History of shipbuilding
At the latest with the necessity for groups of people to have to cross water over long distances in search of food or in search of habitat , man invented appropriate means of transport . It is believed that Homo sapiens developed watercraft over 50,000 years ago. But even before that, to cross the Red Sea, watercraft were required. Even earlier, Homo erectus must have traveled distances of over 20 km over water to get to the Sunda Island of Flores , which was never accessible by land and where Homo floresiensis lived. Notwithstanding the overcoming of separating seas, very large rivers, some of which were too cold for swimming, were crossed again and again during the spread of humans , which at least suggest the targeted use of flotsam.
The first detectable vehicle, however, must have been around 6500 BC. To be dated. Initially, these vehicles were simple hewn tree trunks, later these were further developed and a limit in terms of size was initially reached with the clippers due to the properties of the building material wood . Only with the use of steel could larger ships be built. B. the container ships of the UASC A18 class , are now built up to 400 m in length.
Ships are the main means of transport for bulk cargo today . Nowadays, general cargo is mainly transported in containers on container ships. The largest ship ever built in the world is the crane ship Pieter Schelte with a measurement of 403,342 GT ( gross tonnage ).
Since at least the 1960s years, sees passenger ship ride a growing rivalry with the air traffic over and shifted because of this from a pure transport propagated through to transport , especially in adventure travel / cruises . This shift is also reflected in the way the ships used are built.
Beginnings
As early watercraft not be dugouts discussed, but rather rafts ; Paleoanthropologists assume that bamboo rafts in Southeast Asia . However, the evidence remains indirect, as no archaeological references to ships or representations from this period are known.
Modern humans immigrated to Australia at least 50,000 years ago (cf. the settlement of Australia through South Asia ). Thanks to the lower sea level, there were shorter sea routes from Asia to Australia than today, but more than 100 km of ocean had to be crossed over the Timor Trench . For this purpose, ocean-going vessels were necessary. In addition, the logistical performance was required to keep drinking water on board for a journey of over 100 km. Third, active propulsion was required, such as swimming or paddling, as flotsam would have missed the other coast. In addition to propulsion, some form of direction finding ( navigation ) was also required, as the target coast was beyond the horizon.
The oldest archaeological evidence of watercraft are dugout canoe and paddle finds ( paddles from Duvensee ) in Northern Europe, which date back to around 6500 BC. Can be backdated. The oldest evidence of a dugout canoe from Africa goes back to 6000 BC. Dated. The oldest evidence of a sail is a rock carving in the Nubian Desert, dating from around 5000 BC. BC originated. Until about 3500 BC BC models go back from Egypt .
The oldest larger ships are directly occupied by the Egyptians. They were probably built mainly for inland traffic on the Nile, later also for naval warfare (depictions of warships with ram ram and raised stern post on the island of Syros , 2800 BC) and for long-distance trade (Pharaoh Sahu-Re sent around 2500 BC) . Ships to Syria , Somalia and East Africa ).
Also from Egypt comes the oldest surviving ship find ( Cheops funeral ship , 2650 BC), which testifies to an already mature art of shipbuilding. The ship had no keel and was kept in shape with the help of lengthways stretched ropes . The planks made of imported Lebanese cedar wood were also sewn with ropes.
A ship find in Yangshao ( China ) proves that the Chinese were around 2000 BC. BC could also build ships and cross bulkheads were already known.
Antiquity
The oldest evidence of the use of ships in Mesopotamia are cuneiform tablets with waybills for transports with rafts ( keleks ) , which were made around 1900 BC. The Euphrates and Tigris drove down. About 200 years later, Mesopotamian city-states had trade links throughout the eastern Mediterranean . 1200 ton obelisks dating from 1500 BC. BC were transported across the Nile , testify to enormous transport ships on the Nile.
