Wooden Ships and Iron Men: Difference between revisions

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. But tales of action and adventure abound, with swashbucklers, pirates, heroes and villains and damsels in distress all around.

 

 

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* [[Rafael Sabatini]]'s swashbuckling [[Pirate]] books, ''[[Captain Blood]]'' and ''[[The Sea Hawk]]''.

* Quite a lot of [[John Ringo]]'s ''Emerald Sea'' and ''Against the Tide'', in the [[Council Wars]] series, are 40th century recreations of this era, due to the Fall and restrictions imposed by the world-controling AI "Mother" that make combustion-based engines beyond a certain low power output unavailable.

* The sections concerning the people of the Iron Islands in [[A Song of Ice and Fire]], especially those that take place on boats, come across like this. Bonus points for them being called the Iron Men.

* Rosemary and Stephen Vincent Benet's poem "[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:

* ''[[Open Blue]]''

* 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]]".

 

 

== Real Life ==

* This might not precisely qualify, but in the 1500's 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.

* Invoked by name by Austrian sailors after winning the Battle of Lissa, remarking that "Men of iron on wooden ships had defeated men of wood on ironclad ships" after doing exactly that (a division of Austrian wooden steam warships had caught by surprise the Italian ironclads. Various wooden vessels got disabled, two ironclads were sunk).

* Admiral David Farragut in the [[American Civil War]]. "Damn the torpedoes. Full speed ahead."

** This cannot be overexaggerated. Fair portions of the Napoleonic Royal Navy were renowned for being dangerously brave and immensely tough, with figures such as Howe, Collingwood and Cochrane often taking on far superior odds and winning because they flat out refused to be afraid. Nelson was, of course, the King of this trope, as he supposedly had a death wish, exposing himself to deadly fire at every occasion, until he died at Trafalgar. Considering the wax-wane nature of his popularity, this might've be his [[Thanatos Gambit|plan all along.]]

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

[[Category:Seaborne and Submersible Vehicles]]

[[Category:Wooden Ships And Iron Men]]