Naval boarding action is an offensivetactic used in naval warfare to come up against (or alongside) an enemy watercraft and attack by inserting combatants aboard that vessel. The goal of boarding is to invade and overrun the enemy personnel on board in order to capture, sabotage, or destroy the enemy vessel. While boarding attacks were originally carried out by ordinary sailors who are proficient in hand-to-hand combat, larger warships often deploy specially trained and equipped regular troops such as marines and special forces as boarders. Boarding and close-quarters combat had been a primary means to conclude a naval battle since antiquity, until the early modern period when heavy naval artillery gained tactical primacy at sea.[1]
A cutting out boarding is an attack by small boats, preferably at night and against an unsuspecting and anchored, target. It became popular in the later 18th century, and was extensively used during the Napoleonic Wars. This heralded the emphasis on stealth, and surprise, that would come to dominate future boarding tactics. An example is the successful cutting out of the Hermione which took place at Puerto Cabello, Venezuela, on 25 October 1799.
In modern warfare, boarding by military forces almost always involves stealth, and usually takes place at night. It may involve the use of small submarines or submersibles, inflatable boats, or frogmen. All involve scaling the sides of the ship. When stealth is not as important, helicopters may be used to carry troops to the deck of the ship.
Boarding is used in wartime as a way to seize a vessel without destroying it, or to remove its cargo (people or goods) before it is destroyed. It can also be used to aid in the collection of naval intelligence, as soldiers boarding a sinking, crippled, or surrendered vessel could possibly recover enemy plans, ciphercodebooks or machines. For a boarding to be successful, it must occur without the knowledge of the crew of the defending ship, or the ship's defenses must be suppressed.
In modern warfare, boarding by military forces may involve the use of small submarines or submersibles, inflatable boats or helicopters to carry troops to the deck of the ship, or may simply be carried out by scuba divers scaling the sides of the ship.
In peacetime, boarding allows authorized inspectors of one nation or group, such as a coast guard or an international policing fleet (e.g. United Nations fleet), to examine a ship's cargo in a search for drugs, weapons, passengers which are unrecorded on the ship's manifest, or any other type of contraband that could possibly have been carried aboard. A nation's coast guard could also board any suspicious ships that have been overfishing in such a nation's territorial waters. Air ambulances often deploy paramedics to ships by using typical helicopter boarding procedures.
British Royal Navy sailors guard the crew of an Iraqi oil tanker in 2002
Members of Commando Jaubert boarding Alcyon in a simulated assault
A German Navy boarding team member provides security for the remainder of his team as they board a local cargo dhow by fast rope to conduct a search of the vessel
Boarding is the oldest method of securing an opposing ship, as the first cases were depicted when the Sea Peoples and Egyptians fought.[1] For cultures that lack effective shipboard artillery, boarding is the main technique of ship-to-ship combat. However, in the modern era, boarding is still used, particularly when stealth is desired.
In all eras, boarding requires that the ship boarded be stable enough to withstand the impact of enemy personnel leaping or climbing onto the deck and a subsequent sustained fight. The target ship must also have enough deck space for boarders to be able to stand and fight effectively. Thus, Native Americanwar canoes or New Zealand waka were not suitable boarding targets, and wars between sides equipped with such vessels have generally not seen boarding actions, or any other decisive form of ship-to-ship combat. Instead, such vessels were often used for the rapid transportation of troops and supplies, and decisive engagements were normally fought by landing forces.
