Ram (ship)

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A ram was a naval ship class in the 1860s. Its principal weapon was its own bow. The bow of the ram was hardened and reinforced to break the hull of an enemy ship. Rams were especially used during the American Civil War. They were often ironclads.

The ram was a naval weapon in the Grecian/Roman antiquity and was used in such naval battles as Salamis and Actium. For the last stage of the attack the ship would be propelled by oarsmen rather than sails.

A trireme bronze cast ram has been found off Athlit (Israel) without any other wreckage around it which gives credit to the idea often expressed by some scholars that the ancient shipbuilders and carpenters built the ship's keel with some sort of carpenter's trick enabling the ram to be sheared off the keel without endangering the ramming (attacking) ship, which could otherwise have sprung a leak or be driven to the bottom by the sinking opponent.

Later on, in the early times of steam propelled warships, ramming was revived as a technique by Austria-Hungary admiral Wilhelm von Tegetthoff at the Battle of Lissa, where the adverse (Italian) ironclad Re d'Italia was sunk by such a move. Many ship designers incorporated a ram in their designs even though the fast progresses of gunnery (exploding shells, rifled guns, telemetry) and manoevrability combined with speed of the modern steam driven ships made it completely obsolete. A ram prow design, where the hull sloped back from a forefoot below the waterline, was common in ship designs up until the early 20th century, and is likely to see new application as part of the stealthy design of the Zumwalt class destroyer of the United States Navy in the 21st.

The ramming tactic was also used by surface ships against submarines in World War II, notably by the famous British anti-submarine specialist, captain Frederic John Walker.