berenzero:

fuckyeah-nerdery:

Crossing the T in naval warfare, also known as opening a can of whoop ass.

This was totally the prevailing tactical orthodoxy, true. But occasionally, it made better tactical sense to be the line in red; as shown by Admiral Nelson at the Battle of Trafalgar, where he spilt is fleet into two columns that ran perpendicular to the Franco-Spanish line. One of his columns, led by him in the HMS Victory, hit the line in center, the other, led by his second in command, Cuthbert Collingwood, attacked the rear of the Franco-Spanish line.

This graphic shows you how dangerous it is for the red ships to approach the blue line, but what it doesn’t show you is just how utterly devastating the red ships can be when they break that line. The HMS Victory, a first-rate ship of the line, was a beast of a vessel and took the brunt of the fire, but survived and pushed through into the midst of the enemy’s line of ships, allowing her to throw two full broadsides at the bow of one ship and the stern of another, and all the following English ships were able to do the same, coming under significantly less fire than the Victory, given how long reload times for cannons were. The other big thing is that the broadsides of these ships were built to repel cannon fire; the Victory’s hull at the waterline was 2ft thick (some ships had hulls up to 3ft thick of solid oak). But the bow and the stern? Hardly anything at the bow, and generally large ornate forecastles at the stern, often with large glass windows, which allowed cannonfire down the stern to rake across the ENTIRE length of the ship, killing crewmen and destroying equipment with ease.

This allowed Nelson to put his 27 ships up against the combined Franco-Spanish line of 33 ships and sink 22 of their ships without losing a single vessel. It did, however, cost him his life, as he was mortally wounded during the battle (he was on the ship that took the brunt of the fire for the English).