Comments by "Michael Wright" (@michaelwright2986) on "Why did Battleships carry torpedoes?" video.

  1. I've just been watching 5:00 to 10:00 and it looks like there's been a major change in the objective of battle; in the age of the steam iron-clad, the aim is to sink the enemy's ship. AFAIK, this wasn't the primary objective in the age of sail. Ships rarely sank, unless the magazines exploded, and in any case it was MUCH more profitable, both for the ship's crew and for the nation, to capture a vessel and bring it into your own fleet (often retaining its original name). For all the reasons you list; and this presumably explains the difference in gunnery tactics: the French aim high to disable the rigging, as this is the elegant way of disabling a ship with a view to capture. All this is implicit in what you're saying, but maybe worth foregrounding since it might imply that the early iron-clad steamships, although they still formed lines of battle like the old days, actually introduced a revolution in naval tactics. Or not, I might have got it wrong.
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