Best Seafaring culture of all times?

[axi]

***bump!***

It seems that the Greeks are highly unpopular...

[Drake Tungsten]

Originally posted by Saint Marcus
in the past, they sailed all over the globe, discovering new lands and establising colonies, from New York to Cape Town to Batavia (Jakarta), and even to Japan (only western power to have had a colony in Japan).

No European country ever had a colony in Japan. The Dutch were the only ones allowed to trade with the Japanese. They were allowed into one port (Nagasaki, I believe) for one day a year to trade.

As for my choice, I picked the Polynesians. The Phoenicians are a close second.

[axi]

Would the Dutch travel halfway around the globe to trade for just one day?!

They must have been making extreme profits...

[Bereta_Eder]

HEY we were not THAT sh!tty!

Come on, not even one vote

Greek navigation is FAAAMOUS baby!

Just think, athenian triremes, Byzantine Dragons (or what the name), Greek fire, The catoptron (burning roman ships with the rays of the sun focues by gigantic mirrors onboard Greek ships)
Balkan wars, we sunk everything that floated in the Aegean, biggest commercial navy in the whole iwide world right now is Greek

some one vote for us

[Kyle]

Just had to throw this out; a Korean admiral was the first to use ironclads. But that was a couple hundred years before the Monitor/Merrimac (wasn't the Confederate designation the Virginia?). Though the US contribution was obviously more influential.

[TCO]

Go Navy!! Beat Army!!

[Sikander]

Re: Re: Best Seafaring culture of all times?

Originally posted by Lars-E

I vote for the Phoenicians who settled in what later became The Holy Land. Thus not Carthagian Phoenicians. The former might be the ancestors of the Philistines - the ancestors(?) of today's Palestinians - maybe in combo with descendants of Ismael - Arabs. That last part is the point where I'm most unsure.

Carthage was a colony founded by the Poenicians. Actually it was founded by the neice of Jezebel (from the Bible, OT) who was some sort of Phoenician Royalty. The Phoenicians were related to the Canaanites, who were related to the Israelites, and they made a great living trading with Egypt a very long time ago. The Egyptians were their allies and propped them up from time to time whenever they were threatened by other ME powers. The Phoenicians went into decline because of the Greeks, especially Alexander who conquered not only every Phonecian city along the East Coast of the Mediteranean, but Egypt as well. Carthage became the last holdout of Phoenician culture until it too was destroyed, by the Romans. The Philistines btw were Greeks.

Originally posted by Lars-E
King Solomon sent out a Phoenician and he supposedly sailed all the way around Africa Around 1200 BC?

I think it was later, and it wasn't King Solomon who sent the explorer out, but one of the Egyptian Pharoahs. The expedition was sent to map the North African coast westward. Two years later the returned, coming into the Red Sea.

I voted for the Polynesians, who sailed across, discovered and settled a vast area. No other group can claim to have explored more area by the same time in history as the Polynesians who sailed as far East as South America, as far West as Madagascar, as far south as New Zealand and Australia and as far North as the Central Pacific.

So far I think that the poll overrates the Vikings, who did sail in the open ocean, but didn't really cover much new ground and didn't manage to permanently settle much territory. The Dutch would have been a nice addition to the poll, but they were not as fortunate as a lot of nations due to their small numbers and need to defend themselves against numerous larger neighors by land.

The U.S. was a seafaring nation from the very beginning, and it produced the best sailors in the world qualitatively in the 18th and early 19th centuries. It's Navy was woefully small, yet the U.S. was able to capture 800 British ships during the War of 1812. Yankee Clipper Ships did a brisk business in the Asia trade in the 19th century, and American Naval technology was unsurpassed by the end of the civil war, at which point the Navy was mothballed and forgotten.

In World War II the U.S. perfected a number of naval warfare techniques and built the world's largest and most powerful navy by far. U.S. skills in Carrier operations were unsurpassed, as were U.S. amphibious warfare capabilities. This is still true today. Nonetheless the U.S. falls short in my book of several others, as naval power is only a part of the equation.

[Saint Marcus]

No European country ever had a colony in Japan. The Dutch were the only ones allowed to trade with the Japanese. They were allowed into one port (Nagasaki, I believe) for one day a year to trade.

we had a small trading port on one of the islands, which was officially part of Japan. You're right about the Nagasaki one day trade though.

Would the Dutch travel halfway around the globe to trade for just one day?!

Hell yeah!

They must have been making extreme profits...

Course we did.


Also, Holland's VOC (united east-indian company) was the world's first multinational, and the world's first company to give out shares.

[Zopperoni]

Originally posted by axi
As for other candidate nations, I considered the Dutch, the Japanese and the French but I thought that they haven't done anything really special.

Farking bullcrap, man. You should have included the Netherlands, since you included USA as well

Like Mark and Hueij pointed out, the VOC ruled

[Hueij]

Would the Dutch travel halfway around the globe to trade for just one day?!

They must have been making extreme profits...

Yep, that's us baby!

Like Mark and Hueij pointed out, the VOC ruled

Hehe, it's my understanding that the South-Africans and the people along the Indian Ocean coast don't exactly share our enthousiasm

But we did discover Australia and New Zealand. Living in Arnhem my whole life i remember the thrill when I found out as a small kid that there is an Arnhemland in Oz...

[Ribannah]

Weird that you didn't include the Dutch in your poll who are the most obvious choice. Apart from the VOC and the heroics of the Dutch Golden Age, the #1 seaport in the world is Rotterdam.

[axi]

Take it easy guys!

Ok I got it, I should have included the Dutch. I can't do anything about it now...

Just had to throw this out; a Korean admiral was the first to use ironclads.

What century was that then?

Anyway, ironclads are not really seafaring vessels. They are just floating fortresses.

Sikander is right about the clipper ships. Their design revolutionised seafaring.

[Saint Marcus]

What century was that then?

16th

[Ribannah]

With regard to Australia: the Chinese discovered this continent in the 6th century, and knowledge made its way to the west based on the journal of Marco Polo.

By the time the European explorers set out to find Australia (Java la Grande), they knew exactly what they were looking for. A map from as early as 1482 AD clearly shows the Australian coastline.

The first Dutch explorer who discovered Australia was not Abel Tasman, but Willem Janszoon Duyfken in 1606 AD.

Of course, the Polynesians were there long before the Chinese: they settled in Australia in 1600 BC.


Early Dutch Landfall Discoveries of Australia

[Jaguar]

Ribannah, is that you in your avatar or someone else? I always wonder that about posters with people in their avatars.


Chinese.