The mythical Cretan King Minos of Knossos is said to have exercised the first thalassocracy over large parts of the Aegean region after Herodotus and Thucydides . In this research a memory of a thalassocracy of Minoan Crete in the first half of the second millennium BC is assumed. From this period comes a fresco on the island of Thera , which testifies to warships with spurs and high stems . However, research questions whether the Minoans actually exercised a thalassocracy. Around or shortly before 1200 BC The Hittite great king Šuppiluliuma II reports of a sea battle that he successfully waged against the ships of the "enemies of Alašija " (Cyprus). It is the first sea battle in the Mediterranean to be documented in contemporary sources. Around 1180 BC Chr. (In the eighth year of the reign of III Ramses. ) Is the famous naval battle between Ramses III. and the sea people .
Around 1000 BC The Phoenicians established a trading center on the island of Kition. The Karstad-Bildstein ship representation in Norway , which shows watercraft with double stems, also dates from the same time .
Around 800 BC - according to ancient tradition 814 BC BC - the Phoenicians founded Carthage and rose to become the dominant sea power in the Mediterranean area . In the 8th century BC The Phoenicians made a clear distinction between the cargo ship (" Gaulos ") and the combat ship ("Hippos").
The colonization of Sicily by the Greeks around 750 BC BC testifies to Greek seafaring. Corinth became a Greek naval power and introduced innovations, such as the oar arm , into warship construction. The main forces of Greek fleets in the 8th to 6th centuries BC Were single-row (" Moneren ") rowing warships with up to 50 rowers (" Pentekoren ").
537 BC BC the Etruscans , who are thus proven to be seafarers for the first time, together with the Carthaginians defeated a Greek fleet off Corsica .
By winning the sea battle at Salamis in 480 BC Athens rose to sea power. The ships used for this had three rows of oars (" trireme ") and formed between the 6th and 3rd centuries BC. The main power of the war fleets.
With Athens growing into a major city in the 5th century BC It became necessary to procure additional grain by sea. Maritime trade expanded from luxury to bulk goods. Later, Rome was also dependent on grain deliveries by sea.
In the 3rd century BC Rome became naval power and, after a series of victories over Carthage, ruled the entire Mediterranean region. Except for details such as the boarding bridge , Rome introduced hardly any innovations in shipbuilding. The ancient Mediterranean shipbuilding was technically mature and had exhausted its development potential. Ships were decked out and rigged . The hull was stiffened with keel and ribs . The bow and stern stems were raised, warships were significantly slimmer than merchant ships and had a ram in or below the waterline. The vehicles were controlled via two rudders.
Successor developments such as the Byzantine dromone , which could be improved in combat value again through the use of Greek fire , were built until the 12th century, when they were finally replaced by the more modern galleys .
In Northern Europe, boats and later ships developed from dugouts, which were enlarged in width and height by additional planks. The first larger vehicles had a flat floor and no keel and were made using the Kraweel construction. This development is proven by a number of finds ( Hjortspringboot , 350 BC; North Ferriby ship discovery , 150 BC; Blackfriars ship discovery , New Guyse ship discovery , both 2nd century).
middle Ages
The finds by Nydam (3rd century) and Björke (4th century) mark a turning point in northern European shipbuilding, as these were made of clinker construction, which was to remain the predominant design in the North and Baltic Sea region until the late Middle Ages. While the Björkefund can still be clearly recognized as a dugout canoe with plank walkways, the Nydam ship is a direct forerunner of the Viking ships due to its size and design (raised bow and stern stems, transverse ribs, nailed planks) . However, the Nydam ship does not have a mast base and was therefore exclusively rowed.
The finds from Bruges (6th to 7th centuries) and Kvalsund (7th century) show a mast base and were therefore both rowing and sailing ships. Until the late Middle Ages these were single-masted and used a large square sail . They were controlled via a rudder.
With this, all the essential elements of the Viking ship were formed, which by the 13th century became the ship type of Northern Europe in variations in size and proportions (later bulbous forms were also called Nef and had forts in front and aft ). With these ships the Vikings reached Iceland (862), Greenland (901), America (≈1000) and penetrated into the Mediterranean area.
