Ship of the Line

The ship of the line was the battle tank of the age of sail — a floating fortress of sixty to one hundred guns on two or three decks, designed to fight in a long column so each ship could bring her full broadside to bear without masking her consorts' fire. The 74-gun third-rate became the standard workhorse: heavy enough to stand in the line, numerous enough to form a fleet. At Trafalgar in 1805 Nelson broke the Franco-Spanish line with two columns; his flagship Victory absorbed murderous fire for twenty minutes before her guns could answer — and still secured British naval supremacy for a century. A first-rate broadside threw over a tonne of iron. In the game she is the supreme heavy warship of the Colonial Age, devastating in sustained broadside exchange, slow to maneuver, and vulnerable to fire ships and the torpedo weapons of later eras.