The Cambridge History of Warfare

Naval warfare in the West has been dominated for the past three centuries by large warships (‘capital ships’), using heavy artillery as their principal weapon, often drawn up in a single of line of battle so that their big guns could fire broadsides. The rival fleets of steel-clad steam-propelled warships at the battle of Jutland in 1916 deployed in much the same way as the rival fleets of wooden sailing warships in the battles of the Anglo-Dutch Wars, fought in much the same location, in the mid-seventeenth century.