Ships

A Ship is a large watercraft that travels the world's oceans and other sufficiently deep waterways, carrying passengers or goods, or in support of specialized missions, such as defense, research, and fishing. Historically, a "ship" was a sailing vessel with at least three square-rigged masts and a full bowsprit. Ships are generally distinguished from boats, based on size, shape, load capacity, and tradition.

Ships have been important contributors to human migration and commerce. They have supported the spread of colonization and the slave trade, but have also served scientific, cultural, and humanitarian needs. After the 15th century, new crops that had come from and to the Americas via the European seafarers significantly contributed to the world population growth. Ship transport is responsible for the largest portion of world commerce.

Galleons
Galleons were large, multi-decked sailing ships used as armed cargo carriers primarily by European states from the 16th to 18th centuries during the age of sail and were the principal fleet units drafted for use as warships until the Anglo-Dutch Wars of the mid-1600s. Galleons generally carried three or more masts with a lateen fore-and-aft rig on the rear masts, were carvel built with a prominent squared off raised stern, and used square-rigged sail plans on their fore-mast and main-masts.

Such ships were the mainstay of maritime commerce into the early 19th century, and were often drafted into use as auxiliary naval war vessels—indeed, were the mainstay of contending fleets through most of the 150 years of the Age of Exploration — before the Anglo-Dutch wars begat purpose-built ship-rigged warships that thereafter dominated war at sea during the remainder of the Age of Sail.

Brig
A Brig is a sailing vessel with two square-rigged masts. During the Age of Sail, brigs were seen as fast and maneuverable and were used as both naval warships and merchant vessels. The most famous, the Collier brig, is featured in game as a brig that has special abilities and suprising, but acurate size. If you are sailing in sunshine, from Jacksonvile FL port, you must go south. You will go until you find a smuggler's port. Look out at sea and you should find a giant dutch brig bearing down on you. It is immpossibly huge, galleon size in fact. Note this happens only once. If you get it before it sinks you, and it is fast, then that will be a ship to use for any thing. You cannot buy it.

Schooner
A Schooner is a sailing ship with two or more masts, typically with the foremast smaller than the mainmast, and having gaff-rigged lower masts.

Sloop of War
n the 18th century and most of the 19th, a sloop-of-war in the Royal Navy was a warship with a single gun deck that carried up to eighteen guns. The rating system covered all vessels with 20 guns and above; thus, the term sloop-of-war encompassed all the unrated combat vessels, including the very small gun-brigs and cutters. In technical terms, even the more specialized bomb vessels and fire-ships were classed as sloops-of-war, and in practice these were employed in the sloop role when not carrying out their specialized functions.

Corvette
A corvette is a small warship. It is traditionally the smallest class of vessel considered to be a proper (or "rated") warship. The warship class above the corvette is that of the frigate, while the class below was historically that of the sloop-of-war. The modern types of ship below a corvette are coastal patrol craft and fast attack craft. In modern terms, a corvette is typically between 500 tons and 2,000 tons although recent designs may approach 3,000 tons, which might instead be considered a small frigate.

Steam Corvette
Steam frigates, also known as screw frigates, and the smaller steam corvettes and steam sloops were steam-powered warships. The first such ships were steam-powered versions of the traditional frigates, corvettes, and sloops.

Xebec
Was a Mediterranean sailing ship that was used mostly for trading. It would have a long overhanging bowsprit and aft-set mizzen mast. The term can also refer to a small, fast vessel of the sixteenth to nineteenth centuries, used almost exclusively in the Mediterranean Sea.

Ketch
A ketch is a two-masted sailing craft whose mainmast is taller than the mizzen mast (or aft-mast). The name "ketch" is derived from "catch" or fishing boat.[1][2]

Historically the ketch was a northern European square-rigged vessel, often a freighter or fishing boat, particularly in the Baltic and North seas.

Nowadays, a ketch tends to be a fore-and-aft rigged pleasure yacht, similar to a yawl; but a ketch's mizzen mast is taller and its mizzen sail is larger than a yawl's.

