Ship
Large ocean-going vessels are called ships, while all other water craft are called boats. The difference between ships and boats therefore is primarily a matter of size, with boats being the smaller vessels. If the earliest boat was probably a log or a bundle of reeds lashed together, then the first ship could be said to be large log rafts or the long, spoon-shaped reed vessels made by the Egyptians. Despite their size however, such craft were in no way capable of venturing out to the open sea, and remained largely river vessels or coastal craft.
By about 4000 B.C., the Egyptians had learned how to build long, narrow boats called galleys that were powered by rows of paddlers. As another 500 years passed, they developed the first sail and soon learned how to build ships out of planks of wood. By about 3000 B.C., they were able to sail north from the mouth of the Nile River and made sea voyages that hugged the coastline. With the invention of the sail and the use of planks, shipbuilding for the next few thousand years consisted of building larger, more seaworthy wooden ships and improving and adding to the rig or the system of sails, masts, and ropes.
By about 1200 B.C., the Phoenicians and the Greeks constructed both large, roomy cargo ships with sails and warship galleys powered by oars. The Greeks and later the Romans used a system of wooden ribs to stiffen and strengthen the hull. Between the Romans and early Medieval times, Viking ships dominated the waters of northern Europe from about 700 A.D. to the late 1000s. Their open longships were clinker-built (overlapping planks held together by iron rivets) and carried these intrepid sailors across the Atlantic Ocean to North America. The other Viking craft, called the knarr, was a trading vessel built wide and tubby to accommodate more goods. This shape was modified by shipbuilders of the north by about 1200 to create the "cog" which was used in northern Europe as both a trading vessel and a warship. These ships usually had one large sail and were characterized by a high platform structure called the "castle." In the south of Europe about the same time, shipbuilders in the Mediterranean were developing their use of the triangular or lateen sail on very light vessels, and these two schools of shipbuilding eventually came to combine the best features of each around the middle of the fifteenth century. This produced a sailing ship called the "carrack" that was capable of making long, uninterrupted ocean voyages and which would become standard in Europe for the next 300 years. It was on such a ship that Columbus discovered the New World.
By the eighteenth century, this ship had grown into the floating fortress called the "galleon" which was capable of carrying 100 cannons and a crew of 850. The cargo version of the galleon was designed to hold as much goods as possible. By the beginning of the nineteenth century, trade concerns were predominant, and in America, shipbuilders sought something that would give them a seafaring edge over British dominance. What American designers decided upon around 1840 were extremely speedy vessels rather than ships that could carry enormous loads. With this in mind, they made their new ship hulls sharp and narrow which, combined with a forward-slanting bow, would enable them to slice through waves and "clip" off miles from their travel time. The largest clippers had as many as six tiers of sails, and the American ship, Great Republic, was the largest wooden sailing ship ever built. These clippers carried passengers from New York to California during the Gold Rush and raced from China with tea and wool from Australia. Despite their success, the expansion of the railroad and the coming of steam propulsion put an end to the brief career of these sleek merchant vessels.
By 1838, steam had already begun to replace sails, and in that year the British steamship Great Western crossed the Atlantic in only 16 days. This lead to the precursor of the modern ship, the Great Britain. Although it carried six masts for sails in case its engines failed, it was made of iron instead of wood, and in 1845 became the first propeller-driven ship to cross the Atlantic. Steam power did not fully replace sailing ships until a completely new type of marine engine, the steam turbine, was developed in the 1890s. The turbine-powered Mauretania was one of the first modern liners, and it held the Atlantic crossing speed record for over two decades. By 1910, diesel engines that used heavy oil as fuel proved more efficient, and by 1920, oil began to replace coal as fuel for steam turbines.
The great age of the ocean liner reached its height in the 1930s with the launching of several speedy, luxurious ships, but as airplane travel became more common and proficient after World War II, it became apparent that ships could no longer compete with airplanes in crossing the Atlantic quickly. By the mid-1950s, new passenger ships were designed as cruise ships or floating resorts whose actual destination was often incidental to the trip itself. Postwar developments in cargo ships also saw an amazing degree of specialization as each ship was designed and built to carry a particular type of cargo. One of these was the container ship that was built to carry standard-size metal containers and looked like a huge barge with a pointed bow. These made loading, storage, and off-loading a routine, efficient, and very rapid exercise. The largest container ship is about 700 feet (210 meters) long. Tanker ships, which have been carrying liquid petroleum products since around 1900, attained enormous lengths, with a mid-1990 supertanker reaching 1,500 feet (457 meters). Future ships promise to be even more specialized as well as more efficient and cheaper to operate. Increasingly, tomorrow's ships will be more automated, with computers actually operating all major systems. Crews will also be smaller and ships will be built of aluminum and other materials that do not rust.
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