HANDBOOK OF 19TH CENTURY NAVAL WARFARE

Numerous great technological developments and advances have been made in nearly every field of the maritime military activities in the historical period 1793-1914. At the very beginning of the XIX century the Napoleonic wars did mark the top point of fighting sail as well as wooden ship hulls. By the end of the XX century, heavily armed warships with the iron hulls and oil-fired burners, that were driven by the screw propellers, pointed the future of the naval warfare.

This publication contains an excellent, very informative and heavily illustrated narrative text addressing that truly crucial transition phase, mainly focusing on the evolution of the vessels and their ordnance. The publication is opening with the brief yet comprehensive summary of the technology and tactics plus strategy in the early XIX century, followed by the informative accounts of the Napoleonic wars together with the most important factors leading to the naval supremacy of the Great Britain.

He has also provided readers with a clear description of the revolutions following the naval ordnance, iron hulls and means of ship propulsion, underwater warfare, also providing the review of the naval situation that existed prior to the World War I, demonstrating how exactly those changes played out during the American-Spanish, Japanese-Sino and Japanese-Russo wars. The document concludes with the explanation of the balance in the world navy forces by the start of the First World War...