Ship of the Line

The ship of the line is a large sailing warship built to fight in the line of battle, a tactic in which opposing fleets formed single-file lines to bring the maximum number of broadside guns to bear, a doctrine that dominated naval warfare among European powers from the mid-seventeenth century through the age of sail. Typically carrying sixty to over one hundred guns across two or three gun decks, ships of the line such as Britain's HMS Victory represented enormous investments in timber, guns and trained crews, and naval powers rated them by the number of guns carried, from first-rate ships of over one hundred guns down to smaller third and fourth-rate vessels still capable of standing in the line. The type reached its practical peak at battles such as Trafalgar in 1805, and the concept gave way over the nineteenth century to steam-powered, ironclad battleships as propulsion and armor technology made sail-driven wooden warships obsolete.