In the Indian Ocean, around the same time as the Viking ship, a new type of ship emerged, the Arab dhow . Unfortunately, there is little evidence of the exact dating of the development, but the essential features of this ship have been established since the Middle Ages (and practically did not change until the 20th century). The dhows have a short keel, a long, sloping forward stem and an almost vertical stern stem. A lug sail was attached to each of one or two short pole masts . Since the High Middle Ages , dhows have also had an oar at the stern .
The spreading influence of the Arabs led to a mixture of elements of the dhow with ancient shipbuilding in the Mediterranean, from which a new type of warship, the galley , developed towards the end of the first millennium .
She had rigging not dissimilar to that of the dhow, but equipped with latin sails . Also from the dhow comes the failing forward stem, which however still ended in a ram.
Galleys were narrow, slender and not suitable for the high seas, but very fast and extremely agile and easy to maneuver. The sails were only used as an auxiliary drive, especially in combat there was only rowing. By the end of the Middle Ages, the galley had reached its final shape (a series of oars, introduction of the stern rudder) and was to maintain this shape for centuries.
In the Far East, the junk developed as the predominant type of construction. Its essential characteristics remained unchanged over a long period of time, even if there were a number of local variations of the basic pattern.
Junks are characterized by a flat, wide ship's floor that was pulled up at the ends. The side walls were placed almost vertically. The tail rudder can be used in China as early as the 4th century BC. Be proven. Junks were bricked , but towards the keel, that is, the other way around than in Europe. Another difference was the deck planks that were attached under the deck beams.
Junks were usually sailed and had a lug sail on a pole mast that was not braced so that the sail could be swiveled in a full circle. The sail was stiffened by a series of spreader bars.
The Chinese used junks to travel across the entire East Asian region as well as rivers and canals. The Indian Ocean was also regularly navigated, and even East Africa was reached (journeys of Admiral Zheng He 1405–1433).
In Northern Europe there were a number of innovations in shipbuilding in the 13th century. The first use of stern rudders in Northern Europe is known for 1242. Equipped with this innovation, but otherwise based on the Nef , a bulbous merchant ship was created, which was to become the predominant design in the North and Baltic Sea region until around 1400, the cog .
The cog was both a merchant and a warship and was armed with firearms in the course of the 14th century , which were initially small and housed in the forts (the first evidence of firearms at sea is the use of powder cannons on Aragonese ships in 1458 ).
In Portugal , which rose to the powers of the sea in 1418 with the establishment of the nautical school by Heinrich the Seafarer , a new type of ship developed in the 13th and 14th centuries that had the typical features of the Mediterranean shipbuilding of the time ( crawler planking , latin sails ) but was nevertheless suitable for the ocean who have favourited the caravel . She was a narrow, fast ship that was rigged for Atlantic voyages and, depending on the size and time, had up to four masts, the last of which always carried a latin sail.
The age of discovery began with the caravel, because the Nao , a bulky, bulky ship with a high loading capacity, which was customary for transport on the Mediterranean in the Middle Ages, was too expensive and too slow for expeditions. Portuguese caravels reached Sierra Leone in 1460 and South Africa in 1488 .
Early modern age
With the increasing trade and exchange of information, the carracks began to emerge as a pan-European type of ship in the 15th century . This was three-masted (the first two of which were rigged and the rear one was rigged in Latin), completely built and had high superstructures that were incorporated into the hull. Initially, this ship was still clinkered in Northern Europe and called Holk , but the Kraweel planking also prevailed in Northern Europe , which made it possible to build larger ships.
The carrack was a robust and ocean-going ship that was immediately included in the increasing number of overseas expeditions. Columbus's fleet from 1492 still consisted of two caravels and one carrack, while that of Vasco da Gama from 1498 already consisted of five carracks.
