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Watercraft are water-borne vehicles including ships, boats, hovercraft and submarines. Watercraft usually have propulsive capability (whether by sail, oar or engine) and hence are distinct from a simple device that merely floats, such as a log raft.
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Types
Most watercraft would be described as either a ship or a boat. However, there are numerous craft which many people would consider neither a ship nor a boat, such as: surfboards (when used as a paddle board), underwater robots, seaplanes, jetskis and torpedoes.
Although ships are typically larger than boats, the distinction between those two categories is not one of size per se.
The term "watercraft" (unlike such terms as aircraft or spacecraft) is rarely used to describe any individual object: rather the term serves to unify the category that ranges from jet skis to aircraft carriers. Such a vessel may be used in saltwater and freshwater; for pleasure, recreation, physical exercise, commerce, transport or military missions.
Usage
Usually the purposes behind watercraft designs and skills are for seafaring education or leisure activities, fishing and resource extraction, transportation of cargo or passengers, and for conducting combat or salvage operations. In general, the purpose of a water vehicle identifies its utility with a maritime industry sub-sector.
Design
The design from which a water vehicle is created usually seeks to achieve a balance between internal capacity (tonnage), speed and seaworthiness. Tonnage is predominantly a consideration in transport operations, speed is important for warships, and safety is a primary consideration for less experienced or often smaller and less stable training and leisure vehicles. This is due to the great level of regulatory compliance required by the larger watercraft, which ensures very infrequent instances of foundering at sea through application of extensive computer modeling and ship model basin testing before shipyard construction begins.
Propulsion
Propulsion is the primary application of technology in watercraft. Historically, water vehicles have been propelled by poles, paddles or oars, through manipulation of sailing rigs that propel by lifting using the wind, and a variety of engineered machinery that creates subsurface thrust through the process or internal combustion. The technological history of watercraft in the European history can be divided into marine propulsion using the simple paddle craft, oared galleys from the 8th century BCE until the 15th century, lateen sail during the Age of Discovery from the early 15th century and into the early 17th century, full rigged ships of the Age of Sail from the 16th to the mid 19th century, the Age of Steam marine steam engine roughly between 1770 and use of the steam turbine until 1914, the internal combustion engines using diesel fuel, petrol and LNG as fuels from the turn of the 20th century, which has been supplemented to some degree with the nuclear marine propulsion since the 1950s in military watercraft. Current technological development seeks to identify cheaper, renewable and less polluting sources of propulsion for watercraft of all shapes and sizes.
Construction
Secondary applications of technology in watercraft have been those of used structural materials, navigation aids; and in the case of warships, weapon systems. The purpose of usage and the physical environment define the materials used in construction which had historically included grasses, leather, timbers, metals combined with timber or without, silicate and plastic derivatives, and others.
Registration
Watercraft registration is the registration of a watercraft with a government authority. Identification consists of an alphanumeric string called a vessel registration number that is issued in the United States by the state's Department of Motor Vehicles.
Navigation
Navigation aids have varied over time: from astronomical observation, to mechanical mechanisms, and more recently analogue and digital computer devices that now rely on GPS systems.
Weapons
Naval weapon systems have closely followed the development in land weapons, developing from:
Until development of steam propulsion was coupled with rapid-firing breech-loading guns, naval combat was often concluded by a boarding combat between the opposing crews. Since the early 20th century, there has been a substantial development in technologies which allow force projection from a naval task force to a land objective using marine infantry.