Fire-ship

Fire-ship, a vessel, usually an old one, filled with combustibles, sent in among a hostile squadron, and there fired, in the hope of destroying some of the ships, or at least of producing great confusion. Livy mentions the use of such by the Rhodians, 190 B.C. Earliest in modern times, so far as known, they were employed by the Dutch in the Scheldt during the war of independence in the Netherlands, and shortly after by the English, in 1588, against the Spanish Armada. Lord Dundonald (q.v.) employed them against the French in 1809; and the Chinese tried them against the British fleet before Canton in 1857, but unsuccessfully. The service of navigating one of these ships into the midst of an enemy, there firing it, and then attempting to escape, is always fraught with great risk of failure and disaster.