Maritime timeline

This is a timeline of events in maritime history.

Prehistory

• About 45,000 BC: first humans arrive in Australia, presumably by boats and land bridge.

Antiquity

• About 6,000 BC: Earliest evidence of dugout canoes.[1]
• 5th millennium BC: Earliest known depiction of a sailing boat.[2]
• About 2,000 BC:
  • Hannu dispatches a fleet to the Land of Punt.
  • Austronesian people migrate from Taiwan to Indonesia, preceding the colonization of Polynesia.[3][4][5]
• 1575–1520 BC Dover Bronze Age Boat, oldest known plank vessel, was built.
• About 1175 BC: Battle of the Delta, one of the first recorded naval battles, during Ancient Egypt's war against the Sea Peoples.
• 1194–1174 BC: Supposed timespan for the events of Homer's Iliad and Odyssey.
• About 1000 BC: Nusantaran people developed tanja sail and junk sail.[6][7][8][9]
• Around 600 BC: According to Herodotus, Necho II sends Phoenician expedition to circumnavigate Africa.
• 6th century BC: Canal of the Pharaohs is built in Egypt.
• 542 BC: First written record of a trireme.
• 5th century BC: Hanno the Navigator explores the coast of West Africa.
• 480 BC: Battle of Salamis, arguably the largest naval battle in ancient times.
• 247 BC: Lighthouse of Alexandria completed.
• 214 BC: Lingqu Canal built.
• 31 BC: Battle of Actium decides the Final War of the Roman Republic.
• 50 AD: Malay and Javanese settlers reached Madagascar.[10][11]
• 100 AD: Large ships called K'un-lun Po sailed between China and India.
• About 200 AD: Chuan (junk ships) are developed in China. Chinese people learned junk rig from Malay people visiting their southern coast.[8][9]

Middle Ages

• 700: Javanese and Malay people reached Ghana in West Africa.[12]
• 793: The raid of Lindisfarne, first recorded Viking raid
• 851: Javanese Sailendras staged a surprise attack on the Khmers by approaching the capital from the river, after a sea crossing from Java.[13]^:35
• 916: A Javanese invaded Khmer empire, using 1000 "medium-sized" vessels, which results in Javanese victory. The head of Khmer's king then brought to Java.[14]^:187–189
• 945: Malay people from Srivijaya attacked coast of Tanganyika and Mozambique with 1000 boats and attempted to take the citadel of Qanbaloh.[15]
• 984: Pound locks used in China; See Technology of the Song Dynasty
• 986: Bjarni Herjolfsson crossed the Labrador Sea and saw North America.
• About 1000: Leif Ericson crossed the Labrador Sea to reach North America.
• 1025: Chola invasion of Srivijaya
• 1088: Dream Pool Essays by Shen Kuo, first description of a magnetic compass.
• 1159: Lübeck is rebuilt, and the Hanseatic League is founded.
• About 1190: Alexander Neckam writes the first European description of a magnetic compass.
• 13th century: Portolan charts are introduced in the Mediterranean.
• About 1280: Polynesian settlers arrive at New Zealand, the last major landmass to be populated.
• 1274: First Mongol invasion of Japan.
• 1325–1354: Ibn Batuta visits much of Africa and Asia
• 1350: Majapahit invades Samudera Pasai, with 400 jong.[16]
• 1398: Majapahit invades Kingdom of Singapura, with 300 jong and no less than 200,000 men.[17]
• 1405: Zheng He's expeditions begins.

Age of Discovery

See also: Timeline of European exploration

• 1488: Bartolomeu Dias reaches the Cape of Good Hope.
• 1492: Christopher Columbus' first voyage, first recorded non-Arctic crossing of the Atlantic
• 1497: John Cabot reaches North American mainland, as first European since the Vikings.
• 1498
  • Vasco da Gama completes the Cape Route from Europe to India.
  • Columbus reaches continental South America.
• 1513: Jorge Álvares completes the first voyage from Europe to China.
• 1522: Ferdinand Magellan's last ship arrives in Europe, first recorded circumnavigation, and crossing of the Pacific Ocean
• 1571: Battle of Lepanto, last major naval battle fought entirely between galleys.
• 1580: Francis Drake returns home from Nehalem Bay, Oregon to become the 1st circumnavigation by an Englishman.
• 1588: The Spanish Armada is destroyed, shifting naval superiority to England.
• 1602: The Dutch East India Company is founded.
• 1606: Willem Janszoon becomes the first European to reach Australia.
• 1620: Cornelis Drebbel constructs the first submarine.
• 1628: The Vasa sinks in Stockholm harbour on its maiden voyage.
• 1736: John Harrison tests the first successful marine chronometer.
• 1757: First sextant constructed
• 1771: James Cook completes the first circumnavigation without casualties to scurvy.
• 1790: Battle of Svensksund, the last major battle with participation of galleys.

