Weapon Type
Naval Weapons
Weapons designed for or primarily used in naval combat.
Naval Weapons
Category Overview
Overview
Naval weapons are weapons systems designed for or primarily employed in maritime warfare. The constraints of the naval environment — salt water, limited space, the need to project force at sea — have driven distinctive weapons development separate from land warfare, though many technologies cross over. Naval weapons development is closely linked to warship design: the weapons a ship carries determine its function, and the need to carry specific weapons shapes the ship.
Historical Development
Ancient Naval Warfare (Bronze Age – Roman era)
- Ram (embolon) — The primary naval weapon of the Mediterranean; a bronze projection from the waterline of the galley; rowed at speed into the hull of an enemy ship; the trireme was optimized as a ram platform
- Marines and boarding — Soldiers aboard ships fought hand-to-hand after ramming or grappling; catapults and ballistae adapted for ship mounting
Medieval and Early Modern (500–1600)
- Greek fire — Byzantine incendiary weapon; pumped onto enemy ships; burned on water; decisive in several naval battles
- Crossbow and longbow — Naval archery; aimed at rowers and crew
- Grappling hook — Iron hook on rope; pulled ships together for boarding
The Age of Sail (1500–1850)
- Ship-mounted cannon — The defining naval weapon; arranged in broadside batteries along the ship's sides; a first-rate ship of the line carried 100+ guns
- Round shot, chain shot, bar shot — Solid ball for hull penetration; chain/bar shot for cutting rigging
- Carronade — Short-barreled, large-bore; fired heavy balls at short range; devastating in close action
- Mortar (bomb vessel) — Specially built ships carrying mortars for shore bombardment
Industrial Era (1850–1945)
- Naval gun — Steel breech-loading rifled guns; range extended to 20+ miles on WWI/WWII battleships
- Torpedo — Self-propelled underwater projectile; invented 1866; transformed naval warfare by threatening every warship regardless of armor
- Naval mine — Anchored explosive; denied sea areas; both world wars saw extensive mine warfare
- Depth charge — Anti-submarine weapon; barrel of explosive dropped or launched from surface ships
- Aircraft and carrier aviation — Rendered the battleship obsolete; the aircraft carrier became the dominant naval weapons platform
This article is a stub. Contributions covering specific naval weapons, battles, and warship types are welcome.
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32-Pounder Naval Long Gun
The 32-pounder long gun was the heaviest standard cannon of the Royal Navy's ships of the line in the age of sail: a cast-iron muzzle-loader about nine and a half feet long, weighing some 55 hundredweight, that fired a 32-pound round shot with a point-blank range of around 400 yards. Mounted on the lower gun decks of first-rates and 74-gun ships and worked by crews of a dozen men or more, it fought the great fleet actions from the Saintes to Trafalgar and remained the Navy's standard gun until shell guns and rifled ordnance replaced it.
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Boarding Axe
The boarding axe was the short-handled naval axe of the age of sail, with a cutting blade on one side and a spike on the other. It was a tool as much as a weapon: sailors used it to cut away fallen rigging and wreckage in battle, to chop through boarding nets, and to climb the side of an enemy ship by driving the spike into its timbers. In the fight on deck it was as deadly as a cutlass, and navies and pirates alike carried it from the seventeenth century to the mid-nineteenth.
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Boarding Cutlass
The cutlass was the sailor's sword of the Age of Sail: short, broad-bladed, and basket-guarded, built for the crowded chaos of a boarding action where a long blade fouled in rigging and a delicate one broke on a boarding pike. Navies issued it by the rack, pirates made it their emblem, and it outlasted every other edged weapon in shipboard service — the U.S. Navy did not formally retire its last cutlass until the twentieth century.
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Carronade
The carronade was a short, light, large-bore naval gun first cast by the Carron Company of Falkirk, Scotland, in 1778. It fired a heavy ball with a small powder charge, at low velocity and short range, but the slow, heavy shot smashed through timbers and threw off showers of deadly splinters. Much lighter than a long gun of the same caliber, it let small ships carry huge firepower. The Royal Navy adopted it in 1779 and used it widely through the Napoleonic Wars, but ships armed only with carronades could be outranged.
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Swivel Gun
The swivel gun was a small cannon mounted on a forked iron yoke that pivoted in a socket on a ship's rail, fighting top or boat bow, so that one man could swing and aim it like a giant shotgun. Firing a ball of half a pound to a pound, or a charge of musket balls and scrap, it was an anti-personnel weapon for repelling boarders and sweeping decks. Breech-loading swivels with removable chambers armed the caravels of the Age of Exploration; muzzle-loading half-pounders served on warships, merchantmen and pirate sloops into the nineteenth century.