Ancient and Post-classical
Throughout the ancient and post-classical periods, all naval ship-to-ship combat focused primarily on boarding, although ramming and incendiaries were secondary tactics. Greek and Persian naval tactics emphasized ramming and boarding, notably at the Battle of Salamis.[1]
The earliest Roman naval battles against Carthage also emphasized boarding. Since the Romans were primarily a land-based army, they could not effectively combat the Carthaginian navy, and subsequently lost several sea battles. The corvus, a boarding ramp with a steel spike, was the Roman answer to this problem.[2] Roman sailors piloted their ship alongside a Carthaginian ship, dropped the corvus from one deck to the other, and sent their soldiers across the board, assaulting the ship. The Carthaginian navy, unprepared for this "land combat" on the oceans, lost several ships to this tactic.[2] This invention secured Roman naval dominance in the Mediterranean Sea for several centuries.[citation needed]
The Battle of Lepanto in 1571, naval engagement between allied Christian forces and the Ottoman Turks
During the medieval period, boarding continued to be the dominant form of ship-to-ship combat.[3] The most prominent naval power of the period, the Vikings, rarely fought other seaborne peoples on the water, but they still depended on boarding on those rare occasions, often lashing their longships together to make a more stable platform for the upcoming battle. The maritime use of Greek fire made Byzantium less dependent on boarding than other medieval powers, but it was still used.[1] To better resist boarding, medieval European ships began to be built with high wooden "castles" fore and aft, which boarders could scale only with great difficulty, while archers, crossbowmen or arquebusiers could sweep the enemy decks.
Naval tactics in medieval China, Korea, and Japan also depended on boarding, with the flat expanse of a ship used as a battleground for the marine contingents. The Battle of Dan-no-ura in 1185 was one of the classic naval battles in medieval Asia to be decided by boarding.[citation needed] Boarding attacks also occurred beyond the medieval era in Asia. During the Imjin Wars in naval operations, both Korean and Japanese marines would attempt to board the other's ships for engagement in hand-to-hand combat. The Japanese used boarding attacks more often because of the imbalance of firepower between the two navies; at the time, the Koreans controlled a much more powerful navy, technically and tactically, than the Japanese. Though the Japanese were armed with the latest in European small firearms, Korean cannons were advanced and among the best in Asia at the time; they were easily able to destroy Japanese ships.
Early modern period
The development in the early 16th century of shipboard gunports and gun carriages, and the consequent adoption of broadside tactics, gradually ended the primacy of boarding in naval warfare.[1] The decline in boarding occurred faster in Northern and Western Europe than in the Mediterranean. While England and France quickly designed ships with heavy broadsides, the Mediterranean's lighter winds encouraged the Spaniards, Italians and Ottomans to retain the rowed galley, which was difficult to equip with heavy broadsides because the weight and size of the artillery interfered with the oar banks. As late as 1571, the Mediterranean Battle of Lepanto, while influenced by artillery, was still principally a battle determined by boarding.
The defeat of Spain's Great Armada in 1588 struck the death knell for major fleets geared toward boarding. The Spanish galleons were intended primarily for boarding combat, their contingents of boarding soldiers far outnumbering the English and their decks provided with high castles for suppressive fire. But the Armada proved unable to close with the English vessels, partly because the Spanish castles rendered their ships more sluggish, while Drake and Hawkins stood off and bombarded the Spanish from long range, tearing up their rigging and their crews with the superior firepower of their broadsides. This enabled the outnumbered English fleet to avoid being boarded and allowed them to prevent a Spanish landing.
While boarding would never again be the dominant tactic in Western naval warfare, it was not abandoned. Boarding was still used as the coup de grace against a crippled ship, enabling the victimized vessel to be recovered and used by the boarders' side rather than being sunk. Important information such as enemy plans, ciphers or rutters might also be recovered. Large quantities of soldiers were consigned to transports rather than "pestering" the decks of warships, but smaller units of specialized marines were kept aboard to aid in boarding (as well as to enforce naval discipline). Sailors themselves were now expected to play the major role in boarding combat.
Boarding was of particular importance in the 17th and 18th centuries' guerre de course, or commerce raiding, as well as to privateers and pirates. Because naval crews were paid prize money for bringing back enemy merchant shipping and cargoes intact, it was preferable to capture such ships rather than sink them, which ultimately required boarding, with or without a preliminary artillery duel. Privateers and pirates found boarding even more necessary, as both depended entirely on capturing merchant vessels for their livelihood, under the wageless system of "no purchase, no pay."
