Editing Battleship (section)

== Background ==
=== Ships of the line ===
{{Main|Ship of the line}}
[[File:TheNapoleonAtToulonIn1852ByLauvergne.jpg|thumb|{{ship|French ship|Napoléon|1850|2}} (1850), the world's first steam-powered battleship]]

A ship of the line was a large, unarmored wooden sailing ship which mounted a [[artillery battery|battery]] of up to 120 [[smoothbore]] [[gun]]s and [[carronade]]s, which came to prominence with the adoption of [[line of battle]] tactics in the early 17th century. From 1794, the alternative term 'line of battle ship' was contracted to 'battle ship' or 'battleship'. The sheer number of guns fired [[Broadside (naval)|broadside]] meant a ship of the line could wreck any wooden enemy, holing her [[hull (watercraft)|hull]], knocking down [[mast (sailing)|masts]], wrecking her [[rigging]], and killing her crew. They also imparted a psychological effect on the crews of smaller vessels. Ships of the line were also fairly resilient to the guns of the day; for example, the British [[Royal Navy]] lost no [[first-rate]] (the largest type of ship of the line) to enemy action during the entire 18th century.{{sfn|Gardiner|2011|p=7–9, 12}} Over time, ships of the line gradually became larger and carried more guns, but otherwise remained quite similar. Development of the first-rates was particularly conservative, as these ships represented a major investment. By the early 1800s, the traditional [[Seventy-four (ship)|"seventy-four"]] (so-named because it carried 74 guns) was no longer considered to be a proper ship of the line, having been supplanted by 84- and 120-gun ships.{{sfn|Sondhaus|2001|pp=1–2}}{{sfn|Gardiner|2011|p=9}}

The first major change to the ship of the line concept was the introduction of [[steam power]] as an auxiliary [[marine propulsion|propulsion system]]. Steam power was gradually introduced to the navy in the first half of the 19th century, initially for small craft and later for [[frigate]]s. Early vessels used paddle wheels for propulsion, but by the 1840s, the first [[screw propeller]] equipped vessels began to appear. The value of these smaller steam-powered warships demonstrated their worth, when vessels like the British [[Nemesis (1839)|''Nemesis'']] proved to be critical to the Anglo-French success in the [[First Opium War]] in the 1840s.{{sfn|Sondhaus|2001|pp=18–22, 27–30, 36–40}}

The [[French Navy]] introduced steam to the line of battle with the 90-gun {{ship|French ship|Napoléon|1850|2}} in 1850—the first true steam battleship.{{sfn|Gardiner|Lambert|2001|p=39}} ''Napoléon'', which was designed by [[Henri Dupuy de Lôme]], was armed as a conventional ship-of-the-line, but her steam engines could give her a speed of {{convert|12|kn|lk=in|0}}, regardless of the wind. This was a potentially decisive advantage in a naval engagement. The introduction of steam accelerated the growth in size of battleships. France and the [[United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland|United Kingdom]] were the only countries to develop [[List of steam powered ships of the line|fleets of wooden, steam-screw battleships]] although several other navies operated small numbers of screw battleships, including [[Russian Empire|Russia]] (9), the [[Ottoman Empire]] (3), Sweden (2), [[Kingdom of Naples|Naples]] (1), Denmark (1) and [[Austrian Empire|Austria]] (1).{{sfn|Lambert|1984|pp=144–147}}{{sfn|Sondhaus|2001|pp=40–41, 55–57}}