In southern Europe in particular, the transition from the nao to the carrack was very fluid, and both names were often used for the same type of ship.
The 16th century was marked by an extreme increase in overseas traffic. Ships were not only used for exploration and discovery, but also had to transport increasing amounts of troops, goods and settlers. This was achieved, on the one hand, by initially building carracks even larger (some with four masts); Nevertheless, the development of a new type of ship seemed inevitable, since the invention of the gun port around 1500 now also made it possible to set up heavy artillery in the tween decks, which were too close to the waterline in the carrack.
In the first half of the 16th century the galleon emerged, the typical feature of which was the galeon, a tapered porch on the bow of the ship. Despite its size, the galleon had rather slender underwater shapes and three or four masts, the first two of which were frame rigged. Warships and merchant ships differed mainly in their armament, but were very similar in architecture. There were also regional differences. English ships were usually smaller and more agile with the same armament, which was to remain so until the end of the sailing warship era.
The galley was still the most common warship in the Mediterranean . The naval battle of Lepanto (1571), in which both the Holy League and the Ottoman Empire provided over 200 ships, was the largest galley battle in history. However, galleys had the disadvantage that their oars stood in the way of a broad side placement of the guns, which is why their firepower remained low. One attempt to take this problem into account was the development of the galeas .
In the 17th century the galleon developed into a veritable warship. The broad side positioning of the guns required appropriate tactics in which this came to fruition. While the naval battles of the first Anglo-Dutch naval war (1652-1654) ended in Mêlée , the line tactics (setting up in keel line ) is increasingly used in the second Anglo-Dutch naval war (1665-1667) (e.g. sea battle at Lowestoft ).
At this point, warships began to be differentiated according to whether their armament and stability were sufficient for use in the main battle line. Ships where this was the case were referred to as liners and usually had two battery decks . Ships with three of them were available (the first three-decker was the English HMS Royal Prince , 1610) but rarely, because it was difficult enough to build a balanced two-decker (in 1628 the Swedish Wasa capsized in the harbor).
Ships that were too weak for the line were called frigates . They had one or two battery decks and were usually faster than the ships of the line.
The warships in the time of absolutism always served representational purposes; outwardly they bore all the stylistic features of the baroque . The stern, in particular, was raised, designed to resemble architecture and magnificently decorated with allegories . The English three-decker Sovereign of the Seas (1637) was almost completely covered with ornaments, some of which were gilded. The functionality was often endangered by the jewelry. Due to the expansion into floating objects of representation, the ship sizes occasionally exceeded the 1000 ton limit.
The largest merchant ships of the 17th century were the East Indiaman of the trading companies ( Dutch East India Company , British East India Company ). These were not pure freighters, but were well armed for their defense and to enforce company interests. For their long overseas voyages, the East Indiamans were equipped with very large sails, which made a wide hull necessary for reasons of stability. The upward tapering hull also served as protection against boarding .
The most widespread cargo ship of that time, however, was the Dutch Fleute , which could be found all over Europe from the 16th to the 18th centuries. The Fleute combined a high loading capacity with a relatively shallow draft and was therefore ideally suited for the North and Baltic Seas.
In the 18th century, a more refined classification of warships prevailed by dividing them into ranks according to their armament . The exact subdivisions varied between nations, but were very similar overall.
In the British Navy, the ships of the first four ranks were referred to as ships of the line . Those of the first rank were those with at least 100 cannons and three battery decks. But these were rare and arose from representative rather than military needs. Second tier triplane had 90 to 98 cannons. The ships of the line of the third and fourth rank were double-deckers with 64 to 80 and 50 to 60 guns respectively. The ships of the second and third rank formed the core of the line forces. Ships fifth (32-40 guns) and sixth rank (20-30 guns) were referred to as frigates . Frigates were mostly used for special tasks outside the line forces. All ships of the first to sixth rank had in common that they were rigged as full ships, i.e. had three masts with square sails .