There were two chief techniques of boarding in the Age of Sail. One was to bring the two ships close enough to actually jump from friendly gunwale to enemy deck, with grappling hooks and lines helping to keep the vessels side by side. The second technique was to place a boarding party onto a dory, gig, or another type of small boat, row it alongside the target, and then climb aboard by using grappling hooks or the steps built into some ship's sides. The cinematic method of throwing a grappling line into the enemy's rigging or yards and then swinging aboard does not appear to have any historical support; it could hardly have been practical, as it would put a soldier within range of a large group of hostile combatants extremely quickly. In addition, it would be hard for large numbers sufficient to overwhelm the other ship's defenses to be brought onto the deck in this fashion.[citation needed]
Boarding in the Age of Sail was more difficult and dangerous than in previous eras of open-decked sailing vessels. Defenders could seek cover in "closed quarters" in the ship's roundhouse or foredeck, shooting through small loopholes at the exposed boarders. The defenders could also place grenades on their gunwales or dangle them from their yards, detonating them by fuses of quick match that led back through the loopholes into the closed quarters. If not in closed quarters, defenders sometimes resorted to the naval boarding pike, trying to kill or wound boarders while keeping them at a distance, and of course might use any of the weapons that the boarders themselves used.
Captain Broke leads the boarding party to USS Chesapeake
Boarding weapons in the Age of Sail consisted of grenades, pistols, blunderbusses, muskets, bayonets, cutlasses, naval boarding axes, and naval boarding pikes, etc. Until the introduction of the percussion cap in the early 19th century, sailors preferred to use flintlocks whenever possible, as the lighted match of a matchlock was extremely dangerous to use on board a ship. Spanish and Portuguese sailors, especially officers, were known to use the rapier throughout the 17th and even into the 18th century, but the close-quarter nature of boarding combat rendered these lengthy swords very ineffective. An important multipurpose weapon was the boarding axe, useful for attacking the enemy, but also essential for chopping down doors and bulkheads to break into closed quarters where defenders of a ship could barricade themselves. The heavy blade could also cut grappling lines.
The continued success throughout the 18th century of boarding tactics in a secondary role is best exemplified by John Paul Jones' assault against HMSSerapis from the sinking USSBonhomme Richard in 1779, the only known case in the Age of Sail where a ship's captain captured an enemy ship while losing his own. HMSShannon in turn broke the United States' run of successful frigate battles during the War of 1812 by boarding and capturing USSChesapeake in 1813.
The adoption of ironclads and increasingly powerful naval artillery vastly increased the risk to boarding parties. Meanwhile, the suppression of piracy and the abandonment of privateering and prize money made boarding actions even against merchant vessels less rewarding. The massacre of Paraguayan canoe-borne boarding parties by Brazilian ironclads during the Paraguayan War demonstrated the futility of direct assault by boarding in the face of 19th-century technology.
During World War I the Royal Navy created their own type of warship specifically designed for boarding. Several armed boarding steamers were converted from merchant ships and fought in engagements such as the action of 16 March 1917.
For the most part, boarding became a police action in which the attackers came on board only when no resistance could be expected, in order to search vessels and remove contraband. The target would be a ship that had hove to or surrendered. During wartime, the surrendering or sinking ship would be searched for any valuable information such as plans and ciphers. One prominent example would be during World War II, when British vessels crippled the German submarineU-110 in 1941, and sent a crew aboard after the U-boat commander, KapitänleutnantFritz-Julius Lemp, gave the order to abandon ship. The British would be rewarded with a fully operational Enigma cipher machine, left behind by the German sailors. On June 4, 1944 a United States Navy task force led by Captain Daniel V. Gallery boarded and captured U-505.
True boarding assaults in the 19th, 20th, and early 21st centuries became extremely rare, generally by small boats or by divers, who entered the target vessel surreptitiously and exploited total surprise to seize control before resistance could be effectively organized. Modern-day pirates in motorboats similarly depend on speed, stealth and surprise to take their targets, usually unarmed and poorly defended, without serious resistance.[citation needed]
However, the use of boarding tactics has begun to revive in recent years, both as part of anti-piracy operations and in conflicts such as the ongoing aftermath of the Libyan Civil War, and the 2014 Crimean crisis.
