Wooden Ships and Iron Men: Difference between revisions

[[File:s290-Battle_of_Trafalgar_17Battle of Trafalgar 17.jpg|frame|"[http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2005/10/battle-trafalgar/worrall-text England expects that every man will do his duty.]"]]

Expect stories set in this world to be filled with hard, uncompromising men who are covered in grime, with awful teeth, wooden legs, and stringy dirty hair. [[The Drunken Sailor|They will be drunk much of the time]], usually off rum or grog (rum cut with water and lime juice).<ref>Unless officers in a nation's navy, then they will be drunk on port or brandy.</ref> They may [[Talk Like a Pirate]], and are quite likely to actually BE [[Pirates]] or, if not, fight them.

This trope generally involves a [[Used Future]] sort of vision of the age of sail, with dirt, grime, barnacles, scurvy, [[A Taste of the Lash|floggings]], and other unpleasant aspects of the real time period not glossed over. If a ship or its crew are suspiciously well-scrubbed and well-fed, it's not this trope - unless the protagonists are members of the British Navy, in which case failing to keep the ship spotless could lead to floggings. But tales of action and adventure abound, with swashbucklers, pirates, heroes and villains and damsels in distress all around.

* Lampshaded in ''[[Star Trek: Generations]]'', when the crew are on the wooden ship version of ''Enterprise'', on the holodeck. (The scene, of course, is a tribute to how [[Space Is an Ocean|the franchise owes this genre big-time]].)

{{quote| '''Picard''': Just imagine what it was like. No engines, no computers. Just the wind and the sea and the stars to guide you.<br />

* ''[[Horatio Hornblower]]'':

** A series of eight movies from 1999 to 2003 by A&E. Starting with the award-winning ''[http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0129686/ Hornblower: The Even Chance]''.

* The American [[Tall Tale]] of A. B. Stormalong took place in this time period. However, like all the great American tall tales, his heart broke when the big battleships set out to sea, [[The Magic Goes Away|iron ships crewed by wooden men.]]

* The ''[[Sharpe]]'' series by Bernard Cornwell features this whenever Sharpe has to get somewhere by sea, as in ''Sharpe's Trafalgar'' and ''Sharpe's Devil''.

* The ''[[Temeraire]]'' series is basically this, except the ships are [[Dragon Rider|talking dragons.]]

* The ''Lord Ramage'' novels of Dudley Pope. They're set in the [[Horatio Hornblower]] 'verse; Ramage and Hornblower were lieutenantsmidshipmen on the same ship for a time and apparently on fairly good terms (Pope was a friend of Hornblower's author C.S. Forester). It's mentioned that Hornblower did his best to teach trigonometry to Ramage, who lacks an aptitude for math.

* ''[[wikipedia:Mr Midshipman Easy|Mr. Midshipman Easy]]'' by Frederick Marryat is a near-contemporary example, and probably set the tone for most of the later works in this vein.

* Rosemary and Stephen Vincent Benet's poem "[https://web.archive.org/web/20140314134058/http://www.constitutional.net/099.html Clipper Ships and Captains]" is an ode to this period, even going so far as to include the lines:

{{quote| When the best ships still were wooden ships<br />

* ''[[Warhammer 4000040,000|Warhammer40K]]'' is this trope [[Recycled in Space]] as far as life on board Imperial Fleet ships goes.

* ''[[Seventh7th Sea]]'' draws heavily upon this setting for any of its nautical adventures, especially anything involving the Pirate Nations.

* ''[[Sid MeiersMeier's Pirates!]]'' revolves entirely around this period in the Caribbean. The player character is a Privateer (not quite a pirate as it says on the tin) and will fight many (one-on-one) naval battles during the course of his/her career.

* This is the general theme of the Soleil Alliance, based on the East India Company, in ''[[Lambda]]''. Except that you swap out "Iron Men" with "[[Magical Girl|Magical Girls]]s".

* The ''[[Choice of Games]]'' web game, "Choice Of Broadsides", is set here. With the option, at the beginning of the game, to be about Wooden Ships And Iron '''[[Rule 63|Women]]'''.

* This might not precisely qualify,{{verify}} but in the 1500's1500s Knights of Malta who survived at least a year as a Turkish galley slave and were then rescued frequently lived to nearly 100, in an era in which the average life expectancy hadn't hit 50 yet. Jean Parisot de Valette (who survived a year as a galley slave in his youth) commanded the 9,000 defenders of Malta against 40,000 invading Turks from the front lines and won. At age 70.

** The Knights of Malta probably fit quite well, actually-; they were noted for their love of naval warfare, constantly harrying Ottoman trade in the Eastern Mediterranean. The Turkish campaign which drove them out of Rhodes, and the later (unsuccessful) campaign to drive them from Malta were intended to end their piracy. They're more strongly remembered as "knights" in the classical sense, given that they are mostly known as the successors of the original crusading order, and because their two most famous battles of the post-medieval era were the sieges of Rhodes and Malta, but naval warfare was actually what their contemporaries most knew them for.

** One of the reasons the Royal Navy became so feared is because it [[Took a Level Inin Badass]] (although it was pretty hard already) after King George II pulled a [[You Have Failed Me...]] on Admiral John Byng ''[[Candide|pour encourager les autres]].''

[[Category:WoodenUseful Ships and Iron MenNotes/History]]