Since the end of the age of sail a ship has been any large buoyant watercraft. Ships are generally distinguished from boats based on size and cargo or passenger capacity. Ships are used on lakes, seas, and rivers for a variety of activities, such as the transport of people or goods, fishing, entertainment, public safety, and warfare. Historically, a "ship" was a vessel with sails rigged in a specific manner.
Ships and boats have developed alongside mankind. In armed conflict and in daily life they have become an integral part of modern commercial and military systems. Fishing boats are used by millions of fishermen throughout the world. Military forces operate vessels for combat and to transport and support forces ashore. Commercial vessels, nearly 35,000 in number, carried 7.4 billion tons of cargo in 2007.
Ships were key in history's great explorations and scientific and technological development. Navigators such as Zheng He spread such inventions as the compass and gunpowder. Ships have been used for such purposes as colonization and the slave trade, and have served scientific, cultural, and humanitarian needs. After the 16th century, new crops that had come from and to the Americas via the European seafarers significantly contributed to the world's population growth. Maritime transport has shaped the world's economy into today's energy-intensive pattern.
Read more about Ship: Nomenclature, Types of Ships, Architecture, Lifecycle, Measuring Ships, Ship Pollution, Buoyancy
Other articles related to "ship, ships":
... Prince Charles was the first "civilian" passenger to board the ship, on her voyage from the shipyard in Clydebank to drydock in Greenock ... some 500 passengers from the burning French Line ship Antilles ... Service and Special Boat Service team which parachuted into the sea to conduct a search of the ship ...
... She was renamed while under construction to commemorate the earlier ship ... This ship was the fifth US Navy ship to bear the name in honor of the Revolutionary War Battle of Lexington ...
... Two United States Navy ships have borne the name Tarawa, after the Pacific atoll that was the scene of a bloody fight in the Pacific War ... The second Tarawa (LHA-1) is an amphibious assault ship commissioned in 1976 ... This article includes a list of ships with the same or similar names ...
... On 15 June 1992, the ship was donated as a museum and now operates as the USS Lexington Museum on the Bay at 27°48'53 N, 97°23'19, 2914 North Shoreline Blvd, Corpus Christi, Texas ... The ship is carefully maintained, and areas of the ship previously off-limits are becoming open to the public every few years ... The ship's World War II-era gun battery is also being partially restored using guns salvaged from scrapped ships ...
... USNS Watertown (T-AGM-6) was a Watertown-class missile range instrumentation ship acquired by the U.S ... Navy in 1960 and converted from her Victory ship cargo configuration to a missile tracking ship, a role she retained for eleven years before being placed out of service in 1971 ...
Famous quotes containing the word ship:
“There be three things which are too wonderful for me, yea, four which I know not: the way of an eagle in the air; the way of a serpent upon a rock; the way of a ship in the midst of the sea; and the way of a man with a maid.”
—Bible: Hebrew Proverbs, 30:18-19.
From the oracle of Agur, son of Jakeh.
“If the oarsmen of a fast-moving ship suddenly cease to row, the suspension of the driving force of the oars doesn’t prevent the vessel from continuing to move on its course. And with a speech it is much the same. After he has finished reciting the document, the speaker will still be able to maintain the same tone without a break, borrowing its momentum and impulse from the passage he has just read out.”
—Marcus Tullius Cicero (106–43 B.C)
“I would rather not see such winds subside, which carry your slow ship away, although they leave me, cast down, on an empty shore, often, with clenched hand, calling you cruel.”
—Propertius Sextus (c. 50–16 B.C.)