text:
Before it was refurbished, a few years ago, the lobby of *The Washington Post'*s office building was dominated by oversize photographs of important moments in the history of the newspaper. Visitors walked past the famous image of Katharine Graham, the paper's matriarch, and her beloved executive editor, Ben Bradlee, as they emerged, laughing, from the Supreme Court in 1971 after the justices ruled in favor of the Post in its battle to publish the Pentagon Papers, the U.S. government's secret history of the Vietnam War. Visitors also saw an enlarged copy of the nixon resigns front page from 1974, marking the culmination of the paper's Watergate coverage.
Donald Graham, the son of Katharine Graham, and the current chairman and C.E.O. of the Washington Post Company, has been coming into the building as an employee ever since he started as a Metro reporter, in 1971. David Von Drehle, a former assistant managing editor of the Post, recalls a day in 1994 when he found himself in the lobby alone with Graham. "I just came from an anniversary celebration of the most important moment in the history of our paper," Graham told Von Drehle. "Do you know which one it was?" Graham pointed to a picture of his grandfather Eugene Meyer and his father, Philip Graham, holding up a copy of the newspaper dated March 17, 1954—the first edition of the combined Washington Post and Washington Times-Herald, a merger that established the *Post'*s dominance in Washington. (At the time, Meyer remarked, "The real significance of this event is that it makes the paper safe for Donnie.") Von Drehle says, "Everything else, whether it was Watergate or all the Pulitzers—all of that flowed from the incredible cash cow the paper became when it had the monopoly of the Washington metro area. That was always very illuminating to me of Don's thinking."
The Washington Post is haunted by its history. Dominated by towering figures such as Katharine Graham (who died in 2001), Ben Bradlee (who stepped down as executive editor in 1991), and the reporters who pursued the Watergate scandal, Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, the mythology of the Post was always grander than the reality. No other newspaper enjoyed quite the hype the Post did during its heyday. And few papers are as defined by their city as the Post has been defined by Washington—"Washington" meaning both the nation's capital and a metropolis in its own right. Don Graham's devotion to his city has never wavered. "I can't imagine existing anywhere else," he told me when I sat down with him recently. From the moment he became publisher, in 1979, he insisted that the newspaper must concentrate on its Washington readers. But not everyone got the message. Inside the Post, there was always a powerful tension between Graham's view and the view of the newsroom, which, starting with Bradlee and for a period of decades, sought to compete on a national stage with The New York Times—and to a significant degree succeeded.
For much of that time, the paper's profits supported both views. Then came the Internet and new competition for readers and advertising dollars. The *Post'*s response to dwindling revenues has been to narrow its focus again to Washington. The paper's current publisher, Katharine Weymouth, who is Don Graham's niece, embodied her approach in a slogan in 2008: for and about washington. But the newspaper is no longer the only publication laying claim to that title. It must now fight off threats from online upstarts and other D.C.-focused outlets, such as Politico, National Journal, and Roll Call, which have eaten into the *Post'*s revenues and undercut its mission. The newspaper division of the company posted an operating loss of $193 million in 2008 and $164 million in 2009. For the first nine months of 2011, the division reported an operating loss of $25.6 million. Daily circulation of the print edition is now just over 500,000, down from 830,000 two decades ago. The *Post'*s belated attempt to revive its Web site has drawn traffic, but the effort has been plagued by technical issues. The key architect of the site's redesign said in January that he was leaving the paper. Meanwhile, the Post has been losing some of its most talented journalists, let go in buyouts or wooed away by more ambitious and wealthier rivals. (The most recent round of buyouts, the fifth since 2003, was announced in February.) The newspaper has shuttered all of its national bureaus, and the newsroom churns with rumors of a deteriorating relationship between Weymouth and the editor she hired just a few years ago, Marcus Brauchli.
The desire to compete as a journalistic enterprise on a national or international level—to do so comprehensively and consistently—seems to have been beaten out of the Post. The disaffection on the newsroom floor is audible and undisguised. With every year there are fewer journalistic voices in America that combine seriousness of purpose with high standards and relentless ambition, and that can sometimes reach and inform the nation as a whole. What is at stake is very simple: whether the Post can remain one of them.
"Dear Mrs. Graham …"
You can blame what has happened to the Post on a perfect storm of unexpected developments—but that is only part of the story. The truth is that the Washington Post Company has long been animated by a particular vision, one that led executives to give short shrift to other possibilities along the way. The company was also lulled into a sense of financial security by the success of some of its non-newspaper investments, notably in the test-prep and for-profit education company Kaplan.
When Warren Buffett slid into his regular corner table at his favorite steak house, Piccolo Pete's, in his hometown of Omaha, Nebraska, the first question he asked me was "Did you know her?" I had come to Omaha to talk to him about the Washington Post Company, of which he was a director for many years, and he was showing me a thick, leather-bound photo album and scrapbook, with golden lettering on the front: "The Washington Post Company 1973–2011." The album had been presented to Buffett six months earlier, at his final board meeting. It was a compilation of photographs and correspondence with executives, editors, and board members over the past 38 years.
Though he didn't specify, the "her" he was referring to was Katharine "Kay" Graham. Buffett was introduced to Kay Graham in 1971, when he met with her briefly to see if she wanted to buy Peter Fleischmann's stake in The New Yorker. For a variety of reasons, the discussion went nowhere.
"But then two years passed and I wrote her that letter, that famous letter that's in there," Buffett said, gesturing to the album, where a copy of the letter was pasted. "It was the 'Dear Mrs. Graham' letter, as she always called it." In it, Buffett outlined his reasons for wanting to invest in the Post Company.
"It was an incredibly cheap investment," Buffett told me over a dinner of chicken parmigiana and root-beer floats. "The whole company at the time had a little less than five million shares outstanding. It was selling at a little over 20, so the whole Washington Post Company was selling for $100 million in the market. Now, they had The Washington Post, which was going to win the competitive struggle in Washington. They had four big network television stations, including one in Washington, D.C., and one in Miami, Florida. I mean, these are big, power stations. They had Newsweek. And they had no debt to speak of. So, if you added up what the businesses were worth at that time, they were worth at least $400 million." In the end, Buffett bought 10 percent of the company. His stamp of approval lent the Post an aura of business savvy.
Buffett told me that he had expected to find Mrs. Graham a confident, imperious woman, but found instead that "she was a little girl in some ways and she was the most powerful owner of the company in other ways. And the two intersected, and it turned out we just hit it off."
Buffett's investing strategy revolves, in part, around what he calls "moated businesses"—that is, businesses whose competitive advantage is so wide that other companies cannot cross it. For him, strong newspapers were the perfect moated businesses. "In newspapers, the basic rule was survival of the fattest," he told me. "And the trick was to be bigger than the other guy because at that point you had more help-wanted ads, you had more automobiles for sale, you had more people if you lost your dog who might find it if you ran a classified ad. And you got more dominant because to many people—this kills people in the news business—the most important news in the newspaper are the ads." Buffett made it clear when we spoke that he understood that he was talking about an outdated model of newspapers, one that has not survived the Internet, which has thrown bridges and grappling hooks across the moat and allowed interlopers to surge inside. But it was this old-fashioned dominance that he had loved about the Post.
And, as Buffett sees it, the newspaper's journalists never understood that fundamental reality. "The Washington Post is a local newspaper," Buffett said flatly. "I mean, it has national reach, but the grocers that advertise in it, they're not going to get national customers. The circulation they're paying for is the circulation that goes to people in the Greater Washington, D.C., area, and that's way different than The New York Times. One of the things that's existed over time which I'm sure you're aware of is that the newsroom, kindled by what happened in Watergate, liked to think of themselves as national. And they are national in an important respect, but they're not national as a business. And they don't have a business model that works nationally. What they do have as a business asset is a large and prosperous local market."
Focusing on Washington paid dividends during Kay Graham's era. A native midwesterner, Buffett sometimes mocked her Washington-centric existence. "We were flying one time to Omaha on United Airlines, back when I used to fly commercial, and we got on the plane, and I said to her, 'Kay, that pilot looks a little inexperienced.' I said, 'I'm not sure he'll really be able to fly to Omaha.' So I said, 'Do me a favor. Would you mind drawing a map of the United States that we could help him with, showing where Omaha is?' Well, she started drawing a map, and of course she got about as far as Chevy Chase, Maryland, and she didn't have the faintest damn idea." Buffett let out a high-pitched laugh. "So I grabbed this thing, and I was going to keep it, but she got it back from me before it was over. She practically ate the thing to keep it away from me."
Buffett told me that, since acquiring his 10 percent stake (which is now more than 20 percent, because of share repurchases), he has never bought a share in the Post Company. Shortly after he bought those original shares, he tried to put Graham at ease about his intentions. She had often been warned by other top advisers that Buffett would try to take control. "I said, 'Look. You know, these are baby teeth,' " Buffett said, pointing to his incisors, " 'but they look like wolf's fangs to you,' and I know they look like wolf's fangs. I said, 'Even though they're baby teeth, we're going to take them out.' And so I said, 'I will write a letter that I'll never buy another share without your permission.' " He wrote the letter and he kept his promise. Several years later, in 1977, as a vote of confidence in Don Graham, Buffett handed Graham the voting rights of Berkshire Hathaway's shares in the company. When Buffett stepped down as a director, in May 2011, the board had the exact opposite concern—that he would sell his shares. When I asked him if he ever would, he said, "The answer is I wouldn't. I can afford to be sentimental."
Legends in Their Time
Warren Buffett's influence on the Washington Post Company is impossible to overstate, and it continues today, even after his departure from the board, which he maintains was entirely for personal reasons. ("I don't want to be on any boards anymore.") Don Graham refers to Buffett as "the Supreme Court."
