NS2 - Chapter 1, Maritime History

• Sailors of Crete were the first to use sea power 4,000 years ago
• Phoenicians


  • Established colonies and trading stations that grew into centers of commerce (Carthage was the greatest)
• Sea power


  A nation's ability to use the sea to meet its military and economic needs
• Sea Line of Communication

  Sea route traversed by support forces
• Hellespont


  What the Trojan War was fought over (now called the Dardanelles)
• Galleys


  Fighting vessels mainly propelled by oars with one or two sails
• Year of Battle of Salamis

  480 BC
• Bad weather and the Greek’s hit-and-run tactics reduced Xerxes fleet leading to defeat in the Battle of Salamis
• Triremes

  Multid-decked War Galley
• Areas that flourished in Athens during the Golden Age

  • Theater
  • Sculpture
  • Writing
  • Philosophy
• Made the Golden Age of Athens possible


  Battle of Salamis
• Small battles between Greece and Carthage
• Mare Nostrum

  Our sea
• Pax Romana

  the longest period of peace in world history
• Muslims

  derived from an Arabic word meaning “submitter” (to God)
• Middle Ages

  5th through 15th centuries
• Dark Ages


  from the fall of Rome until about the 11th century
• Long Ships


  slender wooden sailing vessels with shallow-draft hulls and oars that facilitated travel through the open ocean, shallow coastal areas, and rivers. Used by the Vikings
• Renaissance

  the Rebirth; 13th-16th centuries
• Hanseatic League


  German port cities that dominated the economy of northern and western Europe near 1356
• Battle of Lepanto


  signaled the end of the Age of the Galley;
• Arquebus


  an early type of musket
• Age of Discovery


  the Ottoman Turks, now having full reign of the Mediterranean following the Battle of Lepanto, creating the
• Portugese


   the first to seek a new route to the East Indies and the rest of Asia
• Prince Henry the Navigator


  hired sailors to find a route to the East by sailing around southern Africa
• Bartolomeu Dias


  rounded the Cape of Good Hope in 1488, proving that a sea route to Asia exited
• Vasco De Gama


  sailed from Portugal to India in 1498
• Convoy


  a method used for centuries afterward to protect merchant shipping
• Mercantile Theory


  to become richer and more powerful, a nation had to make other nations poorer by capturing their wealth
• Privateering


  where merchant vessels attack/raid treasure ships;
• Armada


  Large fleet of warships; The Spanish one was composed of 124 galleons and they eventually lost to England’s 34 men-of-war; this failure signaled beginning of Spain’s decline
• Culverins


  an early type of cannon
• Broadside


  simultaneous firing of all available guns on one side
• Grapple


  a group of large metal hooks with a common central shaft attached to a heaving line - used to latch onto enemy ships
• Fireships


  ships loaded with combustibles that were set afire and sent drifting among enemy ships
• Spanish Main


  the stretch of water from Colombia and Panama to the Caribbean islands
• Charters


  licenses granted for colonizations
• Treaty of Paris


  ended the war between France and England in 1763
• The First Crusade


  initiated by Pope Urban II in 1095