A navy, naval force, military maritime fleet, maritime self-defense force, war navy, or maritime force is the branch of a nation's armed forces principally designated for naval and amphibious warfare; namely, lake-borne, riverine, littoral, or ocean-borne combat operations and related functions. It includes anything conducted by surface ships, amphibious ships, submarines, and seaborne aviation, as well as ancillary support, communications, training, and other fields.
A trireme was an ancient vessel and a type of galley that was used by the ancient maritime civilizations of the Mediterranean Sea, especially the Phoenicians, ancient Greeks and Romans.
A carronade is a short smoothbore cast-iron cannon which was used by the Royal Navy. It was first produced by the Carron Company, an ironworks in Falkirk, Scotland, and was used from the mid-18th century to the mid-19th century. Its main function was to serve as a powerful, short-range, anti-ship and anti-crew weapon. The technology behind the carronade was greater dimensional precision, with the shot fitting more closely in the barrel thus transmitting more of the propellant charge's energy to the projectile, allowing a lighter gun using less gunpowder to be effective.
A ship of the line was a type of naval warship constructed during the Age of Sail from the 17th century to the mid-19th century. The ship of the line was designed for the naval tactic known as the line of battle, which involved the two columns of opposing warships maneuvering to volley fire with the cannons along their broadsides. In conflicts where opposing ships were both able to fire from their broadsides, the opponent with more cannons firing – and therefore more firepower – typically had an advantage.
A broadside is the side of a ship, or more specifically the battery of cannon on one side of a warship or their coordinated fire in naval warfare, or a measurement of a warship's maximum simultaneous firepower which can be delivered upon a single target. From the 16th century until the early decades of the steamship, vessels had rows of guns set in each side of the hull. Firing all guns on one side of the ship became known as a "broadside". The cannon of 18th-century men of war were accurate only at short range, and their penetrating power mediocre, which meant that the thick hulls of wooden ships could only be pierced at short ranges. These wooden ships sailed closer and closer towards each other until cannon fire would be effective. Each tried to be the first to fire a broadside, often giving one party a decisive headstart in the battle when it crippled the other ship.
A warship or combatant ship is a ship that is built and primarily intended for naval warfare. Usually they belong to the armed forces of a nation. As well as being armed, warships are designed to withstand damage and are typically faster and more maneuverable than merchant ships. Unlike a merchant ship, which carries cargo, a warship typically carries only weapons, ammunition and supplies for its crew. Warships usually belong to a navy, though they have also been operated by individuals, cooperatives and corporations.
The forecastle is the upper deck of a sailing ship forward of the foremast, or, historically, the forward part of a ship with the sailors' living quarters. Related to the latter meaning is the phrase "before the mast" which denotes anything related to ordinary sailors, as opposed to a ship's officers.
The line of battle is a tactic in naval warfare in which a fleet of ships forms a line end to end. The first example of its use as a tactic is disputed—it has been variously claimed for dates ranging from 1502 to 1652. Line-of-battle tactics were in widespread use by 1675.
Naval artillery is artillery mounted on a warship, originally used only for naval warfare and then subsequently used for more specialized roles in surface warfare such as naval gunfire support (NGFS) and anti-aircraft warfare (AAW) engagements. The term generally refers to powder-launched projectile-firing weapons and excludes self-propelled projectiles such as torpedoes, rockets, and missiles and those simply dropped overboard such as depth charges and naval mines.
A galley was a type of ship which relied mostly on oars for propulsion that was used for warfare, trade, and piracy mostly in the seas surrounding Europe. It developed in the Mediterranean Sea region during antiquity and continued to exist in various forms until the early 19th century. It typically had a long, slender hull, shallow draft, and often a low freeboard. Most types of galleys also had sails that could be used in favorable winds, but they relied primarily on oars to move independently of winds and currents. The term "galley" originated from a Greek term for a small type of galley and came in use in English from about 1300. It has occasionally been used for unrelated vessels with similar military functions as galley but which were not Mediterranean in origin, such as medieval Scandinavian longships, 16th-century Acehnese ghalis and 18th-century North American gunboats.