At 66 years old, Don Graham still retains his boyish features. His hair is swept over from a wide part, and his cheeks often appear flushed. With a flat, almost midwestern accent, he even sounds a bit like Buffett when he speaks. Profiles of Graham often mention that he has no requisite "ego wall" in his office—in contrast to the impressive one you would have found in his mother's Georgetown study. His older sister, Elizabeth "Lally" Weymouth, shares their mother's taste for high political society. She was a longtime contributor to Newsweek and still contributes to the Post's Outlook section. Don Graham's two younger brothers, William and Stephen Graham, have no day-to-day involvement in the company. Don served in Vietnam and worked as a policeman in Washington before taking his first job at the Post. He starts most days with an hour of reading the paper—BlackBerry in hand, so he can e-mail the writers of stories he likes. The notes are one of the reasons Graham is so highly regarded in the Post newsroom.
Graham took over from his mother in 1979, when the country was reeling from oil shortages and the Iranian hostage crisis. The movie All the President's Men had cemented the *Post'*s reputation, and reporters in the newsroom thought of themselves, one former editor recalls, as "legends in their own time." If the peak of *The Washington Post'*s journalism under Ben Bradlee was its Watergate coverage, its nadir was the Janet Cooke scandal, which occurred soon after Don Graham took the helm. Cooke was a young, black reporter working on the paper's Metro section. In 1981 she won the Pulitzer Prize for feature writing for her account of an eight-year-old boy named Jimmy, who was said to be a heroin addict. After she was awarded the Pulitzer, it came out that Jimmy did not exist and that the entire story had been fabricated. Cooke left the Post in disgrace. But reverberations from the incident—the impression that Bradlee's newsroom was out of control—continued. Bob Woodward had been the editor of the Metro section at the time, and the scandal dashed his chances for the top job at the paper (for which he had been groomed by Bradlee), opening the door for Len Downie, the low-key managing editor, a favorite of Graham's.
Downie held the Post newsroom to a consistently high standard. Under his leadership, the paper won 25 Pulitzers, and the number of newsroom employees grew to 1,000. But in the later years under Downie there were troubling signs. In 2007, for instance, two of his political reporters, Jim VandeHei and John Harris, went to him with the idea for what would become the online political magazine Politico, hoping to create a must-read site for political junkies. The company tried and failed to retain them, and VandeHei and Harris went off on their own. For some, Politico is now more of a must-read in the political sphere than the Post is. Meanwhile, the Post was facing the same challenge to its business model that every big newspaper did, as advertisers turned away from print. The advent of online services, such as Craigslist, was eroding the *Post'*s lucrative classified sections, which in the 1990s contributed as much as 40 percent of the paper's total revenue and today contribute less than half of that.
"Subprime Goes to College"
As the newspaper's profitability began to shrink, Graham cut costs in the newsroom. (The number of newsroom employees is now just under 640.) And it only got worse after the fall of Lehman Brothers, in 2008, and the ensuing financial crisis. The company's board of directors watched as its stock dropped from nearly $1,000 a share, in December 2004, to $322.50 a share, in March 2009. "Everything was in free fall," one former Post editor recalls.
There was, for a time, a bright spot. In 1984, when presented with the prospect of acquiring a small company called Kaplan Test Prep, Katharine Graham was unenthusiastic. "I confess that my lack of interest was reflected in my saying, 'I don't give a shit about it, but if you think it will be profitable, let's do it,' " she wrote in her memoir. Kaplan warranted only a short paragraph, but it came to represent the most promising, and then the most dangerous, business division within the Washington Post Company.
Kaplan is a for-profit education company that was originally in the business of preparing students for tests such as the S.A.T.'s and the L.S.A.T.'s. In 2000 it entered a fast-growing but risky new line of endeavor: the company paid $178 million to buy an Atlanta-based for-profit education company, Quest Education Corporation, which catered primarily to low-income students and offered programs for entry-level positions in health-care administration, information technology, and business. In other words, Kaplan was no longer just coaching test-takers; it was running a vast educational network of its own, fed by government-backed student loans. It was a highly successful gambit, and for years Kaplan's growth helped offset faltering ad revenues at the Post, though few inside Washington, or in journalistic circles, paid much attention to the fact.
Today, Kaplan is a global, multi-billion-dollar operation with nearly one million students, many of them online. The Washington Post Company has benefited enormously. In 2001 its newspaper revenue declined for the first time in more than a decade. Kaplan was able to pick up the slack. So prominent did the role of Kaplan become that in 2007 Don Graham made the decision to describe the Post officially as an "education and media company," giving the storied news properties second billing.
Then, with little warning, Kaplan's biggest division, Kaplan Higher Education, became an embarrassment, and its business went through the floor. In 2010, Kaplan was caught in a government sting that revealed the division's employees pushing students to take on loans even if they couldn't afford them. That same year, Steve Eisman, the short-seller central to Michael Lewis's account of the financial crisis, The Big Short, gave a speech called "Subprime Goes to College" that was widely discussed among for-profit executives and investors. Eisman described the for-profit education companies as loan sharks preying on disadvantaged students who would soon find themselves deep in debt. Don Graham threw himself personally into the cause of defending Kaplan and lobbying on Capitol Hill to oppose stricter regulation.
"He could have played this game at 50,000 feet," says Anne Mulcahy, a former chief executive of Xerox and a current Post board member. Maybe. The view from ground level was ugly. By the end of 2010, more than 80 percent of the revenue at Kaplan's biggest division—and nearly a third of the Post Company's overall revenue—was from government-backed student loans. According to the Department of Education, two-thirds of Kaplan's students drop out before graduating. Kaplan disputes that number, saying that the Department of Education's definition of "drop out" doesn't take into account its student population, many of whom take longer than six years to complete a four-year degree. In recent years, as many as 30 percent of Kaplan Higher Education students were defaulting on their loans within three years. Kaplan has been sued by several former employees, accusing the company of activities such as cooking the books on job-placement rates to ensure continued eligibility for federal student-aid programs.
Kaplan executives say that the statistics are skewed and misleading, and that the population Kaplan serves—largely poor students who can't attend traditional schools—perform better at Kaplan than anywhere else. "It's our choice whether or not we, as a society, want to educate this population," Andy Rosen, the current chairman and C.E.O. of Kaplan, told me. "If we do, Kaplan provides the best model for doing it."
The Washington Post Company's response to the crisis, which has slashed the value of Kaplan's business, is the Kaplan Commitment, which allows students to enroll in a Kaplan course and then drop out within a month without being on the hook for tuition. Kaplan says the program would have cost $140 million had it been in place for all of 2010. Craig Huber, a longtime senior analyst now at Huber Research Partners, an independent stock-research company, says that, in addition to an estimated 14 to 15 percent drop last year, revenues at Kaplan are likely to continue to fall over the next two years.
The financial decline of Kaplan poses severe and obvious problems for the company in the short term. Kaplan's most damaging legacy may prove to have been its decades of robust good health. Thanks to Kaplan, the Post Company felt less pressure to make hard strategic choices—and less pressure to venture in new directions. The *Post'*s online presence is only the most glaring case in point.
The Kaiser Memo
T*he Washington Post'*s penetration in the Washington area was always a point of pride. "We have more readers in Washington, D.C., than The New York Times does in New York" is an oft repeated refrain among Post reporters. But the Times is a national newspaper and 25 years ago chose deliberately to expand outside of New York and pay less attention to its home turf. In 2003 the Times also decided to take over the International Herald Tribune in its entirety, forcing out the Post, its longtime partner. The move was strategic, designed to give the Times not just national but global distribution.
In contrast, the *Post'*s business remained focused on the local Washington, D.C., market. And it was very slow to embrace the Internet, despite prescient urgings. In August 1992, on his way back from an Apple-organized conference in Japan, Robert Kaiser, then the *Post'*s managing editor, wrote out by hand a 60-page document that is still referred to as "the Kaiser memo." Kaiser urged Len Downie and top executives of the Post to design the world's first electronic newspaper. "The Post," he wrote, "ought to be in the forefront of this, not for the adventure, but for important defensive purposes." Kaiser also suggested that the paper put classified ads in an electronic format which people could access from their home computers. The company created an electronic version of the newspaper the next year, in collaboration with Digital Ink, and developed a Web site three years after that—and for a while it showed promise. But the newspaper resisted efforts to capitalize on the site.
One attempt to revive it, in 2003, was mounted by Steve Coll, who was then Len Downie's managing editor and is now the president of the New America Foundation. In the wake of the paper's ejection from the International Herald Tribune, Coll went to Graham with an idea. "I said, 'This is an opportunity for us to rethink what our alternative futures are post-I.H.T., in terms of the global and online audience,' " Coll told me. "Don encouraged the exercise."
The idea was not to compete with the *Times'*s print strategy, which distributed the print newspaper nationally. The notion, instead, was to leapfrog it by using the Internet to distribute the Post to the existing national and international audience. "*The Washington Post'*s place in the mind of a certain group who lived through the 70s was transitory but powerful," Coll explained. "Washington Post reporters were often depicted as hilariously righteous characters in their values and devotion to the truth. We had this brand position, and it wouldn't last forever."
In May 2003, at an off-site meeting of top editors at the Inn at Perry Cabin, on Maryland's Eastern Shore, Coll and others discussed the findings of the project. Then Graham rose to address the room. "He very emphatically emphasized that the Washington Post franchise was local, and that our emphasis on this opportunity represented a threat to the franchise because it might pull the journalism and energy away from serving the local audience," Coll told me. "He unintentionally delivered the speech in a way that felt like he had just shot me in the head."
Coll left the Post not long afterward. He says he realized that, if he had stayed, "I was going to be managing decline, and that didn't interest me."
Rush for the Exit
On February 7, 2008, Katharine Weymouth, the daughter of Lally Weymouth, was named C.E.O. of Washington Post Media, a new unit within the larger company made up of both the print and the online versions of the newspaper. Weymouth was also named publisher of The Washington Post.
In July, Weymouth announced that she was hiring Marcus Brauchli, who had been forced out as editor of The Wall Street Journal following Rupert Murdoch's acquisition of the paper, to replace Downie. Weymouth chose Brauchli as her editor over an in-house candidate, Phillip Bennett, who had served as Downie's deputy after Coll left the paper. Brauchli had fewer ties to the old newsroom and would be able to approach the place with fresh eyes. A longtime foreign correspondent, Brauchli brought a financial and international background to the task.
