01/01/2014 Watercraft - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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Image of an early use of basic river craft

WatercraftFrom Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The term watercraft covers a range of different vehicles including ships, boats, hovercraft and submarines, anddiffers from a simple device that merely floats, such as a log raft.

Contents

1 Great Ships

2 Uses of water craft

3 Design

4 Propulsion

5 Construction

6 Navigation

7 Weapons8 See also

9 External links

Great Ships

Seafaring has a large corpus of traditional lore associated with watercrafts, in both its meanings, as thefoundation of its heritage and culture in which most seafarers see a significant degree of pride, and which formstheir trade and professional identity. This is often reflected in the industry-specific terminology and concepts thathave been retained and are now applied for the sake of tradition alone. Aside from small craft used byindividuals, maritime tradition identifies a ship as any water vehicle that has, or is capable of carrying three mastswithin its hull. Three masted ships at one time were called the Great Ships, and marked transition in Europeanseafaring from shallow coastal waters of the Age of Navigation confined primarily to the European shores andthose of North Africa, via the Age of Discovery of other continents in relative proximity of Western Europe, tothe "deep sea" oceanic sailing of the Age of Sail. The term 'a great ship' therefore holds a deeper and far moresignificant meaning to seafarers than 'landlubbers', or those who do not serve on ships or other vessels, and hasremained so through the Age of Steam and into the 21st century.

While rigged masts have been discontinued for the vast majority of ships since the late 19th century, a rule ofthumb based on the hull having a wooden construction would determine her as a ship. If the length of thewatercraft deck prevents the mounting of three masts, it is a boat, while a single-masted hull can be termed acraft. This is paralleled with the degree of difficulty that was required in the past by different trades constructingthe hull based on complexity. A ship was always constructed by a shipwright working with a naval surveyor or anaval architect. A boat could be constructed by a ship's carpenter. A watercraft such as a lifeboat, a dinghy, ora runabout could be constructed by any craftsman familiar with woodworking, such as a builder's carpenter or ajoiner, or by a qualified marine trades person or shipwright.

Uses of water craft

Usually the purposes behind watercraft designs and skills are for seafaring education or leisure activities, fishingand resource extraction, transportation of cargo or passengers, and for conducting combat or salvageoperations. In general, the purpose of a water vehicle identifies its utility with a maritime industry sub-sector.

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Design

The design from which a water vehicle is created usually seeks to achieve a balance between internal capacity(tonnage), speed and seaworthiness. Tonnage is predominantly a consideration in transport operations, speed isimportant for warships, and safety is a primary consideration for less experienced or often smaller and lessstable training and leisure vehicles. This is due to the great level of regulatory compliance required by the largerwatercraft, which ensures very infrequent instances of foundering at sea through application of extensivecomputer modeling and ship model basin testing before shipyard construction begins.

Propulsion

Propulsion is the primary application of technology in watercraft. Historically water vehicles have been propelledby poles, paddles or oars, through manipulation of sailing rigs that propel by lifting using the wind, and a varietyof engineered machinery that creates subsurface thrust through the process or internal combustion. Thetechnological history of watercraft in the European history can be divided into marine propulsion using the simplepaddle craft, oared galleys from the 8th century BCE until 15th century, lateen sail during the Age of Discoveryfrom the early 15th century and into the early 17th century, full rigged ships of the Age of Sail from the 16th tothe mid 19th century, the Age of Steam marine steam engine roughly between 1770 and use of the steam turbineuntil 1914, the internal combustion engines using diesel, petrol and LNG as fuels from the turn of the 20thcentury, which has been supplemented to some degree with the nuclear marine propulsion since the 1950s.Current technological development seeks to identify cheaper, renewable and less polluting sources of propulsionfor watercraft of all shapes and sizes.

Construction

Secondary applications of technology in watercraft have been those of used structural materials, navigation aids,and in the case of warships, weapon systems. The purpose of usage and the physical environment define thematerials used in construction which had historically included grasses, leather, timbers, metals combined withtimber or without, silicate and plastic derivatives, and others.

Navigation

Navigation aids have varied over time from astronomical observation, to mechanical mechanisms, and morerecently analog and digital computer devices that now rely on GPS systems.

Weapons

Naval weapon systems have closely followed the development in land weapons, developing from:

aircraft carriers

breach-loading rifled gunsdirect enemy hull ramming to use of basic mechanical projectiles

firing shellsmissiles and remotely piloted devices

naval mine layerssmooth-bore cannonball firing gunstorpedo-armed submarines

warships armed with fire control directed weapons

01/01/2014 Watercraft - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watercraft 3/3

Severn class lifeboat in Poole Harbour, Dorset,

England. This is the largest class of UK lifeboat at

17 metres long.

Until development of steam propulsion was coupled with rapid firing breach-loading guns, naval combat wasoften concluded by a boarding combat between the opposing crews. Since the early 20th century, there hasbeen a substantial development in technologies which allow force projection from a naval task force to a landobjective using marine infantry.

See also

Maritime history

External links

The Canadian Museum of Civilization - NativeWatercraft in Canada

(http://www.civilization.ca/cmc/exhibitions/aborig/watercraft/wainteng.shtml)A History of Recreational Small Watercraft

(http://www.sciencetech.technomuses.ca/english/collection/watercraft.cfm)Recreational Watercraft (http://www.recreationalwatercraft.com)

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Categories: Watercraft Water transport Naval architecture Technical terminology Nautical terms

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