Armored Ships For years ancient ships were made of wood and smaller ones sometimes made of bark or animal skins. It certainly must have taken a lot of guts to head out into the ocean with one of these ships and yet it was done over and over. This just attests to man’s zest for exploration. It could have been tales of ancient treasures or magical potions which led to some of this exploration, but there is no doubt the spirit of exploration had a lot to do with this. Men wanted to see unknown lands and perhaps find shortcuts to other places. One has to remember a sea voyage could take a very long time if one was going to a distant land in an ancient ship. It took Columbus from August 3, 1492 until October 12, 1492 to reach the Bahamas. It is believed by many there were actually metal armored war ships in the 16th century. The problem is while there is antidotal evidence of this there is no hard evidence. There are said to be records of this but no evidence of the vessels. There were some early ships made with metal ribs and rams. When you had a wooden ship, it was best to cover the hull with some sort of metal to protect it against worms and such. This was not armor. Armor is intended to protect a ship from attack. Metal had been used on the hull of ships since at least the 5th century B.C. when the Greeks would put lead sheets over the bottom of the ship’s hull. There was a ship however that did have armor which was built about 240 B.C. It was the Syracusia built by a Greek named Hiero II of Syracuse. The armor on the sides was to repel boarders and the masts had armor on them and the entire hull had lead plates fastened with bronze nails. Some Roman warships called cataphracts had lead plates on their sides. It is said there were some Viking ships which had been reinforced with armor at the water line for protection. Various ships appear to have been created with armor in the early days. Some were more successful than others. One which was said to have been successful for years was the Santa Anna, a ship which had lead armor and belonged to the Knights Hospitaller. It is said to have sailed the Mediterranean Sea against the Turks from 1522 to 1540. Another armored ship which sailed against the Turks was the Venetian which was very successful in the Battle of Preveza in 1538. The Dutch upped the game in 1585, because they built the Finis Bellis and used iron plates to protect it and it was used in the siege of Antwerp in 1585. One has to wonder why lead plates were used as armor for so long. Perhaps it was the fact they were easy to mold to shape, or lead was more available. Everyone knows lead is very heavy so the plates must have been hard to handle and they must have caused these ships to run slower. Handling all that lead was not good for those who did it, but that wasn’t known in those days. While the West was experimenting with armoring ships so was the East. There is a story about the Koreans fighting off a Japanese invasion from the sea with many fewer ships which were clad in metal and had spikes on them. The ships were large and were first used by the Royal Korean Navy in the early 15th century. They are credited as being the first fully armored ships in the world. It is said the first references to these turtle ships appears in records from 1413. The ship was completely enclosed and the top completely armored. If an enemy was able to board the ship he had nowhere to go and the spikes made it impossible to stay on top of the ship. The ships had five different types of cannons and a smoke maker shaped like the head of a dragon. The war which truly brought armored ships into modern times was the American Civil War which saw many iron clad ships created. After that war the day of the wooden warship was gone forever. The British and French navies had just begun to construct iron clad ships and some say the idea was vigorously adapted by both sides of the American Civil War. Many of the Northern ships were created to sail near the shore and on rivers to blockade ports and attack towns and cities. The Southern side was building ships to destroy blockades and sink the North’s ironclads. Ironically the South had raised a sunken Northern Ship and put four-inch-thick armor over the entire ship creating what they thought would be a ship which would be impossible to sink. They named their ship the Virginia. The North decided to take a different tack. They built a smaller armored ship which rode very deep in the water but had a new innovation, an armored turret which could hold two very powerful naval cannons and fire in any direction without turning the ship. The Virginia was sent out in 1862 and immediately sunk 2 Northern ships and then the ironclads met at Hampton Roads, Virginia and they fought to a draw as shots bounced off the sides of the Virginia and off the turret of the ship named the Monitor. We never sank the Virginia, but the South did to keep it out of the hands of the Northern navy. The North built over 50 more Monitor type ships. It has been said the iron clad ships of both sides were very hot and the shells bouncing off the plates and the turrets was deafening. I don’t think anyone today would have wanted to be a sailor on any of these ships. There was no such thing as air conditioning and it seems sound deadening was not a priority. You have to wonder how many sailors went home after the war with hearing problems. Some of the ironclads were so low into the water they presented no profile to cannons except for their plates and turrets. It was especially hard for cannon batteries on the shore to try and sink one of these ships and it was only a little easier up closer. The invention of the turret changed naval warfare forever. Every nation eventually adapted it for their fleet. Today you hardly ever see a cannon exposed on a ship, they are in turrets.
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