Brauchli started in September 2008 and wasn't in the job a year before Politico broke the story that Weymouth and Brauchli were selling access to politicians, policymakers, and Washington Post journalists in the form of $25,000-to-$250,000 sponsorships of off-the-record "salons" to be held at Weymouth's house. The episode, dubbed "Salongate," branded the pair as enemies of the *Post'*s journalistic standards. Brauchli's handling of Salongate—saying that he hadn't been aware of the details even though he had been included in much of the planning and had agreed to lead the salon discussions himself—left many feeling he had been less than candid. "We clearly made mistakes, and the nuances didn't reflect well on us," Brauchli told me. "But at the time and subsequently, I met with anybody in the newsroom who wanted to meet, in small groups or large, and explained honestly, fully, and in detail what happened." The relationship with the newsroom wasn't helped when, in 2009, Brauchli announced that the Post was closing its remaining domestic bureaus, in Chicago, New York, and Los Angeles. (The New York Times has 14 bureaus nationwide.)
There have been a string of high-profile departures from the Post in recent years, not to mention five rounds of buyouts. Anthony Shadid, who won two Pulitzers for his reporting from Iraq, left for the Times in 2009. (Shadid died suddenly in Syria in February.) Other Post reporters, including Peter Baker, Mark Leibovich, Peter S. Goodman, Michael Barbaro, Jo Becker, Serge Kovaleski, and David Segal, have also decamped to the Times. John Harris, the editor in chief of Politico, talks openly about reporters and editors who have left the Post, not through buyouts but simply for other outlets. In addition to those already mentioned, the list includes David Von Drehle, Dafna Linzer, Michael Grunwald, Barton Gellman, and Harris's Politico colleagues Jim VandeHei and Mike Allen. Brauchli is mindful of the departures, though he assured me that "if you look at the ledger we have gained as much as we have lost." Not really. Brauchli has hired 100 new people since he joined the paper, but overall, the newsroom has shrunk in size by more than 100. In early February, when announcing a fifth round of buyouts, Brauchli wrote, "We will continue making tactical hires so that even as we get smaller, we get stronger." The scale and quality of the brain drain has been astonishing. And the departures are not just the stuff of inside baseball—ordinary readers notice. The newspaper's vaunted Style section once published long-form features that national magazines looked upon with envy. Today it is a pale shadow of its former self. Brauchli and Weymouth both recognize that the attention people pay to the Post has declined dramatically.
Clearly, excellent reporters remain on the staff. Dana Priest and Anne Hull's 2008 exposé of abuses and mismanagement at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center won a Pulitzer for public service. In 2010, Priest and William M. Arkin wrote "Top Secret America," outlining the vast and overlapping private entities now tasked with surveilling and defending the country—a superb piece of reporting. In 2010 and 2011, the paper won five Pulitzers, the same number as The New York Times. Greg Jaffe, a military reporter who left The Wall Street Journal in 2009 to join the Post, told me, "I've never had anybody say, 'This is a great story but it's not for and about Washington.' I feel like I have much more freedom to write about things that interest me here than I would at any other major paper." But Jaffe doesn't know how long that will last. "I think we are a great news organization. We are stuck in third place behind the Times and the Journal in terms of resources and revenue. My great fear is that they will get stronger while we just get smaller."
Even as the newspaper scrambled to cut costs and protect its base, the other journalistic pillar of the Washington Post Company, Newsweek magazine, was bleeding ad revenue and subscribers. The magazine had lost $16 million in 2008, and losses were projected to double in the following year. By 2009, Buffett was pressing for a sale of the magazine. Though the other directors, including and especially Graham, weren't yet willing to consider it, Buffett kept bringing it up. Newsweek was the last vestige of a global brand and a global strategy. The company put Newsweek up for sale, eventually unloading it in August 2010 for $1, plus the assumption of tens of millions of dollars in debt, to Sidney Harman, a stereo-equipment magnate. Late that year, Harman negotiated a deal with Post Company board member Barry Diller's IAC/InterActiveCorp to merge Newsweek with IAC's Daily Beast Web site and install Tina Brown as editor of the combined entity.
The Ghost of Bradlee
Don Graham has no plans to step aside anytime soon, but as Warren Buffett told me, for his successor "Don wants to pick somebody in the family. There's no question about that."
The most obvious candidate is Katharine Weymouth. Tall and thin, she looks a lot like her grandmother does in pictures taken when she was young. When I asked about her plans for the newspaper, and whether the Post had lost its ambition, she replied, "Our strategy is to be the indispensable guide to Washington for people who live in Washington and for people all around the country and the world who come to us because we are a trusted news brand.
"It's much more the allocation of our resources, of how or where we are going to put our best reporters and editors. It doesn't mean we would not cover, and cover deeply, a national story. So if Hurricane Katrina happened again, we'd be all over it, and send reporters there. So I think [the strategy] has been misinterpreted as The Washington Post is shrinking their ambition. And I don't think that's true at all."
But Weymouth has been frustrated in the past by what she sees as Brauchli's and his deputies' inattention to some of the most historically strong sections of the paper, the ones that cater most to the local audience. She has told several people in the newsroom, "One of our biggest problems is we have three people at the top of the paper, none of whom give a shit about Sports, Metro, or Style."
Stories of clashes abound. When the bureau chiefs were asked, again, to submit the names of buyout candidates, the business editor, who has only 15 reporters, objected and then put his own name at the top of the list. In a tense meeting during this time, according to several people present, Stephen Hills, who is the president of the Post Media Group and Katharine's deputy, suggested that the newsroom was bloated, and advanced the view that the Web site should be able to attract more traffic, citing the example of the Huffington Post, which largely aggregates coverage from other sites. Brauchli appeared livid, and the two had a heated exchange. News of the argument spread through the newsroom.
Brauchli may fight for the newsroom, but he is not beloved by it. One former editor told me, "He was an unknown in Washington when he arrived, and he's a little shy. What makes that problematic at the Post is that the ghost of Bradlee, even 20 years later, is so huge." He remains a cipher to many. In 2009, a year in which the Post lost $165 million, Brauchli declined a cash bonus. The fact that this is not widely known says something telling about Brauchli—but so does the fact that most reporters at the Post would be surprised to learn of the act. One Post veteran, who happened to be in the know, said to me, "People just don't think he would do that."
The Two Washingtons
Wearing rubber-soled lace-up shoes and a button-down shirt, Don Graham grasped his typed remarks and took the stage. It was December 2011, and he had come to New York for a media-investor conference sponsored by an investment bank.
Resting on the long tables in front of each attendee were copies of a book called Change.edu: Rebooting for the New Talent Economy. Published by the Post Company's own Kaplan division and written by its C.E.O., Andrew Rosen, the book is a full-throated defense of the for-profit education industry, which Rosen argues has been unfairly vilified by elitists. The book is also, simply stated, corporate propaganda for Kaplan.
Before Graham spoke, I had an opportunity to sit down with him for breakfast at his hotel on Central Park South, not far from the old Newsweek offices. I asked him how he felt about the state of The Washington Post as a news operation, and he told me first about the strength of the paper in the Washington market. "Washington is the No. 8 market in the United States," he said, "but in terms of circulation, we are the No. 2 metro newspaper in the U.S. We sell more newspapers in Washington than The New York Times sells in New York." I nodded, familiar now with that point. "It is ridiculous," Graham continued. "The Times is a national elite newspaper aiming not at the one percent, but at the top half a percent." He laughed, as if the elite focus offended his proletarian sensibility. "It's a very smart strategy. But it is unique. We are analogous to every other metro paper in the U.S. Except that we are in the capital of the United States, which has always given us a unique readership."
I brought up the conversations around town, about the prominent Washington Post reporters and editors who have left the paper. When Graham seemed to dislike one of my questions, his smile broadened and he put his hands up, which he did then. "We have fewer people than we did in 1989. Many of the people we've lost I wish were still there. But we've hired some very good people." His conviction seemed to build as he spoke, until every word was sharply articulated: "I joined The Washington Post in 1971. It was a pretty good year. It was the year of the Pentagon Papers. June of the following year was the Watergate burglary—June 17, as I recall." He paused. "So, that was a pretty good newsroom. The newsroom today," he slowed for emphasis, "is twice as big as that newsroom."
I asked him why the Post had become such a symbol of decline in people's minds. Graham smiled widely, put his hands up, and said, "Come. On! It isn't 1989. I don't have a magic bullet to make the past 20 years go away! It has been a challenging time for newspapers. The Post has responded to that challenge about as well as we could have. We are putting out a really good paper. We have a very ambitious news site, and we are trying a lot of things. Some of the things we are trying are in fact quite promising, a little bit more than I thought they were." Graham launched into an enthusiastic discussion of the Washington Post Social Reader, which launched last September, and is a Facebook app that, if you subscribe to it, displays for your Facebook friends the Washington Post articles you are reading, as well as anything you read from the Associated Press and Reuters, and from various niche blogs. A person close to Graham says that he spends less time on The Washington Post newspaper these days, and is instead focused on digital efforts and on Kaplan. The Post redesigned its newspaper in October 2009 and its Web site in March 2011. The new site introduced updated blogs and other features, but was slow and cumbersome and bedeviled with glitches. Six months after the launch, the *Post'*s ombudsman began his column, "Porn sites download faster than The Post's Web site," adding that the slow loading time was "the most numerous topic in my folder of complaints about the Web site." Raju Narisetti, who until January, when he took a job at The Wall Street Journal, was a key Brauchli deputy, led the redesign of the site. He told me in an interview before his departure that "we got too ambitious and we started adding a lot more bells and whistles."
