Ship of the Line: Did you mean...?

A model of a brigantine ship. With two masts which were traditionally gaf-rigged and lateen-rigged, the ship was fast and highly manoeuvrable, making the brigantine a favourite ship of pirates. (Deutsches Museum, Munich)

Slicing through tropical reefs or patrolling Arctic waters, the Calypso gained worldwide fame as the research ship of the French underwater explorer Jacques-Yves Cousteau. Seen by millions on TV documentaries broadcast worldwide, the Calypso...

The Carthaginians were famed in antiquity for their seafaring skills and innovation in ship design. The empire their navy protected stretched from Sicily to the Atlantic coast of Africa. Able to match the tyrants of Sicily and the Hellenistic...

The Golden Age of Piracy (1690-1730) refers to a period when robbery on the high seas and at colonial ports reached an unprecedented level. Although not all historians agree on the precise time frame, it is generally applied to those pirates...

From the 16th to 18th centuries, two treasure fleets sailed each year, one to Mexico and the other to Central America, then part of the Spanish Empire. There they collected precious eastern goods and the riches of the Americas, including...

The 1789 mutiny on the Bounty is an infamous tale of sailors being lured by the easy charms of the South Seas into casting adrift their commander and living out their days as fugitives from the Royal Navy. 'Captain' Bligh, victim of the mutiny...

A depiction of the Sinking the White Ship in the English Channel. The White Ship sank off the coast of Barfleur, Normandy on November 25, 1120 CE. The ship departed from Barfleur on a course for England, but struck a rock on its portside...

Wreckage of the slave ship Clotilda, photograph included in Emma Langdon Roche's Historic Sketches of the South, c. 1914. The "wreckage," as pictured here, would be the dark line of wood appearing out of the water, not the boat on shore...

Smasher of Napoleon's invasion dream, veteran of three major wars, and scene of the death of the Royal Navy's greatest hero, HMS Victory is one of Britain's most famous warships. Curiously, and despite being on permanent display as a tourist...

A pirate ship being careened, that is when a ship is beached and its hull scraped clean of marine encrustations and repaired. From the TV series Black Sails. ©2014 Starz Entertainment