Sailing has been with man since time immemorial. From sailing on rafts across small water bodies to sailing on giant ships to circumnavigate the world and reach the edge of the world even to sailing to unknown parts to conquer lands and nations, sailing has been very pivotal in the history of man.
However, in recent times, modernity has redefined what sailing is used for. We have past time the time of sailing across unknown lands in search of passages to the East. In this time, sailing is put to two major uses: military use and recreational use.
Sailboats are symbols of beauty and freedom. They are highly desirable forms of recreation and symbols of success, independence, and free time. Periods when the economy is strong lead to greater sailboat production and more sails visible on local bodies of water. A sailboat as a retirement home is the dream of many. The variety of sizes of sailboats suits them to a similar variety of lifestyles. All of these aspects seem to insure the future of the sailboat. They are a simple, elegant, and ancient form of transportation made modern; they also provide opportunities for people to enjoy that unique environment where the wind meets the water.
SAILING FOR PLEASURE
Sailing for pleasure as an act often involves short trips across a bay, day sailing, coastal cruising, and more extended offshore or ‘blue-water’ cruising. These trips can be singlehanded, or for more fun, the vessel may be crewed by families or groups of friends. Sailing vessels may proceed on their own as the only vessel sailing across open waters. They can also be part of a flotilla with other like-minded voyagers.
Sailing for recreational use became a popular venture in the early 21st century. It became more prevalent by the middle of the century when sailboats which may be operated by their owners were invented. Owners who often also gain pleasure from maintaining and modifying their craft to suit their needs and taste or may be rented for the specific trip or cruise. A professional skipper and even crew may be hired along with the boat in some cases. People take cruises in which they crew and ‘learn the ropes’ aboard craft such as tall ships, classic sailing vessels and restored working boats.
Cruising trips most of times take several days or longer and can involve a deep immersion in logistics, navigation, meteorology, local geography, and history, fishing lore, sailing knowledge, general psychological coping, and serendipity. Once the boat is acquired it is not all that expensive an endeavor, often much less expensive than a normal vacation on land. It naturally develops self-reliance, responsibility, economy, and many other useful skills. Besides improving sailing skills, all the other normal needs of everyday living must also be addressed. There are work roles that can be done by everyone in the family to help contribute to an enjoyable outdoor adventure for all.
There is a style of casual coastal cruising called gunkholing which is very popular summertime family recreational activity. It majorly involves taking a series of day sails to out of the way places and anchoring overnight while enjoying such activities as exploring isolated islands, swimming, fishing, etc. Many nearby local waters on rivers, bays, sounds, and coastlines can become great natural cruising grounds for this type of recreational sailing. Casual sailing trips with friends and family can often become lifetime bonding experiences and something will you do over and over again.
Long-distance voyaging, such as that across oceans and between far-flung ports, can be considered the near-absolute province of the cruising sailboat. This is also a recent venture in the history of modern sailing.
Most modern yachts of 25–55 feet long, propelled solely by mechanical powerplants, cannot carry the fuel sufficient for a point-to-point voyage of even 250–500 miles without needing to resupply; but a well-prepared sail-powered yacht of similar length is theoretically capable of sailing anywhere its crew is willing to guide it. And since it is a recreational venture, anywhere is really anywhere. Even considering that the cost benefits are offset by a much-reduced cruising speed, many people traveling distances in small boats come to appreciate the more leisurely pace and increased time spent on the water. In this recreational venture, the destination is not the goal but the experience, the journey itself or as it is called, the voyage.
Though a recent activity, we can trace long-distance cruising to as far back as the 1800s. Since the solo circumnavigation of Joshua Slocum in the 1890s, long-distance cruising under sail has inspired thousands of otherwise normal people to explore distant seas and horizons. The important voyages of Robin Lee Graham, Eric Hiscock, Don Street, and many others like them have shown that, while not strictly racing, ocean voyaging carries with it an inherent sense of competition, especially that between man and the elements.