Narisetti also put great emphasis on metrics. Editors now get alerts during the day that show whether the *Post'*s Web site is drawing enough traffic. If it isn't, the editors get an e-mail asking them to post something fresh. There are large screens in the newsroom that show the stories that are drawing the most traffic. The redesign has been successful by this measure. As of January, the Post was the second-most-trafficked newspaper Web site in the country, behind The New York Times. "There is a lot more accountability, a lot more measuring how we're doing," said Narisetti. "That's been thrown back in our face—that 'you are pandering for page views or eyeballs.' At the end of every pair of eyeballs is a real person who can choose not to read us."
I asked Graham if Kaplan's growth had kept the company from thinking about other opportunities that it might have explored. "Yeah, oh, in a sense it did. Sure," he said. "But we were kicking the tires on a whole lot of things. Quite famously we almost bought 10 percent of Facebook." I asked why the company didn't and he directed me instead to read David Kirkpatrick's book, The Facebook Effect. Don Graham met Mark Zuckerberg in 2005, and later that year, according to the book, when Facebook was looking for financing, Zuckerberg and Graham verbally agreed to the terms of a Washington Post Company investment in Facebook. Soon after, Accel Partners, a prominent Silicon Valley private-equity firm, made a richer offer. Zuckerberg felt he had betrayed his agreement with Graham by meeting with the principals of Accel, and at one point left a dinner meeting with them and broke down in the restaurant's restroom. Zuckerberg called Graham, who released him from his obligation to the Post. Zuckerberg agreed to a deal with Accel. Graham and Zuckerberg have remained friends, and in 2008 Graham joined the board of Facebook. (Graham's daughter Molly works at Facebook and his daughter Laura works at a Washington Post-owned division, SocialCode, which advises companies on buying Facebook ads.) According to PrivCo, a firm that researches private companies, if Graham had persuaded Zuckerberg to honor his agreement, the Post's stake in Facebook after the imminent I.P.O. might have been worth $7 billion, more than double the market capitalization of the entire Post Company.
I finally asked Graham if there was anything he wished he had done differently, looking back over his life at the Post. After saying, twice, "Of course there is," he told me that he "replays" the mid-90s "all the time." That was when the Post first was starting its Web operation. "We knocked it out of the park. We were in the help-wanted business three years ahead of anybody else. We started it with great editors and exceptional sales and marketing people, and we had good I.T. people, but we should have tripled up on that. We should have understood that this wasn't a matter of presenting the news in another format. But I think every company in the news business would tell you the same thing."
In his speech later that morning Graham covered many of the same topics and hit precisely the same tone, which can be described as a polite yet defensive stonewalling. Outside the walls of the Post, there are few who see a bright future for the newspaper. Traditionalists feel that it has backed away from its ambition. New-media types feel that it hasn't distinguished itself sufficiently from other online outlets covering either politics or local Washington news.
As the presentation wrapped up and I made my way out, I walked past a Post investor sitting behind me. He looked up and said simply, "Sad story, isn't it?"
What has struck me throughout the reporting process is that, at every turn, the Post has taken a prudent approach and made reasonable choices. The company is exceedingly cautious. It holds no debt. It is in a relatively good financial position as a stand-alone company, despite the losses at Kaplan. Graham is interested in new media and willing to experiment. But the company has been slow to make strategic choices about its future. Graham wanted to invest in Facebook, but was outbid. He experimented with an early digital version of the paper, but let it fall apart. When the Times pushed the Post out of the I.H.T., media watchers and investors felt the Post came out of that the winner, given the losses at that paper. But of course there was a more ambitious way to look at the transaction, which ignored the immediate business results. The company's one radical departure, as it turns out, was buying Kaplan, but that was something it backed into. Graham prides himself on giving ideas time to percolate, but his choices often seem to be cut short by practical financial concerns.
Caution can be a virtue, but in revolutionary times it may be something else entirely.
Rupert Murdoch vs. Marcus Brauchli at The Wall Street Journal (Sarah Ellison, June 2010)


text:
Simple Intersection Tests For Games
October 18, 1999 Page 1 of 7
Whether it's your car crossing the finish line at 180 miles per hour, or a bullet tearing through the chest of your best friend, all games make use of collision detection for object interaction. This article describes some simple intersection tests for the most useful shapes: spheres and boxes.
Sweep Tests for Moving Objects
A common approach to collision detection is to simply test for whether two objects are overlapping at the end of each frame. The problem with this method is that quickly moving objects can pass through each other without detection. To avoid this problem, their trajectories can be subdivided and the objects checked for overlap at each point; however, this gets expensive if either object experienced a large displacement. On the other hand, a sweep test can efficiently determine a lower and upper bound for the time of overlap, which can then be used as more optimal starting points for the subdivision algorithm.
A Sphere-Plane Sweep Test
Figure 1 shows an example of a quickly moving sphere passing through a plane. It can be seen that C0 is on the positive side of the plane and C1 is on its negative side.
|Figure 1. A sphere passes through a plane.
In general, if a sphere penetrated a plane at some point during the frame, then d0>r and d1<r, where r is the radius of the sphere and d0 and d1 are the signed distances from the plane to C0 and C1, respectively. The signed distance from a point C to a plane can be calculated with the formula
More efficiently, we can store the plane in the form {n, D}, where
The distance d is then calculated
The trajectory from C0 to C1 can be parameterized with a variable u, which may be thought of as normalized time, since its value is 0 at C0 and 1 at C1. The normalized time at which the sphere first intersects the plane is given by
The center of the sphere at this time can then be interpolated with an affine combination of C0 and C1
This formula interpolates Ci correctly as long as d0 is not equal to d1 (which is the case if displacement has occurred), even when r = 0 (the case of a line segment). If desired, the parameter u can also be used to linearly interpolate the orientation of an object at this point.
In this example, it was assumed that the sphere approached the plane from the positive side and that the sphere was not already penetrating the plane at C0.. In the case that there could have been penetration on the previous frame, the condition |d0|<=r should also be checked. Listing 1 gives an implementation of this sphere-plane sweep test.
Listing 1. A sphere-plane sweep test.
#include "vector.h"
class PLANE
//unit normal
//distance from the plane to the origin from a
//normal and a point
PLANE( const VECTOR& p0, const VECTOR& n ): N(n), D(-N.dot(p0))
//from 3 points
PLANE( const VECTOR& p0, const VECTOR& p1,
const VECTOR& p2 ): N((p1-p0).cross(p2-p0).unit()),
//signed distance from the plane topoint 'p' along
//the unit normal
const SCALAR distanceToPoint( const VECTOR& p ) const
return N.dot(p) + D;
const bool SpherePlaneSweep
const SCALAR r, //sphere radius
const VECTOR& C0, //previous position of sphere
const VECTOR& C1, //current position of sphere
const PLANE& plane, //the plane
VECTOR& Ci, //position of sphere when it first touched the plane
SCALAR& u //normalized time of collision
const SCALAR d0
= plane.distanceToPoint( C0 );
const SCALAR d1 = plane.distanceToPoint( C1 );
//check if
it was touching on previous frame
if( fabs(d0) <= r )
Ci = C0;
u = 0;
return true;
//check if
the sphere penetrated during this frame
if( d0>r && d1<r )
u = (d0-r)/(d0-d1); //normalized time
Ci = (1-u)*C0 + u*C1; //point of first contact
return true;
return false;
For the definition of the VECTOR class, please see [3].
Page 1 of 7

subset: commoncrawl


text:
Our Price: £9.75
Laser Tools Collapsible Silicone Magnetis Parts Tray
Another universal item which no mechanic or diy addict should ever be without!
VAT (Value Added Tax) is charged at 20% on all purchases shipped within the EEC (with the exception of certain items such as books).
1) Prices displayed on this website are VAT inclusive where the selected currency is an EU currency.
2) All non EU currency prices displayed do NOT include VAT.
3) Orders shipped to addresses outside the EEC will NOT be charged VAT, once shipping address is set and you are logged into your website account, VAT is automatically removed from all prices.
4) Orders being shipped within the EEC will be VAT inclusive where applicable.
5) If you are viewing prices in a non EU currency, prices displayed DO NOT include VAT.
PFS Parts Ltd. is registered for VAT in the United Kingdom, VAT no: GB809914994


text:
More level of photoshop
Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)
The Ultimate Destination For Free Download, Sharing And Viewing Of The Funniest Pictures, Fails, IPhone Autocorrects, Wallpapers, Movies Scenes, Troll Comics Online, Funny Iphone Texts ,Epic Pictures, Meme Comics, Facebook Status Fails, Funny Animal Photos, Rage Comics, Lol Photos, Tv Series Funny Photos, Photoshop Fails, Boyfriend - Girlfriend Texts And Much More Funny Stuffs. Kill Your Boredom And Have Fun. Updated Daily. Do Recommend It To Your Friends .


text:
Last week's transfers of KT Harrell and James Johnson compromise Virginia's basketball team. Their sudden exits limit the Cavaliers in practice, thin their bench and foil plans to redshirt freshman Paul Jesperson.
Serious concerns all.
But the departures, and others during Tony Bennett's two-plus seasons as coach, are not embarrassments to the school – no one flunked out or ran afoul of the law – or blanket indictments of Bennett's program.
Could Bennett have been more selective in recruiting, especially with a first class that bloated to six players? Absolutely.
Do he and his staff need to better evaluate not only prospects but also the people surrounding the prospects? Yes.
But in large measure, transfers at Virginia, Virginia Tech (Tyrone Garland most recently) and elsewhere, reflect a youth basketball culture that considers patience a character flaw.
Blinded by one-and-done talents such as John Wall and Kyrie Irving, far too many college basketball players reject the notion of a gradual career arc that – gasp! – might even include a few setbacks or time on the bench. It's all about the NBA ASAP.
Even those who realize they're not the next LeBron aren't immune. When immediate playing time doesn't transpire, they feel "disrespected" or even embarrassed, the latter because friends and/or family are equally impatient.
Here was the most telling quote from Bennett's 20-minute couch session with reporters Monday:
"If they don't want to be here, or if their camp thinks this isn't the right place, then it is probably best for both parties to split ways."