Concurrent with the development of steam power, another major technological step heralded the end of the traditional ship of the line: guns capable of firing [[Shell (projectile)|explosive shells]]. Pioneering work was done by the French artillery officer [[Henri-Joseph Paixhans]] beginning in 1809. The American artillerist [[George Bomford]] followed not far behind, designing the first shell-firing [[Columbiad]] in 1812. The British and Russians began to follow suit in the 1830s, though early smoothbore guns could not fire shells as far as solid shot, which hampered widespread adoption in any fleet.{{sfn|Sondhaus|2001|pp=23, 29}} By the early 1840s, the French [[Paixhans gun]] and American [[Dahlgren gun]] had begun to be adopted by their respective navies.{{sfn|Tucker|1989|p=149}} In the [[Crimean War]] of 1853–1855, six Russian ships of the line and two frigates of the [[Black Sea Fleet]] destroyed seven Turkish frigates and three corvettes with explosive shells at the [[Battle of Sinop]] in 1853.{{sfn|Lambert|1990|pp=60–61}} The battle was widely seen as vindication of the shell gun.{{sfn|Sondhaus|2001|p=58}}{{efn|The actual effectiveness of the guns has been called into question by modern historians such as Lawrence Sondhaus, who states that "to draw such "lessons" one had to ignore that it took six hours for Nakhimov to destroy the Turco-Egyptian squadron, despite the fact that he had six ships of the line with over 600 guns and that Osman Pasha's largest warships were frigates. Competent gunnery using solid shot alone would have achieved the same outcome."{{sfn|Sondhaus|2001|p=58}} John Beeler agrees, stating that "the effects of explosive shell, supposedly the death-knell of the wooden warship, have been considerably overrated by most naval historians."{{sfn|Beeler|2001|p=34}}}} Nevertheless, wooden-hulled ships stood up comparatively well to shells, as shown in the 1866 [[Battle of Lissa (1866)|Battle of Lissa]], where the modern Austrian steam ship of the line {{SMS|Kaiser|1858|6}} ranged across a confused battlefield, rammed an [[Kingdom of Italy|Italian]] ironclad and took 80 hits from Italian ironclads, many of which were shells,{{sfn|Clowes|1970|pp=54–55, 63, 68}} but including at least one {{convert|300|lb|kg|adj=on}} shot at point-blank range. Despite losing her [[bowsprit]] and her foremast, and being set on fire, she was ready for action again the very next day.{{sfn|Wilson|1896|p=240}}

=== Ironclads ===
{{Main|Ironclad warship}}
[[File:LaGloirePhotograph.jpg|thumb|{{ship|French ironclad|Gloire||2}} (1859), the first ocean-going [[ironclad warship]]]]

As amply demonstrated at the Battle of Sinope, and again during the Anglo-French [[blockade]] of [[Sevastopol]] from 1854 to 1855, wooden ships had become vulnerable to shell-firing guns. This prompted the French emperor [[Napoleon III]] to order the first [[ironclad warship]]s: the {{sclass|Dévastation|ironclad floating battery|1}}s. Three of these ships led the Anglo-French attack on the Russian fortress on the [[Kinburn Peninsula]] in the [[Battle of Kinburn (1855)|Battle of Kinburn]] in 1855, where they bore the brunt of Russian artillery fire, but were not seriously damaged. The success of these ships prompted the French and British to order several similar vessels.{{sfn|Sondhaus|2001|pp=58–61}}{{sfn|Lambert|1984|pp=92–96}}

In March 1858, the French took development of the ironclad to its next logical step: a proper, ocean-going armored warship. This vessel, another design by Dupuy de Lome, was {{ship|French ironclad|Gloire||2}}, and after her [[ceremonial ship launching|launching]] in 1859, Napoleon III ordered another five similar ships, which sparked a naval [[arms race]] with Britain. The first French ironclads had the profile of a ship of the line, cut to one deck due to weight considerations. Although made of wood and reliant on sail for most journeys, ''Gloire'' and her contemporaries were fitted with screw propellers, and their wooden hulls were protected by a layer of thick iron armor. Britain responded promptly with {{HMS|Warrior|1860|2}}, a similar but much larger ironclad with an iron hull. By the time ''Warrior'' was completed in 1861, another nine ironclads were under construction in British shipyards, some of which were conversions of screw ships of the line that were already being built.{{sfn|Gibbons|1983|pp=28–31}}{{sfn|Sondhaus|2001|pp=73–75}}

