships.

The importance of naval air power was further reinforced by the Attack on Pearl Harbor, which forced the United States to enter World War II.

In the 1950s, the Cold War inspired the development of ballistic missile submarines, each loaded with dozens of thermonuclear weapon-armed SLBMs and with orders to launch them from sea if the other nation attacked.

[59] In the 1982 Falklands War between Argentina and the United Kingdom, a Royal Navy task force of approximately 100 ships was dispatched over 7,000 miles (11,000 km) from the British mainland to the South Atlantic.

Over half of Argentine deaths in the war occurred when the nuclear submarine Conqueror torpedoed and sank the light cruiser ARA General Belgrano with the loss of 323 lives.

A major exception to that trend was the Sri Lankan Civil War, which saw a large number of surface engagements between the belligerents involving fast attack craft and other littoral warfare units.

[62][63] Though the attack did not eliminate the United States' control of the local seas, in the short-term, it did prompt the US Navy to reduce its visits to far-flung ports, as military planners struggled to ensure their security.

Notably, the Ukrainian Navy scuttled its flagship, the frigate Hetman Sahaidachny, to prevent its capture,[70] while the patrol ship Sloviansk was sunken by Russian air attack.