The key words "their camp." Parents, friends, street agents, AAU coaches. Their influence is more pervasive than ever, and most are well-intended. But others have ulterior motives, and none is immune to delusions of grandeur.
Harrell started 15 games last season as a freshman and five more this season. But when senior Sammy Zeglinski replaced him in the lineup, it was time to bail.
Johnson asked to be redshirted last season and then bolted 11 games into his college career when playing time wasn't to his liking.
At Virginia Tech, Garland, a sophomore, scored a team-high 31 points in the season's first two games before coach Seth Greenberg began using freshman Marquis Rankin in his place.
Here's a concept: You want more minutes? Earn them in practice.
Coaches walk a tightrope here. They want players who are ambitious but not coddled, and often, given youth basketball's excessive entitlements -- think free gear, cross-country travel and incessant butt-smooching -- the distinction is elsuive.
Prospects and families need to be more discriminating as well. History shows Bennett and Greenberg are not fast-track-to-the-NBA coaches, and that Virginia and Virginia Tech are not one-and-done programs.
If that's your aim, you're better off at a national power such as Kentucky, North Carolina or Duke.
What's that you say? The Wildcats, Tar Heel and Blue Devils didn't recruit you?
Maybe that should tell you something.
I can be reached at 247-4636 or by e-mail at email@example.com. Follow me at twitter.com/DavidTeelatDP
And here's a link to all my print columns in the Daily Press.


text:
Accessibility tools
Service tools
Language selector
Navigation path
Left navigation
Additional tools
The Court dismisses the appeal of the AstraZeneca group, which abused its dominant position by preventing the marketing of generic products replicating Losec
AstraZeneca AB and AstraZeneca plc belong to a pharmaceutical group ('AZ') which is active worldwide in the sector of the invention, development and marketing of pharmaceutical products. One of the main products marketed by AZ is known as 'Losec' (a treatment for ulcers).
By decision of 15 June 20051, the Commission imposed a fine of €60 million on those companies for having committed two abuses of a dominant position.
First, the Commission found that AZ had made deliberately misleading representations to the patent offices of certain Member States. Those representations sought to obtain or maintain supplementary protection certificates2 for Losec, granting an extension of the protection under the patent, to which AZ was not entitled or to which it was entitled for a shorter duration, in order to keep manufacturers of generic products away from the market.
Secondly, AZ was penalised for having submitted requests for deregistration of the marketing authorisations for Losec capsules in Denmark, Sweden and Norway in order to delay or make more difficult the marketing of generic medicinal products, and to prevent parallel imports of Losec.
AstraZeneca plc and AstraZeneca AB brought an action before the General Court for annulment of the Commission's decision.
By a judgment of 1 July 20103, the General Court rejected most of the arguments put forward by AZ. However, it annulled in part the Commission's decision so far as concerns the finding of the second abuse. The General Court held that, although the Commission had proved that the deregistration of the marketing authorisations for Losec capsules in Denmark, Sweden and Norway were such as to delay the entry to the market of generic medicinal products in those three countries and, furthermore, to prevent parallel imports of Losec in Sweden, the Commission had not proved that that latter effect had been produced in Denmark and in Norway. The General Court therefore reduced the amount of the fine imposed jointly and severally on AstraZeneca AB and AstraZeneca plc to €40.25 million and fixed the fine imposed on AstraZeneca AB at €12.25 million.
AstraZeneca AB and AstraZeneca plc lodged an appeal before the Court of Justice to have that judgment of the General Court set aside.
By today's judgment, the Court rejects the arguments advanced by the two companies, concerning, inter alia, errors of law allegedly made by the General Court in respect of the assessment of two abuses and the determination of the amount of the fines.
As regards, in particular, the first abuse of a dominant position concerning supplementary protection certificates, the Court observes that EU law prohibits a dominant undertaking from eliminating a competitor and thereby strengthening its position by using methods other than those which come within the scope of competition on the merits.
The Court concludes on this issue that the General Court was fully entitled to hold that AZ's consistent and linear conduct, which was characterised by the notification to the patent offices of misleading representations and the lack of transparency by which AZ deliberately attempted to lead the patent offices and judicial authorities into error in order to keep for as long as possible its monopoly on the medicinal products market, was a breach of competition on the merits and therefore an abuse of a dominant position.
So far as concerns the second abuse of a dominant position, the Court has held that the deregistration of the marketing authorisations, without objective justification and after the expiry of the exclusive right granted by EU law, with the aim of hindering the introduction of generic products and parallel imports, also does not come within the scope of competition on the merits.
In respect of the fine imposed on the companies, the Court is of the opinion that the General Court did not err in law in concluding, inter alia, that, in the absence of mitigating circumstances or special circumstances, the abuses must be characterised as serious infringements, and consequently the amount of the fine cannot be reduced for those reasons.
NOTE: An appeal, on a point or points of law only, may be brought before the Court of Justice against a judgment or order of the General Court. In principle, the appeal does not have suspensive effect. If the appeal is admissible and well founded, the Court of Justice sets aside the judgment of the General Court. Where the state of the proceedings so permits, the Court of Justice may itself give final judgment in the case. Otherwise, it refers the case back to the General Court, which is bound by the decision given by the Court of Justice on the appeal.
Unofficial document for media use, not binding on the Court of Justice.
The full text of the judgment is published on the CURIA website on the day of delivery.
Press contact: Christopher Fretwell (+352) 4303 3355
Commission Decision C (2005) 1757 final of 15 June 2005 relating to a proceeding under Article 82 [EC] and Article 54 of the EEA Agreement (Case COMP/A.37.507/F3 – AstraZeneca)
A supplementary protection certificate may be obtained by the holder of a national or European patent. Its purpose is to extend the protection conferred by that patent for an additional maximum period of five years so that the holder will have the benefit of a maximum period of 15 years of exclusivity from the first marketing authorisation (which is itself issued for a period of 10 years).
Side Bar


text:
Pear: Nutrition . Selection . Storage
Nutrition information for pears and tips on how to
select, store and prepare them. Health Benefits
select, store and prepare them. Health Benefits
Pears have been cultivated for nearly four thousand years.
How to Select
Chose firm pears, then
"Check the Neck for Ripeness"™ daily by applying gentle pressure to the stem end of the pear with your thumb.
When it yields to the pressure, it's ready to eat.
How to Store
Store unripened pears in paper bag at room temperature.
Refrigerate ripe pears.
Nutrition Benefits
Fat free; saturated fat free; sodium free; cholesterol free; excellent source of dietary fiber; good source of vitamin C.
Health Benefits of Fruits & Vegetables
The natural antioxidants in fruits and vegetables will help keep your body working at its best, so consuming a diet that meets your daily recommended amount of fruits and vegetables is one of the best ways to give your body a strong defense against disease. Fruits and vegetables are protective to health as they're helpful at reducing the risk of coronary heart disease, stroke and some cancers. They're also low in calories, which helps prevent obesity … a significant risk factor for type 2 diabetes, cancer and cardiovascular disease.


text:
via press release:
— AFRICA to Premiere on Discovery Channel January 8th, 2013 —
(Silver Spring, Md.) – The award-winning documentary team behind the breakthrough natural history series LIFE returns with a revealing look at aseemingly familiar continent that is still holding many secrets. A Discovery Channel/BBC co-production fouryears in the making, AFRICA – premiering Tuesday, January 8, 2013 at 10PM E/P – is a seven-part series that brings the continent to life with never-before-filmed species, animal behaviors and secret, natural wonders of the world.
Travel to a secret location in southwest Africa to witness what could be the last great rhinoceros gathering on Earth, filmed with a newly developed camera system that is operated using the light of the stars and captures sound using microphones embedded around a watering hole. Track a teenage chimp in the Congo with a sweet tooth that drives her to perfect complicated honey-hunting techniquesusing four different tools. Meet some gutsy lizards who hunt for flies on the backs of sleeping lions in the Serengeti, a behavior never before captured on film. And see giraffes in a whole new way as two rival males in Namibia deliver sledgehammer-like blows on each other in a knockout fight for domination.
To capture on film these and other spectacular animal behaviors, the production team spent 1,598 days on location across 79 separate expeditions in 27 countries. They utilized 21 different types of cameras to shoot more than 2,000 hours of footage. Of the 553 cameras deployed throughout the series, only eight were lost or damaged beyond repair.
The AFRICA team's extreme efforts are chronicled in the episode Making Of Africa. Other episodes of the series uncover bizarre, brutal and newly discovered animal behaviors in thedeserts of the Kalahari, the dense forests and snow-capped peaks of the Savannah, the dynamic Congo rainforest, the ever-changing climate of the Cape and the massive and parched Sahara desert. The series' seventh episode, hosted on camera by British naturalist David Attenborough, will look at how Africa is changing faster than at any time in history. The greatest and most iconic wildlife continent is at a tipping point. The animals of the next generation will face very different challenges than the ones met by their ancestors – and the animals themselves must adapt to the new landscape and changing relationship with humans.
AFRICA is a Discovery Channel/BBC co-production. For BBC, Mike Gunton is executive producer and James Honeyborne is series producer. For Discovery Channel, Robert Zakin is executive producer.
About Discovery Channel
Discovery Channel is dedicated to creating the highest quality non-fiction content that informs and entertains its consumers about the world in all its wonder, diversity and amazement. The network, which is distributed to 100.1 million U.S. homes, can be seen in over 180 countries, offering a signature mix of compelling, high-end production values and vivid cinematography across genres including, science and technology, exploration, adventure, history and in-depth, behind-the-scenes glimpses at the people, places and organizations that shape and share our world. For more information, please visit http://www.discovery.com.
About Discovery Communications
Discovery Communications (Nasdaq: DISCA, DISCB, DISCK) is the world's #1 nonfiction media company reaching more than 1.7 billion cumulative subscribers in 209 countries and territories. Discovery is dedicated to satisfying curiosity through more than 147 worldwide television networks, led by Discovery Channel, TLC, Animal Planet, Science and Investigation Discovery, as well as US joint venture networks OWN: Oprah Winfrey Network, The Hub and 3net, the first 24-hour 3D network. Discovery also is a leading provider of educational products and services to schools and owns and operates a diversified portfolio of digital media services, including Revision3. For more information, please visit www.discoverycommunications.com.
