Fire ship

A fire ship, or fireship, used in the days of wooden rowed or sailing ships, was a ship, filled with gunpowder or other combustibles, deliberately set on fire and steered (or, when possible, allowed to drift) into an enemy fleet, in order to destroy ships, or to create panic and make the enemy break formation. Ships used as fire ships were either warships whose munitions were fully spent in battle, surplus ones which were old and worn out, or inexpensive purpose-built vessels rigged to be set afire, steered toward targets, and abandoned quickly by the crew. Explosion ships, or hellburners, were a variation on the fire ship, intended to cause damage by blowing up in proximity to enemy ships. Fireships were used to great effect by the outgunned English fleet against the Spanish Armada during the Battle of Gravelines, the Dutch in the raid on the Medway, Chinese warlord Sun Quan in the Battle of Red Cliffs, and the Greeks in their war of independence. Early thermal weapons The oldest known use of a fire ship was in ancient China in the Battle of Red Cliffs (208) on the Yangtze River when Huang Gai assaulted Cao Cao's naval forces with a fire ship filled with bundles of kindling, dry reeds, and fatty oil. Fire ships were decisively employed by the Vandals against the armada sent by the Eastern Roman Empire, in the Battle of Cape Bon (468). The invention of Greek fire in 673 increased the use of fire ships, at first by the Greeks and afterward by other nations as they came into possession of the secret of manufacturing this substance. In 951 and again in 953 Russian fleets narrowly escaped destruction by fire ships. While fire ships were used in the Medieval period, notably during the Crusades, these were typically ships that were set up with combustibles on an adhoc basis. The career of the modern fire ship, as a naval vessel type designed for this particular function and made a permanent addition to a fleet, roughly parallels the era of cannon-armed sailing ships, beginning with the defeat of the Spanish Armada in 1588 and lasting until the Allied victory over the Turks at the Battle of Navarino in 1827.