The Joseon Navy was the navy of the Korean dynasty of Joseon. While originally commissioned to protect merchant vessels and coastal towns from Japanese pirate raids, the Joseon navy is best known for defeating the Japanese naval forces during the Imjin War and is often credited with halting the Japanese invasion campaign and saving the dynasty from conquest.
Panokseon (Korean: 판옥선) was a class of Korean oar- and sail-propelled ship that was the main class of warship used by Joseon during the late 16th century. The first ship of this class was constructed in 1555. These ships were built from sturdy pine wood and, as the primary warship of the Korean Navy, they were instrumental in victories under the command of Admiral Yi Sun-shin against numerically larger Japanese fleets during the 1592-1598 Japanese invasions of Korea.
The capture of USS Chesapeake, also known as the Battle of Boston Harbor, was fought on 1 June 1813, between the Royal Navy frigate HMS Shannon and the United States Navy frigate USS Chesapeake, as part of the War of 1812 between the United States and the United Kingdom. The Chesapeake was captured in a brief but intense action in which 71 men were killed. This was the only frigate action of the war in which there was no preponderance of force on either side.
Sailing ship tactics were the naval tactics employed by sailing ships in contrast to galley tactics employed by oared vessels. This article focuses on the period from c. 1500 to the mid-19th century, after which sailing warships were replaced with steam-powered ironclads.
Oared vessel tactics were the dominant form of naval tactics used from antiquity to the late 16th century when sailing ships began to replace galleys and other types of oared ships as the principal form of warships. Throughout antiquity, through the Middle Ages until the 16th century, the weapons relied on were the ship itself, used as a battering ram or to sink the opponent with naval rams, the melee weapons of the crew, missile weapons such as bolts from heavy crossbows fixed on the bulwarks, bows and arrows, weights dropped from a yard or pole rigged out, and the various means of setting fire to enemy ships. The latter could be done by shooting arrows with burning tow or by Greek fire ejected through specially designed siphons.
The Battle of Flamborough Head was a naval battle that took place on 23 September 1779 in the North Sea off the coast of Yorkshire between a combined Franco-American squadron, led by Continental Navy officer John Paul Jones, and two British escort vessels protecting a large merchant convoy. It became one of the most celebrated naval actions of the war in America, despite its relatively small size and a considerable dispute over what had actually occurred.
The action of 18 June 1793 was one of the most celebrated encounters between British and French frigates during the French Revolutionary Wars. The action occurred off Start Point in Devon, when the British frigate HMS Nymphe encountered and chased the French frigate Cléopâtre. During the previous month, Cléopâtre and another frigate, Sémillante, had been successfully raiding British merchant shipping in the English Channel and Eastern Atlantic from their base at Cherbourg-en-Cotentin. In response, the British frigates Nymphe and HMS Venus had been ordered to intercept and defeat the French frigates and on 27 May Venus and Sémillante fought an inconclusive engagement off Cape Finisterre.
The action off Galveston Light was a short naval battle fought during the American Civil War in January 1863. Confederate raider CSS Alabama encountered and sank the United States Navy steamer USS Hatteras off Galveston Lighthouse in Texas.
Ancient navies had a large impact on the navies of today. The outcomes of battles between ancient navies have been studied by the military to learn tactics that would help in their conquests. The ships that these civilizations created were what many ship designs were based on and allowed the vessels to become better built. The Punic Wars are some of the most notorious wars in history, and the naval vessels and tactics used in all three became a major part of naval military history.
A gunport is an opening in the side of the hull of a ship, above the waterline, which allows the muzzle of artillery pieces mounted on the gun deck to fire outside. The origin of this technology is not precisely known, but can be traced back to the late 15th century, with the appearance of artillery in naval warfare. Ships featuring gunports were said to be pierced, since the ports were cut through the hull after the construction.
Warming, Rolf (2019). An Introduction to Hand-to-Hand Combat at Sea. General Characteristics and Shipborne Technologies from c. 1210 BCE to 1600 CE. In (ed. Johan Rönnby), On War On Board: Historical and Archaeological Perspectives on Early Modern Maritime Violence and Warfare. Södertörn Archaeological Studies 15.
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