Ships: Did you mean...?

Unlike today, where shipbuilding is based on science and where ships are built using computers and sophisticated tools, shipbuilding in ancient Rome was more of an art relying on rules of thumb, inherited techniques and personal experience...

The Battle of Rhode Island (29 August 1778), also known as the Siege of Newport or the Battle of Quaker Hill, was fought during the American Revolutionary War (1775-1783). It marked the first attempt at cooperation between the American and...

The Portuguese Empire was established from the 15th century and eventually stretched from the Americas to Japan. Very often a string of coastal trading centres with defensive fortifications, there were larger territorial colonies like Brazil...

The Manila galleons were Spanish treasure ships which transported precious goods like silk, spices, and porcelain from Manila in the Philippines to Acapulco, Mexico, between 1565 and 1815. The Atlantic treasure fleets then shipped some of...

While there have been pirates and privateers of all nationalities, some Dutch mariners were particularly troublesome in the early modern period, targeting, in particular, the Spanish Main but also shipping in the eastern Atlantic and the...

Clove, nutmeg, and mace are native to only a handful of tiny islands in the middle of the vast Indonesian archipelago – cloves on five Maluku Islands (the Moluccas) about 1250 km (778 mi) west of New Guinea, and nutmeg on the ten Banda Islands...

The Battle of the Eurymedon (c. 466 BCE, also given as the Battle of the Eurymedon River) was a military engagement between the Greeks of the Delian League and the forces of the Achaemenid Empire toward the end of the reign of Xerxes I (r...

The carrack (nao in Spanish, nau in Portuguese, and nef in French) was a type of large sailing vessel used for exploration, to carry cargo and as a warship in the 15th and 16th centuries. Famous carracks include the Santa Maria of Christopher...

Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa (l. 64/62 – 12 BCE) was Augustus' (r. 27 BCE - 14 CE) most trusted and unshakably loyal general and his right-hand man in the administration of the city of Rome. Although his name is forever connected with the first...

Cochin, located on the southwest coast of India, was a Portuguese colony from 1503 to 1663. Known to the Portuguese as Cochim, it was one of several important cities on India’s Malabar Coast and a great trade centre for spices like pepper...