Rise of steamboats and motorships

• 1783: Claude de Jouffroy constructs the first recorded steamboat.
• 1790: Canal Mania begins in Great Britain.
• 1805: The battle of Trafalgar marks the rise of the Royal Navy to a century of world domination.
• 1807: North River Steamboat, the first commercially successful steamboat, is launched.
• 1819: SS Savannah under Capt. Moses Rogers makes first transatlantic crossing using (auxiliary) steam power.
• 1820: Fabian Gottlieb von Bellingshausen discovers mainland Antarctica; the only recorded discovery of an uninhabited continent.
• 1839 - An early electric boat was developed by the German inventor Moritz von Jacobi in 1839 in St Petersburg, Russia. It was a 24-foot (7.3 m) boat which carried 14 passengers at 3 miles per hour (4.8 km/h). It was successfully demonstrated to Emperor Nicholas I of Russia on the Neva River.
• 1845: SS Great Britain becomes first iron steamer to cross the Atlantic.
• 1853: American commodore Matthew C. Perry arrives in Tokyo Bay, enforcing the Convention of Kanagawa in 1854.
• 1856: Paris Declaration Respecting Maritime Law outlaws privateering.
• 1859: The first ironclad warship, the Gloire, is launched.
• 1861: USS Ice Boat (1861), the first purpose-built icebreaker, is launched.
• 1862: The Battle of Hampton Roads becomes the first battle between ironclads.
• 1864: Ictineo II, the first submarine powered by an internal-combustion engine.
• 1869: The Suez Canal opens.
• 1871: Adolf Erik Nordenskiöld braves the Northeast Passage on the Vega
• 1880: The American passenger steamship Columbia becomes the first outside usage of Thomas Edison's incandescent light bulb.[18][19][20][21]
• 1893: The Corinth Canal opens.
• 1894: The Turbinia, the world's first turbine-powered ship, is launched.
• 1895: The Kiel Canal opens.
• 1903: The Vandal, the world's first diesel-electric ship, is launched.
• 1906
  • Roald Amundsen conquers the Northwest Passage on the Gjøa.
  • HMS Dreadnought launched, commencing the era of battleships.
• 1912: The Titanic sinks in the North Atlantic. The wreck could not be discovered until 1985.
• 1914: The Panama Canal opens.
• 1916: Battle of Jutland, claimed to be the largest naval battle in history, counting tonnage of engaged ships.
• 1918: HMS Furious (47) becomes the first aircraft carrier used in warfare.
• 1937: USS Leary (DD-158) becomes the first American vessel to be equipped with radar.
• 1941: The attack on Pearl Harbor starts the Pacific War.
• 1942: The battle of Midway marks the demise of battleships and the domination of aircraft carriers.
• 1944: Normandy landings, the largest amphibious invasion in history.
• 1951: The first purpose-built container ships enter operation.
• 1955: USS Nautilus (SSN-571), the world's first nuclear-powered vessel, is launched.
• 1957: Aircraft supplants shipping as the leading mode of passenger Transatlantic travel
• 1959:
  • The USS Skate (SSN-578) surfaces at the North Pole.
  • The SR.N1, the first practical hovercraft, is launched.
• 1960: The Trieste descends to the Challenger Deep.
• 1962: The Cuban Missile Crisis; a major naval confrontation between the United States and the Soviet Union.
• 1977: Russian icebreaker Arktika makes the first surface voyage to the North Pole.
• 1982: Falklands War, one of the largest naval campaigns since World War II.
• 1985: The Sea Shadow (IX-529), an early stealth ship, is launched.
• 1987: The MV Doña Paz is lost, claiming 4,375 lives, the worst peacetime maritime disaster in history.
• 1994:
  • The Global Positioning System becomes operational.
  • M/S Estonia is lost in the Baltic Sea.

• 2005: Piracy in Somalia becomes an international concern.
• 2007: Arktika 2007 becomes the first manned expedition to the North Pole seabed.
• 2012:
  • M/S Costa Concordia disaster.
  • James Cameron reaches the Challenger Deep solo with the Deepsea Challenger.

• 2013: MS Nordic Orion becomes the first freighter to complete the Northwest Passage.