Such a challenging enterprise requires keen knowledge of sailing in general as well as maintenance, navigation (especially celestial navigation), and often even international diplomacy (for which an entire set of protocols should be learned and practiced). But one of the great benefits of sailboat ownership is that one may at least imagine the type of adventure that the average affordable powerboat could never accomplish.
RACING AND SAILING
Sailing did not begin with the initial Olympics games but over time, it became a major sport in the Olympics. It is a diverse sport with many pinnacles from the Olympic Games to many world championships titles to development-based campaigns for the America’s Cup to round the world races such as the Vendee Globe and Volvo Ocean Race.
Sailboat racing is in different categories. It ranges from single person dinghy racing to large boats with 10 or more crew and from small boats costing a few thousand dollars to multimillion-dollar America’s Cup campaigns. However, the costs of participating in the high-end large boat competitions make this type of sailing one of the most expensive sports in the world.
Nevertheless, there are inexpensive ways to get involved in sailboat racing, such as at community sailing clubs, classes offered by local recreation organizations and in some inexpensive dinghy and small catamaran classes. Under these conditions, sailboat racing can be comparable to or less expensive than sports such as golf and skiing. Sailboat racing is one of the few sports in which people of all ages and genders can regularly compete with and against each other. And it is fast gaining relevance in our world today.
MILITARY USE IN MODERN TIMES
Sailing has also been put to military use more in the 20th and 21st century than any other time in the history of humanity.
In the 20th century, the internal combustion engine and gas turbine came to replace the steam engine in most ship applications. Trans-oceanic travel, transatlantic and transpacific, was a particularly important application, with steam powered Ocean liners replacing sailing ships, then culminating in the massive Superliners which included the RMS Titanic. The historic event with the Titanic lead to the Maritime Distress Safety System.
THE FIRST WORLD WAR
At the beginning of the war, the German Empire possessed countless cruisers and they had them scattered across the globe. Some of them were subsequently used to attack Allied merchant shipping. The British Royal Navy systematically hunted them down and in doing so, suffered some embarrassment from its inability to protect allied shipping. For example, the detached light cruiser SMS Emden, part of the East-Asia squadron stationed at Tsingtao, seized, or destroyed 15 merchantmen, as well as sinking a Russian cruiser and a French destroyer.
Nevertheless, it so happened that the bulk of the German East-Asia squadron – consisting of the armored cruisers SMS Scharnhorst and SMS Gneisenau, light cruisers SMS Nürnberg and SMS Leipzig and two transport ships – did not have orders to raid shipping and was instead underway to Germany when it was lost at the Battle of the Falkland Islands in December 1914.
A little time after the outbreak of hostilities and when it was already obvious that this would become a serious war, Britain initiated a naval blockade of Germany, preventing supplies from reaching its ports. This strategic plan worked out well and cut off vital military and civilian supplies. In retrospect, it was agreed that this blockade violated generally accepted international law codified by international agreements.
A blockade of stationed ships within a three-mile (5 km) radius was considered legitimate, however Britain mined international waters to prevent any ships from entering entire sections of ocean, causing danger to even neutral ships. Though there was limited response to this tactic, some expected a better response for German’s aim with its unrestricted submarine warfare.
The German U-boats attempted to cut the supply lines between North America and Britain. The nature of submarine warfare meant that attacks often came without warning, giving the crews of the merchant ships little hope of survival. After the infamous sinking of the passenger ship RMS Lusitania in 1915, Germany promised not to target passenger liners.
In 1916 the United States launched a protest over a cross-channel passenger ferry sinking, Germany modified its rules of engagement. Finally, in early 1917 Germany adopted a policy of unrestricted submarine warfare, realizing the Americans would eventually enter the war. Germany sought to strangle Allied sea lanes before the U.S. could transport a large army overseas.
