Ship - photo wallpapers; Galawallpapers.com : A ship is a large, sea-going watercraft, sometimes with multiple decks. A ship usually has sufficient size to carry its own boats, such as lifeboats, dinghies, or runabouts. A rule of thumb saying (though it doesn't always apply) goes: a boat can fit on a ship, but a ship can't fit on a boat. Often local law and regulation will define the exact size (or the number of masts) which a boat requires to become a ship. (Note that one refers to submarines as boats). Compare vessel. During the age of sail, ship signified a ship-rigged vessel, that is, one with three or more masts, usually three, all square-rigged. Such a vessel would normally have one fore and aft sail on her aftermost mast which was usually the mizzen. Almost invariably she would also have a bowsprit but this was not part of the definition. The same economic pressures which increased sizes to the point of carrying four or five masts, also introduced the fore and aft rig to larger vessels, so few ship-rigged vessels were built with more than three masts. The five-masted Preussen was the outstanding example but the big German ships and barques were built partly for prestige reasons. Nautical means related to sailors, particularly customs and practices at sea. Naval is the adjective pertaining to ships though in common usage, it has come to be more particularly associated with the noun navy. One can measure ships in terms of overall length, length of the waterline, beam (breadth), depth (distance between the crown of the weather deck and the top of the keelson), draft (distance between the highest waterline and the bottom of the ship) and tonnage. A number of different tonnage definitions exist; most measure volume rather than weight, and are used when describing merchant ships for the purpose of tolls, taxation, etc. In Britain until the Merchant Shipping Act of 1876, ship-owners could load their vessels until their decks were almost awash, resulting in a dangerously unstable condition. Additionally, anyone who signed onto such a ship for a voyage and, upon realizing the danger, chose to leave the ship, could end up in jail. Samuel Plimsoll, a member of Parliament, realised the problem and engaged some engineers to derive a fairly simple formula to determine the position of a line on the side of any specific ships hull which, when it reached the surface of the water during loading of cargo, meant the ship had reached its maximum safe loading level. To this day, that mark, called the Plimsoll Mark, exists on ships sides, and consists of a circle with a horizontal line through the center. Because different types of water, (summer, fresh, tropical fresh, winter north Atlantic) have different densities, subsequent regulations required painting a group of lines forward of the Plimsoll mark to indicate the safe depth (or freeboard above the surface) to which a specific ship could load in water of various densities. Hence the ladder of lines seen forward of the Plimsoll mark to this day. Ships may occur collectively as fleets, flotillas or squadrons. Convoys of ships commonly occur. A collection of ships for military purposes may compose a navy or a task force. In the past, people counting or grouping disparate types of ship may refer to the individual vessels as bottoms. Groups of sailing ships could constitute, say, a fleet of 40 sail. Groups of submarines (particularly German U-boats in the 1940s) may hunt in packs (often erroneously called wolf packs). Some types of ships and boats: Auto carrier; Aircraft carrier Bulk carrier: Cargo ship; Corvette; Cable Layer; Capital ship; Catamaran; Coaster; Commerce raider; Container ship; Cruise ship; Cutter. Destroyer; Diving support vessel Ferry; Frigate Guided missile cruiser: Icebreaker; Junk; Laker; Lugger; Minesweeper; Minehunter; Ocean liner Sailing ship; Sloop Submarine; Supertanker Tanker; Tender; Train ferry; Tugboat Shipyard Yacht
