Boats! Rafts! Jet skis! Fun things that float on water and make huge waves to get your friends wet. But boats weren’t always fun, comfy things with which to goof off or have a luxurious cruise. Boats used to be used to transport slaves, soldiers, and the like. Only the elite, ruling class could afford to have any comforts along the journey. Boats have history, so lets look into it!
Boats were invented in Mesopotamia, as a way of crossing the two rivers on the nation’s sides. Early boats were rudimentary and crude, and they kind of sucked. They were slow, heavy, and very bad at staying afloat. Later on, people came up with sailboats, so one could relax and ride the wind instead of rowing for hours on end. But, as a lot of people know, wind changes. If an inexperienced sailor took to the seas without an oar, trusting fully in the wind, and then the wind stopped, what was he supposed to do? So they came up with monoremes, bigger boats with sails that could be raised or lowered, (to reduce drag if the wind was blowing at the ships bow) and a single layer of rowers under the deck. Then they realized that the monoremes were pretty good at their job. So they put two rows of rowers (a bireme), then three (a trireme), and used slaves to row. It was at this time that boats became almost entirely commonplace, with ports being built in Rome, Greece, Egypt, Israel, and anywhere else with power enough to warrant supplies.
Boats were also used in battle. A big, flat, open deck on a boat could accommodate some kind of siege weapon to be built, and voilé, battleships were born, using primitive cannons to engage battle at sea. Eventually, more modern warships came around, like the wooden-clads and iron-clads used in the Civil War, and even cotton-clad ships in the South. (They literally stuck a bunch of cotton onto the side of a ship. Unsurprisingly, it sucked. If you shot just one flaming cannonball or arrow, the ship would go up in flames instantly.)
After that, World Wars One and Two came around and there are all sorts of stories about battleships and their incredible achievements, but this essay is already too big, so I won’t go into those.
The Wooshing King 