See also

• Age of Discovery
• History of navigation
• List of circumnavigations
• List of explorers
• List of naval battles
• Timeline for aircraft carrier service
• Timeline of European exploration
• Timeline of maritime migration and exploration
• Timeline of transportation technology

References

1. 1000 Inventions and Discoveries, by Roger Bridgman
2. Carter, Robert "Boat remains and maritime trade in the Persian Gulf during the sixth and fifth millennia BC"Antiquity Volume 80 No.307 March 2006
3. Hage, P.; Marck, J. (2003). "Matrilineality and Melanesian Origin of Polynesian Y Chromosomes". Current Anthropology. 44 (S5): S121. doi:10.1086/379272.
4. Kayser, M.; Brauer, S.; Cordaux, R.; Casto, A.; Lao, O.; Zhivotovsky, L. A.; Moyse-Faurie, C.; Rutledge, R. B.; et al. (2006). "Melanesian and Asian origins of Polynesians: mtDNA and Y chromosome gradients across the Pacific". Molecular Biology and Evolution. 23 (11): 2234–2244. doi:10.1093/molbev/msl093. PMID 16923821.
5. Su, B.; Underhill, P.; Martinson, J.; Saha, N.; McGarvey, S. T.; Shriver, M. D.; Chu, J.; Oefner, P.; Chakraborty, R.; Chakraborty, R.; Deka, R. (2000). "Polynesian origins: Insights from the Y chromosome". PNAS. 97 (15): 8225–8228. Bibcode:2000PNAS...97.8225S. doi:10.1073/pnas.97.15.8225. PMC 26928. PMID 10899994.
6. Mahdi, Waruno (1999). "The Dispersal of Austronesian boat forms in the Indian Ocean". In Blench, Roger; Spriggs, Matthew (eds.). Archaeology and Language III: Artefacts languages, and texts (PDF). One World Archaeology. 34. Routledge. pp. 144–179. ISBN 0415100542.
7. Hourani, George Fadlo (1951). Arab Seafaring in the Indian Ocean in Ancient and Early Medieval Times. New Jersey: Princeton University Press.
8. Shaffer, Lynda Norene (1996). Maritime Southeast Asia to 1500. M.E. Sharpe.
9. Johnstone, Paul (1980). The Seacraft of Prehistory. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. ISBN 978-0674795952.
10. Dewar, Robert E.; Wright, Henry T. (1993). "The culture history of Madagascar". Journal of World Prehistory. 7 (4): 417–466. doi:10.1007/bf00997802. hdl:2027.42/45256.
11. Kumar, Ann. (1993). 'Dominion Over Palm and Pine: Early Indonesia’s Maritime Reach', in Anthony Reid (ed.), Anthony Reid and the Study of the Southeast Asian Past (Sigapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies), 101-122.
12. Dick-Read, Robert (July 2006). "Indonesia and Africa: questioning the origins of some of Africa's most famous icons". The Journal for Transdisciplinary Research in Southern Africa. 2: 23–45.
13. Rooney, Dawn (16 April 2011). Angkor, Cambodia's Wondrous Khmer Temples. www.bookdepository.com. Hong Kong: Odyssey Publications. ISBN 978-9622178021. Retrieved 2019-01-21.
14. Munoz, Paul Michel (2006). Early Kingdoms of the Indonesian Archipelago and Malay Peninsula. Singapore: Editions Didier Miller.
15. Reid, Anthony (2012). Anthony Reid and the Study of the Southeast Asian Past. Institute of Southeast Asian Studies. ISBN 9814311960.
16. Chronicle of the Kings of Pasai, 3: 98: After that, he is tasked by His Majesty to ready all the equipment and all weapons of war to come to that country of Pasai, about four hundred large jongs and other than that much more of malangbang and kelulus.
17. Sejarah Melayu, 10.4:77: then His Majesty immediately ordered to equip three hundred jong, other than that kelulus, pelang, jongkong in uncountable numbers.
18. Jehl, Francis Menlo Park reminiscences : written in Edison's restored Menlo Park laboratory, Henry Ford Museum and Greenfield Village, Whitefish, Mass, Kessinger Publishing, 1 July 2002, page 564
19. Dalton, Anthony A long, dangerous coastline : shipwreck tales from Alaska to California Heritage House Publishing Company, 1 Feb 2011 – 128 pages
20. Swann, p. 242.
21. "Lighting A Revolution: 19th Century Promotion". Smithsonian Institution. Retrieved 23 July 2013.