Shipbucket

I am currently gathering information on naval design philosophy from late age of sail to net-centric era.
From 1800 to circa 1850, it is a straight forward, and from 1890 to 1945 is also easy to fallow and actually the most talked about.
The real interesting bits are the 1850-1890. In those 40 years we seen we see wood, iron and steel as construction material. We get breech loaders, muzzle loaders, and even pneumatic guns, howitzer, mortars and cannons.
Breech loaders alone are a whole book worth.
Torpedoes both powered and not, with various propulsion methods.


So far I am quite confident I can create drownings for the capital ship line:
Ship of the line=>steam ship of the line=>broadside armoured frigate/corvette=>central battery ironclad=>central battery casamate Ironclad=>battleship from pre dreadnouth all the way to fast BB of 1940's.
I have a lot of questions but the following will help me immensely.
Its the mid size and small ships I have trouble with.

Could you point me to drawings or info for those.
The most interest I have in transition ships.
When was a Iron side corvette replaced by a steel hull cruiser.
Did one replaced the other or were the two types build side by side?

Did torpedo boats appeared out of invention of self-propelled torpedo, or did they replace torpedo ram coastal ships?

Can a destroyer line be traced back to sloops? Or is it a totally independent line from those that came before them?

hmmm, I don't know to much about those, however this is what I do know=

Aviso - light cruiser - heavy cruiser - battlecruiser - pocket battleship and possibly the destroyers and small battleships of the 1940's to today.

The problem with these kinds of linear progressions is that there weren't any in reality. There were no A then B then C etc, rather it was A, B and C all together in one big pile. There were all wooden ships being built after ironclads, central battery ships after turreted ships, muzzle loaded rifles replaced breach loaders at one point and so on. There was a lot of uncertainty and except for a couple of largely inconclusive clashes here and there, very little data to go on. Everything was based on a mixture of guesswork, ivory tower thinking and a not inconsiderable amount of "hold my beer and watch this."
Not that this stops people from trying to find some sort of systematic progression and classification to pigeonhole everything into. The current pathetic insistence on shoehorning modern warships into a century old system that didn't work in the first place is an excellent example.

as Thiel say. Most ships of today, are build for a selected task they are good at and some they are not totally good at. and i bet on the same thing was in the old days, but back then they tried to build a ship that could change the game, something that resulted in some quit interesting design.

Thiel wrote:The problem with these kinds of linear progressions is that there weren't any in reality. (...)

I'm am aware of that. However it is not looking for progression on design for design base.
What I'm trying to create is an evolution in the way of thinking.

My plan is simple, if labour intensive.
Start by creating a 1800 fleet.
4-10 first rate 90-100 gun three deck ships of the line.
20-80 second rate 60-76 gun two deck ships of the line.
Frigates and sloops, the work our way year after year.
Starting with the steam engine and designing new ship when various developments appear.

Thiel wrote:The current pathetic insistence on shoehorning modern warships into a century old system that didn't work in the first place is an excellent example.

Don't get me started.
If some fleet today would build a 8000t air defence warship and call it a Trireme, because it has three decks in the hull above the waterline I wouldn't bat an eye at that.

Ehem...trireme denotes three (notional) levels of oars, not three deck levels...

...still it wouldn't surprise me if they'd invent nuclear oars...

Posting here so not to make a new thread.

Beware 34MB jpg file image.
http://www.theadmiralty.eu/wp-content/u ... ground.jpg
I know Victory and Santisma are already made.
Is any of the ships in the picture on someone's work-list?