#Naval fleet

[bottegapowerpoint]

Hendrik Willem Mesdag, Fishing Fleet Off The Dutch Coast

[ltwilliammowett]

Tile Panel depicting the Warship Rotterdam and the Herring Fleet, c. 1700 - c. 1725

[illustratus]

The Fleet Messenger by Montague Dawson

[racefortheironthrone]

Do we know anything about the historical context that allowed Venice to come up with something like the Arsenal? Most accounts kind of treat it as this de Novo idea to mass produce ships, but I feel like history never actually works like that, and Carthaginians were doing that 1,500 years earlier. Were there trends going on elsewhere in Europe and the Mediterranean world that contributed to this industrial breakthrough? Do we know anything about the specific administrators who had to plan this seeming quantum leap in production out? Did a bunch of folks immediately see what the Venetians were doing and copy it? If not, why?

I'm going to take a slightly broader take on this question: the assembly line is not an invention, it's a discovery. So it's not about who did it first, because you have lots of cases of independent discoveries happening in wildly disparate times and places.

I remember quite vividly a talk given by Professor Anthony Barbieri-Low when he first arrived at UCSB, where he argued that the assembly line was first discovered in China...during the Bronze Age. As early as the Shang and Zhou dynasties around 1000 BCE, we have evidence of assembly line techniques being used in the production of bronze and pottery, because the pieces were inscribed on the bottom with indications of which worker did which parts of the process and which quality inspector signed off on the piece as good enough for sale - so that if the thing broke, officials could figure out exactly who to blame for shoddy work.

So it's not that Venice was the first to ever adopt the idea of assembly line manufacture of ships, but rather that they did it more consistently and devoted more resources to it than anyone else, and iteratively improved on the techniques to get production times down to a single day per galley.

The Arsenal of Venice was an enormous complex, roughly 15% of Venice's landmass, surrounded by a two-mile long defensive wall, and employing some 16,000 people. In addition to standardized pre-fabricated parts, the Arsenal also emphasized division of labor with workshops devoted to producing everything a warship might need in-house - rope, rigging, masts, planking, sails, nails, guns, etc. Organizing these supply chains, what we might call vertical integration, was an incredible logistical feat in and of itself.

In terms of technology, the Arsenal pioneered frame-first (as opposed to hull-first) construction, a moving assembly line whereby galleys were floated down a canal to different stages of the production process, new forms of firearms, and new kinds of ships llike the galleass and galleon. Galileo was a major consultant to the Arsenal at the height of its power.

In addition to the technical advancements, all of this required a lot of money - roughly 10% of the Republic's entire budget - and what made Venice truly unique was its ability to devote those kind of resources on a regular basis at a time when even powerful empires like the Ottomans and the Spanish were still using the yo-yoing methods of medieval fleet construction.

[lonestarbattleship]

USS Indiana (BB-1) at anchor during the Naval Review on October 3, 1911.

NARA: 55171560

[dougielombax]

Get fucked!

Make them eat shit!

Wait. Another one?!

They really do work fast.

I’m impressed.

[ernestbruce]

Ukraine, please, please, please continue to bomb the shit out of those Russian refineries

do not listen to those too cowardly to fight with you against the shitface that is Putin

BOMB ALL THE FUCKING REFINERIES!!

[tomorrowusa]

Ukrainian sea drones are becoming faster, more accurate, and more powerful. With a range of over 1,000 km, they must keep commanders of Putin's Black Sea from getting much sleep.

Ukrainian naval drones Sea Baby have been modernized and can now carry almost a ton of explosives to hit a target over 1,000 kilometers away, Artem Dekhtiarenko, the spokesperson of the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU), said on April 14. "This means that the SBU can reach a target almost anywhere in the Black Sea," added Dekhtiarenko. In recent months, Ukraine has intensified its attacks on occupied Crimea, targeting Russian military assets in and around the Black Sea with domestically-produced sea drones and long-range missiles. Russia has illegally occupied the peninsula since 2014. As of early February 2024, 33% of the Russian Black Sea fleet's warships had been disabled by Ukraine, the Strategic Communications Center of Ukraine's Armed Forces recently reported. The SBU currently uses two types of sea drones — Sea Baby and Mamai, Dekhtiarenko said on national television.

"These are already new generations of drones, on the improvement of which the team of SBU specialists worked and continues to work together with other members of the Security and Defense Forces."

Ukraine continues to develop and upgrade its sea drone forces. When Russian missile launching vessels are forced to cower in distant ports, they are unable to launch attacks on Ukrainian maternity hospitals and schools.

Ukraine's ability to rule the waves of the Black Sea, despite having no real navy, is another example of its determination to fight off Russian invaders.

The only way to end the war is to make Ukraine safe from Russian aggression. Putin is already in violation of several treaties and other international agreements regarding Ukrainian sovereignty. Only a fool or MAGA supporter (basically the same thing) would expect Putin to respect any new agreement. Appeasement of Hitler did not stop World War II – it accelerated it.

If you're in the US, look up your member of the House of Representatives and demand that Russophile Speaker "MAGA Mike" Johnson quit blocking US aid to Ukraine which has already passed the Senate. And I'm talking to you – not the neighbor with the broken porch light.

Find Your Representative

If you have a MAGA zombie as a Representative, ask: Why do you hate freedom?

[maaruin]

Atla worldbuilding thought: In Atla steam engines and ships with metal hull exist. Guns, on the other hand, do not exist.

There was a short time window in our history in which guns were ineffective against Ironclads. In one battle they tried the solution of ramming and it worked surprisingly well. But it didn't become common practice because gun technology caught up.

But in the world of Atla, without guns, naval battles would be ramming focussed.

[mayyosgallery]

Human domestication guide fan art???

"Weed Killer"

Probably went about as well as you think it did. Damn invulnerable plants...

[sidonius5]

ℐ 𝒸𝒶𝓃'𝓉 𝑔𝑒𝓉 𝑒𝓃𝑜𝓊𝑔𝒽 𝑜𝒻 𝓉𝒽𝑒 𝒥𝒶𝓅𝒶𝓃𝑒𝓈𝑒 𝒜𝓃𝒾𝓂𝑒 𝒾𝓁𝓁𝓊𝓈𝓉𝓇𝒶𝓉𝑒𝒹 𝓋𝑒𝓇𝓈𝒾𝑜𝓃 𝑜𝒻 𝐒𝐭𝐚𝐫 𝐖𝐚𝐫𝐬. 𝒯𝒽𝒾𝓈 𝓁𝑜𝑜𝓀𝓈 𝑔𝑜𝓇𝑔𝑒𝑜𝓊𝓈...

[ltwilliammowett]

The Fleet leaves the Port the last Time, by Christian Mølsted, 1919

[illustratus]

The Battle of the Nile, 1 August 1798

by Eduardo de Martino

[bigglesworld]

Blackburn  B-25 Roc. Fleet Air Arm AC. First flew in 1938