Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
In sailing and boating, a vessel's freeboard is the distance from the waterline to the upper deck level, measured at the lowest point of sheer where water can enter the boat or ship. [1] In commercial vessels, the latter criterion measured relative to the ship's load line , regardless of deck arrangements, is the mandated and regulated meaning.
They were low-freeboard, steam-powered ironclad vessels, with one or two rotating armored turrets, rather than the traditional broadside of guns. The low freeboard meant that these ships were unsuitable for ocean-going duties and were always at risk of swamping and possible loss, but it reduced the amount of armor required for protection.
USS Monitor had had very little freeboard so as to bring the mass of the gun turret down, thereby increasing stability and making the boat a smaller and therefore harder target for gunfire. At the end of the American Civil War, the U.S. Navy Casco-class monitors had large ballast tanks that allowed the vessels to partially submerge during ...
These were low-freeboard vessels intended for local, coastal defense. They were badly overweight when completed, and as a result suffered from serious problems, including belt armor that was fully submerged when the ships were fully loaded, a tendency to ship excessive amounts of water, and poor handling characteristics.
The low freeboard of the galley meant that in close action with a sailing vessel, the sailing vessel would usually maintain a height advantage. The sailing vessel could also fight more effectively farther out at sea and in rougher wind conditions because of the height of their freeboard.
This was one of the changes which led to the vessels being 600 tons overweight, causing an increase in draught of a foot. The Trafalgars were the penultimate low-freeboard battleships built for the Royal Navy. This design had been favoured for several years because it reduced the size of the target that the ships presented to enemy guns in ...
Diagram of the battlecruiser Von der Tann, Brassey's Naval Annual 1913, showing wing turrets amidships. Attempts were made to mount turrets en echelon so that they could fire on either beam, such as the Invincible-class and SMS Von der Tann battlecruisers, but this tended to cause great damage to the ships' deck from the muzzle blast.
All were similar in size and capabilities, typically with a speed of around 25 knots (46 km/h; 29 mph), three 457 mm (18.0 in) torpedo tubes, two 75 mm (3.0 in) guns, and four 57 mm (2.2 in) guns, and in a departure from the high-freeboard hullform of earlier torpedo cruisers, they were low-freeboard ships with a high forecastle: this style of ...