Vehicles with fewer than three masts or fewer than 20 cannons were called sloops in the British Navy . They were mostly rigged as a brig , schnau or ketch . They were used for reconnaissance, the transmission of information and the hunt for opposing merchant ships.
In other navies (for example the American and French) smaller warships were also referred to as corvettes , which were mostly rigged as full ships , but carried fewer cannons than frigates.
Since the end of the 18th century, the underwater part of the hull of English warships was regularly shod with copper plates, which was previously only used to protect Caribbean sailors from woodworms .
The sailing warship of the 18th century was technically mature, had exhausted its development potential and hardly changed until the end of the sailing warship era. The great sea battles at the turn of the 18th to the 19th century ( Sea Battle of Cape St. Vincent (1797) , Battle of Trafalgar 1805) represented a climax in the era of sailing warships, before industrialization and technical progress of the 19th century made the sailing warship obsolete as a weapon system.
The last naval battle between sailing ships took place near Navarino in 1827 .
Late modern times
With the invention of the steam engine , the first mechanically powered ships were designed ( steam ships ). Initially, these were mostly sailing ships with an auxiliary drive, which was used for propulsion when there was no wind or for maneuvering in port. With the invention of the ship's propeller , with which the first commercial ship in liner service, the Novelty , was equipped in 1837 , it was possible to replace the inefficient paddle wheels in the middle of the 19th century. Only then did the new technology have the potential to displace sail propulsion.
Another great innovation of the industrial age was the introduction of iron and later steel as a material in shipbuilding, which gradually replaced wood. All new technologies were developed and introduced primarily for the military sector due to the high acquisition and maintenance costs. This development progressed rapidly in the second half of the 19th century, when the transition from sailing warship to battleship took place in just a few decades .
In the civilian sector, the scientific development of hulls and rigging, as the last heyday of commercial sailing ships, enabled the construction of efficient transport ships, the so-called clippers , mostly full ships like the Cutty Sark , which in tough competition against each other, high-quality goods such as tea or wool to Europe or North America transported. For a long time, larger but slower sailing ships with up to four masts, such as the four-masted barque Passat , were used to transport bulk goods such as guano or wheat . The only five-masted full ships in the world were the Prussians and today the cruise ship Royal Clipper . The German sailing ship fleet reached its highest level around 1870; after that only the number of steamers grew.
At the end of the 19th century, large shipyards were established in which shipbuilding was carried out in an industrialized manner. According to the construction plans, line plans were drawn on the cord floor, then wooden templates were made and used as templates for the construction of the frames , panels and other parts of the hull and the superstructure. On the Helgen these parts were then connected to one another by rivets . As soon as the hull with the superstructure was completed, it was launched and received machines, interior fittings and deck equipment at the equipment quay.
In the first half of the 20th century, the sailing ship was then completely replaced by the machine-driven ship. With the increasing number of emigrants from Europe and the start of regular services between the continents, the development of ever larger passenger ships began in 1880 . Steam powered fishing trawlers have been around since the 1870s. Before the First World War , new types of ship were tankers , rail ferries and submarines .
After the Second World War , the diesel engine as a ship drive and the weight-saving welding technology for the manufacture of hulls and superstructures, which had already been developed in the 1920s, became generally accepted. The sectional construction also reduced the construction times of the ships considerably. The previously ubiquitous general cargo ships have been replaced by container ships in liner service since the late 1960s, which enabled the extensive automation of the handling of goods and meant that on-board loading facilities could largely be dispensed with. The development of refrigerated ships also made it possible to transport perishable goods around the world. New ships got bigger and bigger (=> Economies of Scale ); at the same time, more and more types of special ships such as cruise ships, liquid gas transporters , RoRo ships , offshore service ships or fishing factory ships were created .
