Fortune favors the bold: The wooden-hulled Austrian ship-of-the-line Kaiser rams the Italian ironclad Re di Portogallo during the July 1866 Battle of Lissa.

‘Head Straight for the Enemy and Sink Him’

In the century between the fall of Napoleon and the opening guns of World War I, an alluring force was reconfiguring the European map: cultural nationalism.

Eric Mills
August 2024
11 October 1797: The Dutch (aka Batavian) fleet, now allied with Napoleonic France, once again poses an existential naval threat to Britain. The epochal Battle of Camperdown ensues.

Showdown Off Camperdown

Borne by the armies of Napoleon Bonaparte, the French revolutionary spirit spread like a virus across Europe in the late 18th century.

June 2024
Roger of Lauria

The Battle of Malta: A Naval Genius Emerges

The annals of medieval warfare record a conflict of especial interest to those who love sea history—for every important clash in this war was a naval battle.

July 2023
Cao Cao gazes at the full moon over the Yangtze River

The Flaming Ships of Red Cliffs

The trading routes of the Great Silk Road linked the empire of the Han to its mirror image in the west, the Roman Empire.

Eric Mills
January 2023