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beginning ironclads
'''Battleship''' is the name applied to very large, heavily-armoured warships bearing the largest guns afloat, and applied specifically to those ships built from the late 1800s through the mid-20th Century. Once considered the capital ship by the countries that could afford to build and deploy them, the battleship saw its heyday during the [[First World War]]; its subsequent weakness to aerial attack during [[World War II]] rendered it essentially obsolete.
'''Battleship''' is the name applied to very large, heavily-armoured warships bearing the largest guns afloat, and applied specifically to those ships built from the late 1800s through the mid-20th Century. Once considered the capital ship by the countries that could afford to build and deploy them, the battleship saw its heyday during the [[First World War]]; its subsequent weakness to aerial attack during [[World War II]] rendered it essentially obsolete.
==Origins of the battleship==
The battleship as we know it today is the successor of two warships: the [[ship of the line]], which saw service in several European countries for over two centuries; and the ironclad, a name given to several types of vessel generally built with a heavy wooden frame overlaid with iron plating, and esspecialy those ships with guns mounted in revolving turrets.
====Ship of the line====
The ship of the line was the largest type of sailing warship, mounting a battery of between 80-120 guns on three decks. Slow in comparrison to the smaller frigates, ships of the line were heavily-built to withstand the pounding given by the enemy in battle, while their large number of heavy guns would pound the enemy into submission. Descended in turn from the "great ships" of the early 1600's, the ship of the line was a by-product of a naval manuever known as the "line of battle", in which a single-file line of ships engaged the enemy abrest, with the most powerful and heavily-armed ships in the lead. By 1794 the ship of the line was given the alternate title ''line of battle ship'', hence the origin of the word ''battleship''.
====Ironclads====
[[Robert Fulton]] demonstrated in his ''Clermont'' (1807) that steam power can be fitted to a sea-going vessel, freeing the ship from sails and enabling it to go wherever a captain may direct, limited only by the amount of fuel on board. Paddlewheels were a standard means of propultion on many warships in addition to its complement of sails and masts, but the placement of the wheels on the ship's sides reduced the amount of guns in a broadside as well as leaving the wheels and engine vulnerable to enemy fire; this would be changed in the 1840's with the adoption of the screw propeller and the placement of its engines deep within the ship below the waterline.
==Dreadnought==
==Dreadnought==