In warship construction, the battleship disappeared completely and was replaced by the aircraft carrier , ship artillery and armor play a subordinate role, missiles and missiles are the preferred weapon systems. Electronic warfare and the use of nuclear-powered submarines created new dimensions in naval warfare .
present
The inventions of radar , direction finding and GPS in the 20th century made navigation much easier . Computer-controlled processes also found their way into shipbuilding. The shapes and dimensions of the ship components are now calculated on the computer and then cut from the raw material with automatic cutting machines. Large sections of several hundred tons or entire ships are now manufactured in covered building docks, so that work can be carried out in any weather.
The largest shipbuilding nations in 2014 were the People's Republic of China with deliveries of around 11.9 million CGT and South Korea with 11.6 million CGT, followed by Japan with 6.8, the Philippines with 1.0, Germany and Indonesia with 0 each, 5 and the USA, Taiwan and Vietnam with 0.4 million CGT each. Due to overcapacities as a result of the shipping crisis from 2008 onwards , a global consolidation of the shipyard industry is to be expected.
See also
Individual evidence
- ^ Robert G. Bednarik: On seafaring in the Palaeolithic. In: Ethnographisch-Archäologische Zeitschrift , Volume 49, No. 3, 2008, pp. 257–270 ( PDF ).
- ^ Robert G. Bednarik: The origin of navigation and language. In: The Artefact , Vol. 20, 1997, pp. 16-56.
- ↑ Robin Dennell , Michael D. Petraglia: The dispersal of Homo sapiens across southern Asia: how early, how often, how complex? In: Quaternary Science Reviews. Volume 47, 2012, pp. 15-22.
- ↑ Robert G. Bednarik: Seafaring in the Pleistocene . In: Cambridge Archaeological Journal , Volume 13, No. 1, April 2003, pp. 41-66, doi: 10.1017 / S0959774303000039 .
- ↑ VV Pitulko, PA Nikolsky, E. Yu. Girya, AE Basilyan, VE Tumskoy, SA Koulakov, SN Astakhov, E. Yu. Pavlova, MA Anisimov: The Yana RHS Site: Humans in the Arctic before the Last Glacial Maximum. In: Science . Volume 303, No. 5654, January 2004, pp. 52-56, doi: 10.1126 / science.1085219 .
- ↑ Birth of the world's largest-ever ship, article in Lloyd's Register report 1/2015, title and pages 4–7 ( Memento of the original from January 10, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (English)
- ↑ Robert G. Bednarik: The beginning of the seafaring. In: Almogaren , Volume 30, 1999, pp. 13-34.
- ^ P. Breunig: The 8000-year-old dugout canoe from Dufuna (NE Nigeria). In: G. Pwiti, R. Soper (Eds.): Aspects of African archeology. Papers from the 10th congress of the Pan African association for prehistory and related studies, University of Zimbabwe publications, Harare 1996, pp. 461–468.
- ↑ Herodotus, Historien 1,171
- ↑ Thucydides, The Peloponnesian War 1,4,1
- ↑ see e.g. B. Philip de Souza: Piracy in the Graeco-Roman World. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 2002, p. 15 f. ISBN 0-521-01240-6 (paperback edition)
- ↑ CTH 121 (= KBO 12.38).
- ↑ Tassilo Schmitt : From the end of success. Reflections on the fall of the Mycenaean palace civilization . In: Gustav Adolf Lehmann , Dorit Engster, Alexander Nuss (eds.): From the Bronze Age history to the modern reception of antiquities , Syngramma vol. 1, Universitätsverlag Göttingen 2012, p. 121ff.
- ^ Christoph Voigt: Ship Aesthetics. 1921. Reprint Bremen 2013. ISBN 978-3-95427-260-0 .
- ↑ Exhibition “Industrial Shipbuilding” in the German Maritime Museum ( Memento of the original from March 4, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ http://www.ndr.de/nachrichten/mecklenburg-vorpommern/Baltic-2-kriegt-ein-knallrotes-Service-Schiff,balticzwei122.html ( Memento from June 25, 2015 in the Internet Archive )
- ↑ Information from de.statista.com , accessed November 12, 2015
