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A navy has command of the sea when it is so strong that its rivals cannot attack it directly. This dominance may apply to its surrounding waters (i.e., the littoral) or may extend far into the oceans, meaning the country has a blue-water navy. It is the naval equivalent of air supremacy.
Anchored in their European territories, several nations established colonial empires held together by naval supremacy. First among them chronologically was the Portuguese Empire , followed soon by the Spanish Empire , which was challenged by the Dutch Empire , itself replaced on the high seas by the British Empire , which had large landed ...
A letter of marque and reprisal (French: lettre de marque; lettre de course) was a government license in the Age of Sail that authorized a private person, known as a privateer or corsair, to attack and capture vessels of a foreign state at war with the issuer, licensing international military operations against a specified enemy as reprisal for a previous attack or injury.
AAW An acronym for anti-aircraft warfare. aback (of a sail) Filled by the wind on the opposite side to the one normally used to move the vessel forward.On a square-rigged ship, any of the square sails can be braced round to be aback, the purpose of which may be to reduce speed (such as when a ship-of-the-line is keeping station with others), to heave to, or to assist moving the ship's head ...
This remains the greatest English naval defeat, and established Dutch supremacy at sea for over half a century. Very few ships were sunk in naval combat during the Anglo-Dutch wars, as it was difficult to hit ships below the water level; the water surface deflected cannonballs, and the few holes produced could be patched quickly. Naval ...
Athenian naval supremacy was a great fear of Sparta and her allies. While the Spartans combat prowess was unmatched on land, when it came to the sea Athens was the clear victor. This split seemed to have already been accepted by the Spartans many years earlier, however the aggressiveness and effectiveness of Athenian naval warfare had yet to be ...
The English were able to manoeuvre against the French and defeat them in detail, capturing most of their ships. The French lost 16,000–20,000 men. The battle gave the English fleet naval supremacy in the English Channel. However, they were unable to take strategic advantage of this, and their success barely interrupted French raids on English ...
One of the ironies of the arms race and subsequent conflict was that, while the German battle fleet fought only one major surface engagement (the inconclusive Battle of Jutland) and never seriously threatened British naval supremacy, the commerce raiding strategy that had been the historic focus of German naval doctrine would consistently ...