# # #


text:
Naval ship, the chief instrument by which a nation extends its military power onto the seas. Warships protect the movement over water of military forces to coastal areas where they may be landed and used against enemy forces; warships protect merchant shipping against enemy attack; they prevent the enemy from using the sea to transport military forces; and they attack the enemy's merchant shipping. Naval ships are also used in blockade—i.e., in attempts to prevent an enemy from importing by sea the commodities necessary for prosecution of the war. In order to accomplish these objectives, naval ships have been designed from earliest times to be faster and sturdier than merchant ships and to be capable of carrying offensive weapons.
In the modern era the word craft has come to denote small surface vessels that operate usually in coastal waters.
This article traces the development of the major surface warships and craft from their beginnings to the present day. For a discussion of submarines, which operate below the surface, see submarine. Detailed discussion of weapons used by warships can be found in other articles. For early naval cannon, see military technology; for guided antiship and antiaircraft missiles, see rocket and missile system; for naval airplanes, jets, and helicopters, see military aircraft.
The age of oar and ram
The first craft fitted purposely to make war were conversions of the dugouts, inflatable bladders, papyrus rafts, or hide boats used in everyday transport. It is probable that the conversion at first consisted simply of a concentration of weapons in the hands of a raiding party. In time conversions added offensive and defensive powers to the craft itself. As vessels became more seaworthy and more numerous, warships designed as such developed both as marauders and as defenses against marauders. The first craft designed and built especially for combat may have sailed in the fleets of Crete and Egypt 5,000 years ago.
The first recorded appearance of warships is on the Nile River, where Egypt's history has centred since antiquity. These boats were built of bundles of reeds lashed together to form a narrow, sharp-ended hull and coated with pitch, and they were hardly suited for tempestuous seas. By 3000 bc larger wooden seagoing versions of the reed craft sailed for distant cruising, trade, and conquest.
Egyptian wooden ships had both oars and sails, being fitted with a bipod (inverted V) mast and a single, large, square sail. The whole mast could be lowered when under oars. Large Egyptian ships had more than 20 oars to a side, with two or more steering oars. The war galley was built to the same pattern but was of stouter construction. Modifications that could be easily incorporated in a merchant ship's hull under construction included elevated decks fore and aft for archers and spearmen, planks fitted to the gunwales to protect the rowers, and a small fighting top high on the mast to accommodate several archers. Some galleys had a projecting ram, well above the waterline, which may have been designed to crash through the gunwale of a foe, ride up on deck, and swamp or capsize him.
By about 2000 bc Crete had evolved into a naval power exercising effective control of the sea in the eastern Mediterranean. Little record exists of Minoan seapower, yet these maritime people may have been the first to build a warship designed as such from the keel up, rather than as a modification of a merchant ship. Thus it was probably the Minoans who began to differentiate between war craft and merchantmen and between the rowing galley and sailing vessel.
Sometime in the 2nd millennium bc the commodious merchantman evolved as a beamy "round ship" powered by sails and emphasizing cargo capacity at the expense of speed. By contrast, the fast fighting "long ship" was narrower, faster, and more agile than the tubby cargo ship. Developing as both predator on and protector of maritime trade and coastal cities, it hoisted its sails for cruising but depended on oars when in action.
The Cretan warship had a single mast and a single bank of oars. The sharply pointed or "beaked" bows suggest an emphasis on the tactical use of the ram.
Beginning about 1100 bc, the Phoenicians dominated the eastern Mediterranean for about three centuries. Information about Phoenician ships is fragmentary, but they appear to have been built primarily for trading, with a capacity to fight effectively if necessary.
Phoenician trading ships were apparently galleys, mounting a single pole mast with a square sail and with steering oars to port and starboard. Their war galleys show a Cretan influence: low in the bow, high in the stern, and with a heavy pointed ram at or below the waterline. Oars could be carried in a staggered, two-bank arrangement, allowing more oars to be mounted in a ship of a given length and increasing power and momentum. Because the ram was the principal weapon, the vessel's slender build and greater rowing power were important in providing more speed for the decisive shock of battle.
Unlike the Egyptians, for whom wood was scarce and costly, the Aegean peoples had an abundance of timber for shipbuilding. The earlier Greek warships were used more to carry attack personnel than as fighting vessels. No mention is made in the Iliad, for instance, of sea warfare. Even the pirates of the time were sea raiders seeking their booty ashore rather than in sea actions. The so-called long penteconter, mentioned by Herodotus, was employed in exploring, raiding, and communicating with outlying colonies. Light and fast, with 25 oars to a side, it played an important role in the early spread of Grecian influence throughout the Mediterranean. As the Greek maritime city-states sped the growth of commerce and thus the need for protection at sea, there evolved a galley built primarily for fighting. The first galleys, called uniremes (Latin: remus, "oar"), mounted their oars in a single bank and were undecked or only partially decked. They were fast and graceful with high, curving stem and stern. In Homeric times some carried an embolon, a beak or ram, which became standard in succeeding centuries.
Biremes and triremes
The bireme (a ship with two banks of oars), probably adopted from the Phoenicians, followed and became the leading warship of the 8th century bc. Greek biremes were probably about 80 feet (24 metres) long with a maximum beam around 10 feet (3 metres). Within two or three generations the first triremes (ships with three vertically superimposed banks of oars) appeared. This type gradually took over as the primary warship, particularly after the Greeks' great sea victory at the Battle of Salamis (480 bc).
Like its predecessors, the trireme mounted a single mast with a broad, rectangular sail that could be furled. The mast was lowered and stowed when rowing into the wind or in battle. Built on an entirely different system from the Egyptians—with keel, frames, and planking—these were truly seagoing warships.
After Salamis, the trireme continued as the backbone of the Greek fleet, with the ram continuing as its primary weapon. Its keel, like those of its predecessors, formed the principal-strength member, running the length of the ship and curving upward at each end. The ram, usually shod in bronze, formed a forward prolongation that gained effectiveness from the heavy keel back of it. Additional longitudinal strength came from a storming bridge, a gangway along the centreline from bow to stern along which the crew raced to board when a foe was rammed. Gradually, with ships becoming steadily heavier, boarding assumed greater importance and the ram lost some of its importance.
A trireme of the 5th century bc may have had a length of about 125 feet (38 metres), a beam of 20 feet (6 metres), and a draft of 3 feet (1 metre). Manned by about 200 officers, seamen, and oarsmen (perhaps 85 on a side), with a small band of heavily armed epibatai (marines), under oars it could reach seven knots (seven nautical miles per hour; one knot equals 1.15 statute miles per hour or 1.85 km per hour). Extremely light and highly maneuverable, the classical trireme represented the most concentrated application of human muscle power to military purposes ever devised. The oarsmen sat on three levels, which were slightly staggered laterally and fore and aft to achieve the maximum number of oarsmen for the size of the hull. In rowing, the oarsmen slid back and forth on leather cushions strapped to their buttocks; this enabled full use of the powerful muscles of the thighs and abdomen.
With only scant room for provisions, such warships could not remain long at sea, and a voyage usually consisted of short hops from island to island or headland to headland. Even the largest triremes put into shore and beached for the night, resuming the passage in the morning, weather permitting. Light construction and little endurance made short distances between bases essential and frequent refits imperative.
Later developments
The trireme reached its peak development in Athens. By the middle of the 4th century bc, Athenians employed quadriremes (four-bank seating), with quinqueremes appearing soon thereafter. In the late 4th and early 3rd century bc an arms race developed in the eastern Mediterranean, producing even larger multibanked ships. Macedonia's rulers built 18-banked craft requiring crews of 1,800 men. Ptolemaic Egypt capped them with 20s and 30s. Ptolemy III even laid down a 40 (tesseraconter) with a design length of over 400 feet and calling for a crew of 4,000 rowers. The vessel was never actually used. (The multiplicity of "banks," once a puzzle to historians, signifies the number of rowers on each oar or row of oars rather than an almost unimaginable vertical piling-up of banks.)
This same arms race brought other changes of significance. Until the late 4th century bc, maneuver, marines, and the ram constituted a warship's offensive strength, and archers provided close-in fire. Demetrius I Poliorcetes of Macedonia is credited with introducing heavy missile weapons on ships at the end of the century, starting a trend that has continued to the present day. Demetrius' ships mounted crossbowlike catapults, for hurling heavy darts, and stone-throwing machines of the type the Romans later called ballistae. From this time on, large warships carried these weapons, enabling them to engage a foe at standoff ranges, though ramming and boarding also continued. Temporary wooden turrets—forecastles and sterncastles—were similarly fitted to provide elevated platforms for archers and slingers.
Following the fragmentation of the brief empire of Alexander the Great, sea power developed elsewhere. The city-state of Rhodes built a small but competent fleet to protect its vital shipping. Meanwhile to the west, Carthage, a state with ancient maritime origins, rose to prominence on the north coast of Africa and by about 300 bc had become the foremost Mediterranean naval power. Carthage's navy consisted probably of the same ram-galley types developed by its ancestral Phoenicians and by the Greeks.
Coincidentally, across the sea to the north the city-state of Rome expanded to include most of the southern Italian peninsula, with its extensive seacoast and maritime heritage. Rome's growth southward collided with Carthage's ambitions in Sicily, leading to the First Punic War, which began in 264 bc. Unlike their seafaring opponents, the Romans were not a naval power. When in the fourth year of the war Carthage sent a fleet against Sicily, Rome realized its fatal disadvantage and moved to remedy it. The Greek city-states it had conquered had long seagoing experience. Employing their shipbuilders and learning also from the foe, Rome built a fleet of triremes and quinqueremes, the latter patterned after a Carthaginian warship that ran aground in Roman territory early in the war.
