Ship

A ship /ʃɪp/ en-us-ship.ogg Audio (US) (help·info) is a large vessel that floats on water. Ships are generally distinguished from boats based on size. Ships may be found on lakes, seas, and rivers and they allow for a variety of activities, such as the transport of persons or goods, fishing, entertainment, public safety, and warfare.

Ships and boats have developed alongside mankind. In major wars, and in day to day life, they have become an integral part of modern commercial and military systems. Fishing boats are used by millions of fishermen throughout the world. Military forces operate highly sophisticated vessels to transport and support forces ashore. Commercial vessels, nearly 35,000 in number, carried 7.4 billion tons of cargo in 2007.[1]

These vessels were also key in history's great explorations and scientific and technological development. Navigators such as Zheng He spread such inventions as the compass and gunpowder. Ships have been used for such purposes as colonization and the slave trade, and have served scientific, cultural, and humanitarian needs.

As Thor Heyerdahl demonstrated with his tiny boat the Kon-Tiki, it is possible to achieve great things with a simple log raft. From Mesolithic canoes to today's powerful nuclear-powered aircraft carriers, ships tell the history of humankind.

Ships can usually be distinguished from boats based on size and the ship's ability to operate independently for extended periods.[2] A commonly used rule of thumb is that if one vessel can carry another, the larger of the two is a ship.[3] As dinghies are common on sailing yachts as small as 35 feet (11 m), this rule of thumb is not foolproof. In a more technical and now rare sense, the term ship refers to a sailing ship with at least 3 square-rigged masts and a full bowsprit.

A number of large vessels are traditionally referred to as boats. Submarines are a prime example.[4] Other types of large vessels which are traditionally called boats are the Great Lakes freighter, the riverboat, and the ferryboat.[citation needed] Though large enough to carry their own boats and heavy cargoes, these vessels are designed for operation on inland or protected coastal waters.

[edit] History

The history of boats parallels the human adventure. The first known boats date back to the Neolithic Period, about 10,000 years ago. These early vessels had limited function: they could move on water, but that was it. They were used mainly for hunting and fishing. The oldest dugout canoes found by archaeologists were often cut from coniferous tree logs, using simple stone tools

By around 3000 BC, Ancient Egyptians already knew how to assemble planks of wood into a ship hull.[5] They used woven straps to lash the planks together,[5] and reeds or grass stuffed between the planks helped to seal the seams.[5] The Greek historian and geographer Agatharchides had documented ship-faring among the early Egyptians: "During the prosperous period of the Old Kingdom, between the 30th and 25th centuries B. C., the river-routes were kept in order, and Egyptian ships sailed the Red Sea as far as the myrrh-country."[6]

At about the same time, people living near Kongens Lyngby in Denmark invented the segregated hull, which allowed the size of boats to gradually be increased. Boats soon developed into keel boats similar to today's wooden pleasure craft.

The first navigators began to use animal skins or woven fabrics as sails. Affixed to the top of a pole set upright in a boat, these sails gave early ships range. This allowed men to explore widely, allowing, for example the settlement of Oceania about 3,000 years ago.

The ancient Egyptians were perfectly at ease building sailboats. A remarkable example of their shipbuilding skills was the Khufu ship, a vessel 143 feet (44 m) in length entombed at the foot of the Great Pyramid of Giza around 2,500 BC and found intact in 1954. According to Herodotus, the Egyptians made the first circumnavigation of Africa around 600 BC.

The Phoenicians and Greeks gradually mastered navigation at sea aboard triremes, exploring and colonizing the Mediterranean via ship. Around 340 BC, the Greek navigator Pytheas of Massalia ventured from Greece to Western Europe and Great Britain.[7]

Before the introduction of the compass, celestial navigation was the main method for navigation at sea. In China, early versions of the magnetic compass were being developed and used in navigation between 1040 and 1117.[8] The true mariner's compass, using a pivoting needle in a dry box, was invented in Europe no later than 1300.[9][10]

[edit] Through the Renaissance

Until the Renaissance, navigational technology remained comparatively primitive. This absence of technology didn't prevent some civilizations from becoming sea powers. Examples include the maritime republics of Genoa and Venice, and the Byzantine navy. The Vikings used their knarrs to explore North America, trade in the Baltic Sea and plunder many of the coastal regions of Western Europe.

