A floating battery is a kind of armed watercraft, often improvised or experimental, which carries a heavy armament but has few other qualities as a warship.
An early appearance was during the Great Siege of Gibraltar.
A purpose-built floating battery was FlĂĄdebatteri No. 1,[1] designed by Chief Engineer Henrik Gerner in 1787; it was 47 m long, 13 m wide and armed with 24 guns and used during the 1801 battle of Copenhagen under command of Peter Willemoes.
The most notable floating batteries were built or designed in the 19th century, and are related to the development of the first steam warship and the ironclad warship.
Demologos, the first steam-propelled warship, was a floating battery designed for the protection of New York Harbor in the War of 1812.
In the 1850s, the British and French navies deployed iron-armoured floating batteries as a supplement to the wooden steam battlefleet in the Crimean War. The role of the battery was to assist unarmoured mortar and gunboats bombarding shore fortifications. The French used their batteries in 1855 against the defenses at Kinburn on the Black Sea, where they were effective against Russian shore defences. The British planned to use theirs in the Baltic Sea against Kronstadt, and were influential in causing the Russians to sue for peace.[2]
Floating batteries were popularly implemented by both the Union and the Confederacy during the American Civil War. The first was the Confederate Floating Battery of Charleston Harbor, which took an active part in the bombardment of Fort Sumter in April 1861. Experimental ironclad vessels that proved too cumbersome or were underpowered were often converted into floating batteries and posted for river and coastal waterway control.