Not content with copying the enemy's tactics, the Romans took land warfare to sea and forced the Carthaginians to fight on Roman terms. Each Roman galley had fitted in the bow a hinged gangplank with a grappling spike or hook (the corvus) in the forward end, thus providing a boarding ramp. They added to the crews many more marines than warships usually carried.
The Phoenicians and Greeks had emphasized ramming, with boarding as a secondary tactic. A Roman captain rammed and then dropped the gangplank. Ram and corvus locked the galleys together, and the Roman marines boarded, overwhelming the opponent. The Roman fleet had extraordinary success in the great naval Battle of Mylae off northeast Sicily, destroying or capturing 44 ships and 10,000 men. After other victories, and some defeats, by the end of the First Punic War, 241 bc, Rome had become the leading sea power.
As the Roman navy evolved, so did its warships. Though pictorial evidence is ambiguous, it seems clear that the gangplank and corvus disappeared as the Romans gained experience in sea warfare. Later Roman warships appear to have been conventional fully decked ram-galleys mounting one or two wooden turrets (probably dismountable) for archers. To the single mast with rectangular sail was added a bowsprit carrying a small sail, the artemon, Falces, or long spars tipped with blades, were used by Julius Caesar's fleet against the sailing vessels of the Veneti of northwestern Gaul to cut their rigging and immobilize them. Catapults and ballistae served as mechanical artillery, and it was under their fire that Caesar's legions landed in England.
Early Roman warships were all large; to escort merchantmen and combat pirates Rome found need for a lighter type, the liburnian. Probably developed by the pirates themselves, this was originally a light, fast unireme to which the Romans added a second bank of oars. In the Battle of Actium, 31 bc, Octavian's skilled fleet commander, Agrippa, used his liburnians to good effect. Although polyremes continued to be built after Actium, the liburnian became the predominant Roman man-of-war.
The Byzantine Empire
With the breakup of the western Roman Empire, naval organization and activity in the west decayed. In the eastern Roman Empire, however, the need for sea power was well appreciated. During the 11 centuries that the Roman Empire centred on Constantinople, the Byzantine rulers maintained a highly organized fleet. Their original type of warship was the liburnian, called in Greek the dromōn; it was built in several different sizes, the heavier designed to bear the weight of battle and the lighter single-bank dromons serving as cruisers and scouts.
Throughout the eastern Roman Empire's existence warships changed little except in rig and armament. An average large dromon measured up to 150 feet (46 metres) in length, with 100 oars and one or two fighting towers for marines. At some point early in the Christian era, the lateen sail, three-cornered and suspended from an angled yard, probably adopted from the Arabs, came into general use. Eastern warships had two or three masts. In a departure from classical customs, these were left in place in battle. Contemporary pictures show rams above the waterline.
Missile-launching weapons grew in size, some hurling projectiles as large as 1,000 pounds (450 kg) up to 750 yards (685 metres). Greek fire, a combustible material for setting fire to enemy ships, was invented in the 7th century or earlier. The various compounds passing under the name used a blend of some of the following: pitch, oil, charcoal, sulfur, phosphorus, and salt. As the composition of Greek fire was improved, tubes shaped into the mouths of savage monsters were placed in the bows of war galleys and the flaming substance, which water merely spread, was hurled on the enemy. Greek fire was an important factor in terrifying and repelling the Muslim fleet in sieges of Constantinople from the early 8th century on.
Viking vessels
By the beginning of the Viking period, about ad 800, the early and primitive Scandinavian craft had evolved into the well-known Viking ship, a sturdy, double-ended, clinker-built (i.e., with overlapping planks) galley put together with iron nails and caulked with tarred rope. It had a mast and square sail, which was lowered in battle; high bow and stern, with removable dragon heads; and a single side rudder on the starboard (steer-board) quarter.
Viking vessels were essentially large open boats. Like the Homeric Greeks, the Vikings at first made no distinction between war and cargo ships, the same vessel serving either purpose as the occasion demanded. Later, however, they built larger ships specifically designed for war. By ad 1000 they sailed three categories of these: those with fewer than 20 thwarts (40 rowers); those with up to 30; and the "great ships" with more than 30, which might be considered the battleship of the time. Expensive and unwieldy, though formidable in battle, the great ships were never numerous. The middle group, maneuverable and fast, proved most valuable.
Viking "long ships" played an important role in exploration (reaching Greenland and America before Columbus), in the consolidation of kingdoms in Scandinavia, and in far-ranging raids and conquests. In them the Norsemen invaded the British Isles and established themselves in Normandy, whence their descendants under William I the Conqueror crossed the Channel in 1066.
The age of gun and sail
To about the end of the 13th century, the typical ship in northern European waters remained a clinker-built, single-masted, square-rigged descendant of the long ship. In that century, and even more in the 14th, changes began that would bring an end to the long dominance of the oar in battle. About ad 1200 came one of the great steps in the history of sail: the introduction, probably in the Netherlands, of the stern rudder. This rudder, along with the deep-draft hull, the bowsprit and, in time, additional masts, transformed the long ship into the true sailing ship, which could beat into the wind as well as sail with it.
Until the 15th century, northern ships probably continued to have single masts, though in the Mediterranean a two-mast rig carrying lateen (fore-and-aft) sails had existed for some time. Then change came rapidly in the north, spurred on by Henry V of England's construction of large and strongly built warships for his cross-Channel French campaigns. The remains of one of these, the Grâce Dieu, reflected the clinker-built construction of the Viking long ship, but they had a keel to beam ratio of about 2.5:1 and now carried a second mast.
Some historians believe that the Grâce Dieu carried a third mast. At any rate, in a few decades ships had three and, by the end of the century, large vessels mounted four masts carrying eight or more sails. A three-master carried a large sail on each mast and in addition a main topsail and the spritsail under the bowsprit—the rig, in fact, of Christopher Columbus' Santa Maria in 1492. Ships, no longer dependent on fair winds, could and did range the world.
The beamier round sailing ship used for commerce also became the warship when the need arose. In times of war, temporary wooden castles were added at the bow and stern to provide bulwarked platforms for archers and slingers. A complement of men-at-arms embarked, in addition to the ship's seamen. Tactics were usually simple and straightforward, opposing fleets closing and attempting to beat down each other's archers before grappling and boarding. At war's end, off came the castles, and the ship went back to trading.
The trading vessel that could be promptly adapted to war did not, however, fulfill the need of the European nations for navies. The coming of gunpowder and the period of world exploration brought changes that were to cause the sailing man-of-war to become more and more distinct from the merchantman.
Gun-armed warships
The employment of guns afloat, bringing a slow but progressive revolution in warship construction and naval tactics, had its first small beginnings by the 14th century. The first guns used at sea, undoubtedly hand weapons, were probably in Mediterranean galleys in the 13th or early 14th century. Such weapons played a minor role. In fact, in the numerous sea battles of the Greeks, Genoese, Moors, Turks, and Venetians during this period there is no mention of guns. But by the middle of the 14th century, the English, French, Spanish, and other navies mounted guns. Most were relatively small swivel pieces or breech-loading deck guns located in the castles fore and aft, but heavier guns were added later. The Mediterranean galleys of Venice, Turkey, and Spain at first simply mounted a heavy gun rigidly in a timber bed that was fixed to fire the gun forward over the bow. By the late 15th century these rigid mounts gave way to sliding mounts for the main centreline bow gun, as the pieces were called. Though some of these pieces were quite large, the light structure of a galley meant that there was only one large gun per vessel.
European guns were originally built up of wrought-iron bars welded together to form a tube, then banded with a thick iron hoop. Initially, they were breechloaders with an open trough at the rear of the barrel through which the ball was loaded and a cylindrical chamber, filled with powder, inserted and wedged tight. They were replaced after 1500 by brass muzzle-loaders, cast in one piece. Some of these muzzle-loaders attained great size for their day; by the mid-16th century even some 60-pounders (firing 60-pound [27-kg] solid shot) were mounted in the largest ships. In this century also, increasing knowledge of iron metallurgy led to the production of cast-iron cannon that slowly replaced the brass guns in ships, though brass remained predominant for the lighter calibre well into the 19th century.
The Portuguese and Spanish, and then the French, seem to have been the first to cover transoceanic distances with cannon-armed warships. Vasco da Gama reached Calicut in India in 1498 with a squadron of cannon-armed carracks, and the Portuguese gained a number of signal victories over their Muslim opponents in the East in the early years of the 16th century using standoff artillery tactics that their foes could not match. The Spanish were patrolling the waters of the Caribbean in ships well-provided with wrought-iron breech-loading cannon by the 1520s or '30s, if not before, and heavily armed French raiders were not far behind.
Henry VII of England created the first true oceangoing battle fleet. The "king's ships" carried many guns, but most of these weapons were small breechloaders. Following him, Henry VIII initiated gunports in English warships, a development that was to have a far-reaching effect on man-of-war design. Neither stability nor structural strength favoured heavy guns in the high castles built upon the deck, so that Henry's introduction of gunports, at first low in the waist of the ship and afterward along the full broadside, made possible the true heavy-gun warship. The cutting of gunports in the hull must also have been a factor in causing the northern nations to shift from clinker-built ships to caravels with flush-fitting planks, a change that took place in the early 1500s.
The armament of an English man-of-war of the early 16th century consisted of four or five short-barreled cannon, or curtals, a similar number of demicannon, and culverins. The average cannon, a short-range gun, hurled an iron ball of about 50 pounds (23 kg), and the demicannon one of 32 pounds (14 kg). The culverin, a longer and stronger gun, fired a smaller shot over a longer range and was likely to be more accurate at other than point-blank range. Supplementing these standoff "ship killers," in descending size of ball fired (down to only several ounces), were the smaller demiculverin, saker (quarter culverin), falcon (half saker), falconet, and robinet.
A great warship of the 16th century mounted a total of large and small pieces approximating the numbers mounted in battleships of World War II. For its original complement in 1514, Henry VIII's best-known warship, the Henry Grâce à Dieu, had 186 guns. Most of these were small, but they also included a number of iron "great guns."
