Naval Battles

What links these battles?

Sea power decided who could trade, who could invade and who could feed a besieged city, so naval battles often mattered more than the land campaigns around them. This collection runs from the oared galleys of Salamis and Actium, where ramming and boarding settled everything, through the gun-armed sailing ships of the Armada, the Nile and Trafalgar, to the steel fleets of Tsushima and Jutland and the carrier duels of Midway, the Coral Sea and Leyte Gulf. Look for three recurring themes: weather and tides, the value of a single admiral's judgement, and how quickly a new technology such as the broadside or the aircraft carrier made an older fleet obsolete.