Snow
A snow, snaw or snauw is a square rigged vessel with two masts, complemented by a snow- or trysail-mast stepped immediately abaft (behind) the main mast.

While the snow and the brig might appear closely related, this is in fact not the case. The two rigs developed from different directions, the brig evolving from the generally smaller brigantine, and the much older snow evolving from the larger three masted ship.

Frigate
A frigate /ˈfrɪɡɪt/ is any of several types of warship, the term having been used for ships of various sizes and roles over the last few centuries.

In the 17th century, this term was used for any warship built for speed and maneuverability, the description often used being "frigate-built". These could be warships carrying their principal batteries of carriage-mounted guns on a single deck or on two decks (with further smaller carriage-mounted guns usually carried on the forecastle and quarterdeck of the vessel). The term was generally used for ships too small to stand in the line of battle, although early line-of-battle ships were frequently referred to as frigates when they were built for speed.

Junk
Junk is a type of ancient Chinese sailing ship that is still in use today. Junks were used as seagoing vessels as early as the 2nd century AD and developed rapidly during the Song dynasty (960–1279).

They evolved in the later dynasties, and were used throughout Asia for extensive ocean voyages. They were found, and in lesser numbers are still found, throughout South-East Asia and India, but primarily in China. Found more broadly today is a growing number of modern recreational junk-rigged sailboats.

The term junk may be used to cover many kinds of boat—ocean-going, cargo-carrying, pleasure boats, live-aboards. They vary greatly in size and there are significant regional variations in the type of rig, however they all employ fully battened sails.

3rd Rate Ship of the Line (man o' war)
Third rate ship is a gunship that has about 60-88 guns. They are fore and aft rigged, allowing for maximum range and steering. The ship itself was about 150-156 feet long, 60 feet wide and has a total height of about 256 feet. The three masts, rigged as much with jib sails, allowed the masts to be turned slightly. They had only an odd number of guns on one side. This makes them very interesting. The usual gun setup was 50-70 starboard, and then 10-30 on port. The port side had thicker wood (used as a cargo space) and was set up to balance the ships turning masts.

2nd Rate Ship of the Line
A second rate was a ship of the line which by the start of the 18th century mounted 90 to 98 guns on three gun decks; earlier 17th-century second rates had fewer guns and were originally two-deckers or had only partially armed third gun decks. An interesting development of these ships came in 1778, when a french sailor ordered a mutineed crew to build a new gun deck from scratch. This ship was later captured by the british, whom thought the extra gun deck was more efficient. It was, although on this "protptype", the speed was cut in half by the amount of addled weight. In 1799, a project was started to build the new prototypes, but only three were completed.

1st Rate Ship of the Line
First rate was the designation used by the Royal Navy for its largest ships of the line, equivalent to the 'super-dreadnought' of more recent times. Originating in the Jacobean era with the designation of Ships Royal capable of carrying at least 400 men, the size and establishment of first-rates evolved over the following 250 years to eventually denote ships of the line carrying at least 80 guns across three gundecks. By the end of the eighteenth century, a first-rate routinely carried 100 guns and more than 850 crew, and had a measurement (burthen) tonnage of some 2,000 tons.

Ocean Class Ship of the Line
The Océan-class ships of the line were a series of 118-gun three-decker ships of the line of the French Navy, designed by engineer Jacques-Noël Sané. Fifteen were completed from 1788 on, with the last one entering service in 1854; a sixteenth was never completed, and four more were never laid down.The first two of the series were the Commerce de Marseille and États de Bourgogne in the late 1780s. Three ships to the same design followed during the 1790s (a further four ordered in 1793-94 were never built). A second group of eleven were ordered during the First Empire; sometimes described as the Austerlitz class after the first to be ordered, some of the later ships were not launched until after the end of the Napoleonic era, and one was not completed but broken up on the stocks. A 'reduced' (i.e. shortened) version of this design, called the Commerce de Paris Class, with only 110 guns, was produced later, of which two examples were completed.

Junk Ship of the Line
A Junk Ship of the Line is a four mast, three decked Junk with more cannon holds than a normal junk. Notable Junk Ship of the Line is the "Emperor's Mistress" and the "Executor"