Towards the end of the fourteenth century, ships like the carrack began to develop towers on the bow and stern. These towers decreased the vessel's stability, and in the fifteenth century, caravels became more widely used. The towers were gradually replaced by the forecastle and sterncastle, as in the carrack Santa María of Christopher Columbus. This increased freeboard allowed another innovation: the freeing port, and the artillery associated with it.
A Japanese atakebune from the 16th century

In the sixteenth century, the use of freeboard and freeing ports become widespread on galleons. The English modified their vessels to maximize their firepower and demonstrated the effectiveness of their doctrine, in 1588, by defeating the Spanish Armada.

At this time, ships were developing in Asia in much the same way as Europe. Japan used defensive naval techniques in the Mongol invasions of Japan in 1281. It is likely that the Mongols of the time took advantage of both European and Asian shipbuilding techniques. In Japan, during the Sengoku era from the fifteenth to seventeenth century, the great struggle for feudal supremacy was fought, in part, by coastal fleets of several hundred boats, including the atakebune.

Fifty years before Christopher Columbus, Chinese navigator Zheng He traveled the world at the head of what was for the time a huge armada. The largest of his ships had nine masts, were 130 metres (430 ft) long and had a beam of 55 metres (180 ft). His fleet carried 30,000 men aboard 70 vessels, with the goal of bringing glory to the Chinese emperor.

Parallel to the development of warships, ships in service of marine fishery and trade also developed in the period between antiquity and the Renaissance. Still primarily a coastal endeavor, fishing is largely practiced by individuals with little other money using small boats.

Maritime trade was driven by the development of shipping companies with significant financial resources. Canal barges, towed by draft animals on an adjacent towpath, contended with the railway up to and past the early days of the industrial revolution. Flat-bottomed and flexible scow boats also became widely used for transporting small cargoes. Mercantile trade went hand-in-hand with exploration, which is self-financing by the commercial benefits of exploration.

During the first half of the eighteenth century, the French Navy began to develop a new type of vessel, featuring seventy-four guns. This type of ship became the backbone of all European fighting fleets. These ships were 56 metres (180 ft) long and their construction required 2,800 oak trees and 40 kilometres (25 mi) of rope; they carried a crew of about 800 sailors and soldiers.
A small pleasure boat and a tugboat in Rotterdam

Ship designs stayed fairly unchanged until the late nineteenth century. The industrial revolution, new mechanical methods of propulsion, and the ability to construct ships from metal triggered an explosion in ship design. Factors including the quest for more efficient ships, the end of long running and wasteful maritime conflicts, and the increased financial capacity of industrial powers created an avalanche of more specialized boats and ships. Ships built for entirely new functions, such as firefighting, rescue, and research, also began to appear.

In light of this, classification of vessels by type or function can be difficult. Even using very broad functional classifications such as fishery, trade, military, and exploration fails to classify most of the old ships. This difficulty is increased by the fact that the terms such as sloop and frigate are used by old and new ships alike, and often the modern vessels sometimes have little in common with their predecessors.

In 2007, the world's fleet included 34,882 commercial vessels with gross tonnage of more than 1,000 tons,[11] totaling 1.04 billion tons.[1] These ships carried 7.4 billion tons of cargo in 2006, a sum that grew by 8% over the previous year.[1] In terms of tonnage, 39% of these ships are tankers, 26% are bulk carriers, 17% container ships and 15% were other types.[1]

In 2002, there were 1,240 warships operating in the world, not counting small vessels such as patrol boats. The United States accounted for 3 million tons worth of these vessels, Russia 1.35 million tons, the United Kingdom 504,660 tons and China 402,830 tons. The twentieth century saw many naval engagements during the two world wars, the Cold War, and the rise to power of naval forces of the two blocs. The world's major powers have recently used their naval power in cases such as the United Kingdom in the Falkland Islands and the United States in Iraq. Warships were also key in history's great explorations and scientific and technological development. Navigators such as Zheng He spread such inventions as the compass and gunpowder. On one hand, ships have been used for colonization and the slave trade. On the other, they also have served scientific, cultural, and humanitarian needs.
The harbor at Fuglafjørður, Faroe Islands shows seven typical Faroe boats used for fishing.

The size of the world's fishing fleet is more difficult to estimate. The largest of these are counted as commercial vessels, but the smallest are legion. Fishing vessels can be found in most seaside villages in the world. As of 2004, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization estimated 4 million fishing vessels were operating worldwide.[12] The same study estimated that the world's 29 million fishermen[13] caught 85.8 million metric tons of fish and shellfish that year.[14]