During the [[Unification of Italy]] in 1860, the [[Kingdom of Sardinia]] entered the ironclad building race by ordering the {{sclass|Formidabile|ironclad|1}}s from French shipyards; their long-term rival across the [[Adriatic Sea]], the Austrian Empire, quickly responded later that year with the two {{sclass|Drache|ironclad|1}}s. Spain and Russia ordered ironclads in 1861, as did the United States and rebel [[Confederate States of America]] after the start of the [[American Civil War]]. Construction of these large and expensive warships remained controversial until March 1862, when news of the [[Battle of Hampton Roads]], fought between the Union {{USS|Monitor}} and the Confederate {{ship|CSS|Virginia}}, firmly settled debate in favor of even larger construction programs.{{sfn|Sondhaus|2001|pp=76–78}}

From the 1860s to 1880s, navies experimented with the positioning of guns, in [[Gun turret|turrets]], [[central battery ship|central-batteries]], or [[barbette]]s; ironclads of the period also prominently used the [[naval ram|ram]] as a principal weapon. As steam technology developed, masts were gradually removed from battleship designs. The British [[Director of Naval Construction|Chief Constructor]], [[Edward Reed (naval architect)|Edward Reed]], produced the {{sclass|Devastation|ironclad|1}}s in 1869. These were mastless [[turret ship]]s, which adopted twin-screw propulsion and an arrangement of two pairs of {{convert|12|in|adj=on|0}} guns, one fore and one aft of the [[superstructure]], that prefigured the advent of the [[pre-dreadnought battleship]] some two decades later. By the mid-1870s [[steel]] was used as a construction material alongside iron and wood. The French Navy's {{ship|French ironclad|Redoutable||2}}, laid down in 1873 and launched in 1876, was a combination central battery and [[barbette ship]], which became the first capital ship in the world to use steel as the principal building material.{{sfn|Gardiner|Lambert|2001|p=96}}{{sfn|Sondhaus|2001|pp=87–89}}

The rapid pace of technological developments, particularly in terms of gun capabilities and thickness of armor to combat them, quickly rendered ships obsolescent.{{sfn|Beeler|2001|p=21}} In the continuous attempt by gun manufacturers to keep ahead of developments in armor plate, larger and larger guns were fitted to many of the later ironclads. Some of these, such as the British {{sclass|Victoria|ironclad|4}}, carried guns as large as {{convert|16.25|in}} in diameter, while the Italian {{sclass|Duilio|ironclad|1}}s were armed with colossal {{convert|17.7|in|adj=on}} guns.{{sfn|Chesneau|Kolesnik|1979|pp=30, 340}} The French experimented with very large guns in the 1870s, but after significant trouble with these guns (and the development of slower-burning [[gunpowder]]), they led the way toward smaller-caliber guns with longer barrels, which had higher [[muzzle velocity]] and thus greater penetration than the larger guns.{{sfn|Ropp|1987|pp=98–100}}

===''Jeune École''===
{{main|Jeune École}}

In the 1880s, opposition to fleets of large, expensive ironclads arose around the world, but most notably in France, where a group of naval officers led by Admiral [[Théophile Aube]] formed the {{lang|fr|Jeune École}} (Young School). The theory, which held as one of its core tenets that small, cheap [[torpedo boat]]s could easily defeat ironclads, was based on combat experience during the [[Russo-Turkish War (1877–1878)|Russo-Turkish War]] of 1877–1878. The doctrine also posited that modern steel-hulled [[cruiser]]s could defeat a more powerful navy by attacking the country's merchant shipping, rather than engage in a direct battle. The concept proved to be highly influential for several years, shaping the construction programs of France, Germany, Italy, and Austria-Hungary, among others throughout the world.{{sfn|Sondhaus|2001|pp=139–141}}