As the 17th century advanced, guns and gunpowder improved. Gun carriages were given heavy wooden sides called brackets, which had sockets for the gun trunnions and were joined by similar flat timbers called transoms. The carriage was supported on wooden trucks and hauled out after recoil by heavy tackle.
From oar to sail
The galleass
The coming of mighty men-of-war did not mean the immediate end of oared warships. In fact, some types of galleys and oared gunboats continued to serve well into the 19th century. Indeed, the Battle of Lepanto (1571), in which a combined European fleet defeated the Turkish fleet, differed little from traditional galley warfare with two exceptions. First, the scale of the action was very large, with more than 200 cannon-armed galleys on each side. Each of those galleys was propelled by 50 to 200 oarsmen and carried at least 50 additional men to fight and to man the guns and sails. Second, the European line of battle included six Venetian galleasses, a compromise type developed in the transition from oar to sail. These huge vessels, which depended on sail as well as oar, bristled with guns, including heavy ones in broadside. Although cumbersome to maneuver, their concentrated fire contributed importantly to victory.
Galleasses outside the Mediterranean differed somewhat from Venice's in that they were basically full-rigged sailing ships carrying broadsides of heavy guns and a bank of auxiliary oars for mobility. The hybrid existed only in small numbers and soon passed out of fashion to the north.
The galleon
The "great ships" of Henry VII and Henry VIII were carracks: starting basically with the lines of beamy, seaworthy merchant ships, designers had added stronger timbers, masts, sailpower, broadside guns, and high-built forecastles and aftercastles. In the galleon, the successor to the carrack, the general principles of design of sailing men-of-war were established, and they ruled, without fundamental change, for three centuries. The galleon retained certain characteristics of the galley, such as its slender shape, and in fact it had a greater length-to-beam ratio than the carrack. But the carrack's high-built forecastle, which tended to catch the wind and thus make the ship unmaneuverable, was eliminated from the galleon's design. The resulting ship was much more seaworthy. Like carracks, the larger galleons might carry a single mizzenmast or two relatively small masts, the second being called the bonaventure.
In the longer, leaner galleon, the number of heavy guns was increased until they ran the full length of the ship's broadside in one or two tiers (and later three).
The galleon came into favour in northern Europe during the middle of the 16th century. The far-ranging experience of mariners and improved construction techniques led to great fighting ships that were both lower in the water and more seaworthy than their predecessors. The sides now sloped inward from the lowest gun deck up to the weather deck. This "tumble home" helped concentrate the weight of the large broadside guns toward the centreline, improving the ship's stability.
By this time it had become normal for warships to mount powerful broadsides of 28 or more ship-smashing guns, a much heavier armament in proportion to their size than their predecessors. For their handy, maneuverable ships, the British had relatively large cannon carried in broadsides. Thus they were designed for off-fighting, permitting the English fleet to get the most out of its ships' superior maneuvering qualities. When the Spanish Armada arrived in 1588, the British sought and fought a sea battle with ship-killing guns, rather than the conventional fleet engagement of the past that concentrated on ramming, boarding, and killing men in hand-to-hand combat. With superior ability and long-range culverins, the English ships punished the invading fleet outside the effective range of the heavy but shorter-range cannon the Spanish favoured. This historic running battle of July 1588 closed one era and opened a greater one of big-gun sailing navies.
Ship of the line
The late Elizabethan galleon that began the true fighting ship of the line reached its culmination in England's Prince Royal of 1610 and the larger Sovereign of the Seas of 1637, along with similar great ships in other European navies. These two English ships mounted broadside guns on three decks; the Sovereign of the Seas, the most formidable ship afloat of its time, carried 100 guns. In this mobile fortress displacing approximately 1,500 tons, there was some reduction of height; the bonaventure mizzen disappeared, leaving the standard three masts that capital ships thereafter carried.
Soon ships began to be standardized into different categories. James I organized his ships into four ranks, and, by the mid-17th century, six "rates" existed as a general concept, though not yet a system. The number of guns a ship carried determined its rate, with a first-rater mounting 100 guns and a sixth-rater 18. An important improvement came in the standardization of batteries in the higher rates so that guns on the same deck were of the same weight and calibre rather than mixed, as originally in the Sovereign of the Seas. Near the end of the century, guns began to be described by their weight and calibre, with the 32-pounder long gun favoured as the standard lower-deck weapon for British warships.
The frequent hard-fought sea battles of the 17th century, particularly in the Anglo-Dutch wars, led to the column formation of heavy warships called line ahead. In the line formation, each warship followed in the wake of the ship ahead so that every ship in the line had a clear field of fire for a broadside discharge of its guns. The adoption of line-ahead tactics made it necessary to standardize the battle line, which had consisted of ships of widely varying strength. Now only the more powerful warships were considered suitable "to lie in the line of battle." Hence the origin by the 1700s of the term line-of-battle ship, or the ship of the line, and, in the second half of the 19th century, the derived term battleship—ships that could hit the hardest and endure the most punishment.
Some first-raters were built to carry as many as 136 guns, but, because the biggest ships were often cumbersome, relatively few were built. The handier 74-gun third-rater proved particularly successful, combining sufficient hitting power with better speed and maneuverability. Most of the ships of the line of the late 18th and early 19th centuries were 74s. One of these might be approximately 175 feet long with two full gun decks, the lower mounting the heaviest guns, by the Napoleonic Wars usually 32-pounders. The upper gun deck customarily carried 24-pounders, while the forecastle and quarterdeck mounted lighter guns. The bigger ships were similar but had three covered gun decks instead of two. Viscount Nelson's Victory, launched in 1765 and preserved in dry dock as it was at Trafalgar in 1805, is a classic example of this powerful type.
Warships gradually improved in design through the 17th and 18th centuries. New types of sails, providing more canvas and more versatile combinations for varying weather conditions, such as staysails and the jib sail, came into use in the 17th century. Soon thereafter the steering wheel replaced the old whip staff, or tiller.
Frigates and smaller vessels
Ships of the line, first to fourth rates, had strong, fast frigates as consorts. This ancestor of the modern cruiser evolved during the mid-18th century for scouting, patrol, and escort, as well as for attacking enemy merchantmen. The frigate carried its main battery on a single gun deck, with other guns on forecastle and quarterdeck. Like ships of the line, they varied in size and armament, ranging from about 24 guns in early small frigates to as many as 56 in some of the last. Two classic examples, still preserved, are the U.S. Navy's Constitution, with 44 guns, and Constellation, with 38.
Smaller vessels aided frigates in their blockade, escort, commerce raiding, and other duties. The single-masted cutter served as scout and coastal patrol craft. Brig and schooner-rigged types, generally called sloops of war, by the time of the American Revolution grew into the three-masted, square-rigged "ship sloop." Called a corvette on the Continent, the fast ship sloop complemented frigates on the fringes of the fleet. Smaller sloops, schooners, brigs, and luggers were widely used for special service. Fleets also needed ordnance and supply ships and other auxiliaries; these were usually merchantmen taken into service in war emergency. Converted merchantmen, such as John Paul Jones's Bonhomme Richard, often played combat roles. Fleets also had various special types, such as fire ships and bomb ketches. The latter, with two large mortars hurling bombs of about 200 pounds (91 kg), were developed by France in the late 1600s and were used with devastating effect against Barbary pirate ports.
Learn More in these related Britannica articles:
Submarine, any naval vessel that is capable of propelling itself beneath the water as well as on the water's surface. This is a unique capability among warships, and submarines are quite different in design and appearance from surface ships. Submarines first became a major factor in naval warfare during World War…
military technology
Military technology, range of weapons, equipment, structures, and vehicles used specifically for the purpose of warfare. It includes the knowledge required to construct such technology, to employ it in combat, and to repair and replenish it. The technology of war may…
rocket and missile system
Rocket and missile system, any of a variety of weapons systems that deliver explosive warheads to their targets by means of rocket propulsion. Rocket is a general term used broadly to describe a variety of jet-propelled missiles in which forward motion results from reaction to the rearward ejection of matter (usually…
military aircraft
Military aircraft, any type of aircraft that has been adapted for military use. Aircraft have been a fundamental part of military power since the mid-20th century. Generally speaking, all military aircraft fall into one of the following categories: fighters, which secure control of essential airspaces by driving off or destroying enemy…
nuclear reactor: Ship-propulsion reactors…confers a strategic advantage on naval surface vessels as well, because it eliminates their dependence on refueling from vulnerable tankers or in foreign ports.…
More About Naval ship5 references found in Britannica articles
Assorted References
- letter of marque
- logistics
- navy
- In navy
- nuclear propulsion
- relation to caravel
- In caravel


text:
buy now
Mendini by Cecilio trumpets are ideal for beginner or student musicians. This trumpet features a phosphorus copper lead mouth pipe, topped with 3 comfortable white mother of pearl key inlaid and 3 smooth action valves. Every trumpet is play tested at Cecilio's factory and re-tested at their Los Angeles distribution center to ensure that their high quality standards are met. This is why thousands of instructors have approved these trumpets. This trumpet package includes a plush-lined nylon covered hard shell case with backpack straps (making it convenience to carry to school or band practice), a pair of gloves, a soft cleaning cloth, and a bottle of valve oil. Buy with confidence as it comes with a 1- year warranty against any manufacturer's defects.Gold lacquer Bb trumpet with 7C mouthpiece
0.46 inch bore & 5 inch bell, 1st valve slide thumb saddle, 3rd valve slide with adjustable throw ring
Phosphorus copper used on lead mouth pipe (found on expensive trumpets), smooth action valves, & comfortable white faux mother of pearl inlaid buttons
Includes: Cecilio 92-D chromatic tuner, case, pocketbook, bottle of valve oil, soft polishing cloth, a pair of white gloves, and a foldable trumpet stand that is stored inside the bell
1 Year Warranty Against Manufacturer's Defects