The U-boat threat lessened in 1917, when merchant ships entered convoys escorted by destroyers. This tactic made it difficult for U-boats to find targets. The accompanying destroyers might sink a submerged submarine with depth charges. The losses to submarine attacks were reduced significantly. But the convoy system slowed the flow of supplies. The solution to the delays was a massive program to build new freighters. Various troop ships were too fast for the submarines and did not have to travel the North Atlantic in convoys.
The First World War also saw the first use of aircraft carriers in combat, with HMS Furious launching Sopwith Camels in a successful raid against the Zeppelin hangars at Tondern in July 1918.
The effect of the First World War to the historiography of sailing is undeniable. It gave sailing a new meaning and made the once peaceful act one to be much feared and revered. This would not change until the introduction of recreational sailing as explained above.
BATTLE OF THE ATLANTIC
The Second World War also had a major impact in the history of sailing as it picked up from where in the North Atlantic, German U-boats attempted to cut supply lines to the United Kingdom by sinking merchant ships. In the first four months of the war, they sank more than 110 vessels. That was a major loss in the armada of the British. In addition to supply ships, the U-boats occasionally attacked British and Canadian warships. One U-boat sank the British carrier HMS Courageous, while another managed to sink the battleship HMS Royal Oak in her home anchorage of Scapa Flow.
Things took a different turn by 1941. During the summer, the Soviet Union entered the war on the side of the Allies. Although the Soviets had tremendous reserves in manpower, they had lost much of their equipment and manufacturing base in the first few weeks following the German invasion. The Western Allies attempted to remedy this by sending Arctic convoys, which travelled from the United Kingdom and the United States to the northern ports of the Soviet Union: Archangel and Murmansk. The treacherous route around the North Cape of Norway was the site of many battles as the Germans continually tried to disrupt the convoys using U-boats, bombers, and surface ships.
Following the entry of the United States into the war in December 1941, U-boats sank shipping along the East Coast of the United States and Canada, the waters around Newfoundland, the Caribbean Sea, and the Gulf of Mexico. They were initially so successful that this became known among U-boat crews as the second happy time. Eventually, the institution of shore blackouts and an interlocking convoy system resulted in a drop in attacks and U-boats shifted their operations back to the mid-Atlantic.
Things began to look different, more like a turning point for the Battle of the Atlantic in early 1943 as the Allies refined their naval tactics. They effectively made use of new technology to counter the U-Boats. The Allies produced ships faster than they were sunk and lost fewer ships by adopting the convoy system.
This led to a change in the efficiency of the sips. Improved anti-submarine warfare meant that the life expectancy of a typical U-boat crew would be measured in months. The vastly improved Type 21 U-boat appeared as the war was ending, but too late to affect the outcome. In December 1943, the last major sea battle between the Royal Navy and Nazi Germany’s Kriegsmarine took place. At the Battle of North Cape, the German battleship Scharnhorst, was sunk by HMS Duke of York, HMS Belfast, and several destroyers.
CHANGES TO SAILING CULTURE
Right from the turn of the millennium, there has been the construction of stealth ships. Stealth ships are ships which employs stealth technology construction techniques in an effort to ensure that it is harder to detect by one or more of radar, visual, sonar, and infrared methods. These techniques borrow from stealth aircraft technology, although some aspects such as wake reduction are unique to stealth ships’ design. This is a major development following the introduction of sailing as a military venture. There had to be modifications made to regular ships which were earlier designed for commerce and recreation.
In additional to the architectural and technical changes made to ships used especially for military use, there are some other changes that occurred that revolutionized the course of sailing. Some of the major social changes of this period include women becoming admirals in defensive navies, being allowed to work on submarines, and being appointed captains of cruise ships.
CONCLUSION
Sailing as a venture began as a totally different thing from what it is today. Right from the beginning when men began to migrate from one location to another as the climate and drive for ultimate survival directed; down to this period where sailing has become a source of recreation and also a form of sports. The military use of sailing is recent times is also a major part of the modern history of sailing.