Wooden Ships and Iron Men: Difference between revisions

{{quote|Journey with us now, just as our hearty forefathers did, in the days of wooden ships and iron men.|'''Narrator''', ''[[Disney Theme Parks|Disneyland's Sailing Ship Columbia]]''}}

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]].)

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

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

* ''[[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:

* 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.

[[Category:{{PAGENAME}}Useful Notes/History]]