Ship of The Line - Combat

Combat

Although Spain, the Netherlands, and France built huge fleets, they were rarely able to match the skill of British naval crews. British crews excelled, in part, because they spent much more time at sea, were generally better fed, were well trained in gunnery (allowing a faster rate of fire), and were generally more competent, as the Royal Navy based promotion much more on merit rather than purchase. The British Army has usually been smaller than the armies of comparably prominent continental countries, while the navy tended to be larger than the individual navies of each continental power.

In the North Sea and North Atlantic Ocean, the fleets of Great Britain, the Netherlands, France, and Spain fought numerous battles in support of their land armies and to deny the enemy access to trade routes. In the Baltic Sea, Sweden, Denmark, the Netherlands, and Russia did likewise, while in the Mediterranean Sea, Russia, Ottoman Turkey, Venice, Portugal, Britain, and France battled for control.

During the Napoleonic Wars, Britain defeated Europe's major naval powers at battles such as at Copenhagen, Cape St Vincent, Aboukir ("The Nile"), and Trafalgar, allowing the Royal Navy to establish itself as the world's primary naval power. Spain, Denmark, and Portugal largely stopped building ships of the line during this time under duress from the British. Britain emerged from the Napoleonic Wars in 1815 with the largest and most professional navy in the world, composed of hundreds of wooden, sail-powered ships of all sizes and classes. The Royal Navy had complete naval supremacy across the world following the Napoleonic Wars, and it demonstrated this superiority during the Crimean War in the 1850s.

Nonetheless, the Napoleonic Wars, as well as the American War of 1812, had illustrated the shortcomings of ships of the line when an enemy resorted to tactics including the large-scale use of privateers. Both the French and the Americans had demonstrated what a menace small, lightly armed, but fast, nimble, and, most especially, numerous vessels like sloops and schooners could be when they spread across the wide oceans, operating singly or in small groups. They targeted the merchant shipping that was Britain's economic lifeblood, and ships of the line were too few, too slow, and too clumsy to be employed against them.

Overwhelming firepower was of no use if it could not be brought to bear: the Royal Navy's initial response to Napoleon's privateers, which operated from French New World territories, was to buy Bermuda sloops. Similarly, the East India Company's merchant vessels became lightly armed and quite competent in combat during this period, operating a convoy system under an armed merchantman, instead of depending on small numbers of more heavily armed ships.