Maritime timeline

Prehistory

• About 45,000 BC: first humans arrive in Australia, presumably by boats and land bridge.

  Antiquity

• About 6,000 BC: Earliest evidence of dugout canoes.
• 5th millennium BC: Earliest known depiction of a sailing boat.
• About 2,000 BC:
• *Hannu dispatches a fleet to the Land of Punt.
• * Austronesian people migrate from Taiwan to Indonesia, preceding the colonization of Polynesia.
• 1575–1520 BC Dover Bronze Age Boat, oldest known plank vessel, was built.
• About 1175 BC: Battle of the Delta, one of the first recorded naval battles, during Ancient Egypt's war against the Sea Peoples.
• 1194–1174 BC: Supposed timespan for the events of Homer's Iliad and Odyssey.
• About 1000 BC: Nusantaran people developed tanja sail and junk sail.
• Around 600 BC: According to Herodotus, Necho II sends Phoenician expedition to circumnavigate Africa.
• 6th century BC: Canal of the Pharaohs is built in Egypt.
• 542 BC: First written record of a trireme.
• 5th century BC: Hanno the Navigator explores the coast of West Africa.
• 480 BC: Battle of Salamis, arguably the largest naval battle in ancient times.
• 247 BC: Lighthouse of Alexandria completed.
• 214 BC: Lingqu Canal built.
• 31 BC: Battle of Actium decides the Final War of the Roman Republic.
• 50 AD: Malay and Javanese settlers reached Madagascar.
• 100 AD: Large ships called K'un-lun Po sailed between China and India.
• About 200 AD: Chuan are developed in China. Chinese people learned junk rig from Malay people visiting their southern coast.

  Middle Ages

• 700: Javanese and Malay people reached Ghana in West Africa.
• 793: The raid of Lindisfarne, first recorded Viking raid
• 851: Javanese Sailendras staged a surprise attack on the Khmers by approaching the capital from the river, after a sea crossing from Java.
• 916: A Javanese invaded Khmer empire, using 1000 "medium-sized" vessels, which results in Javanese victory. The head of Khmer's king then brought to Java.
• 945: Malay people from Srivijaya attacked coast of Tanganyika and Mozambique with 1000 boats and attempted to take the citadel of Qanbaloh.
• 984: Pound locks used in China; See Technology of the Song Dynasty
• 986: Bjarni Herjolfsson crossed the Labrador Sea and saw North America.
• About 1000: Leif Ericson crossed the Labrador Sea to reach North America.
• 1025: Chola invasion of Srivijaya
• 1088: Dream Pool Essays by Shen Kuo, first description of a magnetic compass.
• 1159: Lübeck is rebuilt, and the Hanseatic League is founded.
• About 1190: Alexander Neckam writes the first European description of a magnetic compass.
• 13th century: Portolan charts are introduced in the Mediterranean.
• About 1280: Polynesian settlers arrive at New Zealand, the last major landmass to be populated.
• 1274: First Mongol invasion of Japan.
• 1325–1354: Ibn Batuta visits much of Africa and Asia
• 1350: Majapahit invades Samudera Pasai, with 400 jong.
• 1398: Majapahit invades Kingdom of Singapura, with 300 jong and no less than 200,000 men.
• 1405: Zheng He's expeditions begins.

  Age of Discovery

• 1488: Bartolomeu Dias reaches the Cape of Good Hope.
• 1492: Christopher Columbus' first voyage, first recorded non-Arctic crossing of the Atlantic
• 1497: John Cabot reaches North American mainland, as first European since the Vikings.
• 1498
• * Vasco da Gama completes the Cape Route from Europe to India.
• * Columbus reaches continental South America.
• 1513: Jorge Álvares completes the first voyage from Europe to China.
• 1522: Ferdinand Magellan's last ship arrives in Europe, first recorded circumnavigation, and crossing of the Pacific Ocean
• 1571: Battle of Lepanto, last major naval battle fought entirely between galleys.
• 1580: Francis Drake returns home from Nehalem Bay, Oregon to become the 1st circumnavigation by an Englishman.
• 1588: The Spanish Armada is destroyed, shifting naval superiority to England.
• 1602: The Dutch East India Company is founded.
• 1606: Willem Janszoon becomes the first European to reach Australia.
• 1620: Cornelis Drebbel constructs the first submarine.
• 1628: The Vasa sinks in Stockholm harbour on its maiden voyage.
• 1736: John Harrison tests the first successful marine chronometer.
• 1757: First sextant constructed
• 1771: James Cook completes the first circumnavigation without casualties to scurvy.
• 1790: Battle of Svensksund, the last major battle with participation of galleys.

  Rise of steamboats and motorships

• 1783: Claude de Jouffroy constructs the first recorded steamboat.
• 1790: Canal Mania begins in Great Britain.
• 1805: The battle of Trafalgar marks the rise of the Royal Navy to a century of world domination.
• 1807: North River Steamboat, the first commercially successful steamboat, is launched.
• 1819: under Capt. Moses Rogers makes first transatlantic crossing using steam power.
• 1820: Fabian Gottlieb von Bellingshausen discovers mainland Antarctica; the only recorded discovery of an uninhabited continent.
• 1839 - An early electric boat was developed by the German inventor Moritz von Jacobi in 1839 in St Petersburg, Russia. It was a boat which carried 14 passengers at. It was successfully demonstrated to Emperor Nicholas I of Russia on the Neva River.
• 1845: becomes first iron steamer to cross the Atlantic.
• 1853: American commodore Matthew C. Perry arrives in Tokyo Bay, enforcing the Convention of Kanagawa in 1854.
• 1856: Paris Declaration Respecting Maritime Law outlaws privateering.
• 1859: The first ironclad warship, the Gloire, is launched.
• 1861:, the first purpose-built icebreaker, is launched.
• 1862: The Battle of Hampton Roads becomes the first battle between ironclads.
• 1864: Ictineo II, the first submarine powered by an internal-combustion engine.
• 1869: The Suez Canal opens.
• 1871: Adolf Erik Nordenskiöld braves the Northeast Passage on the Vega
• 1880: The American passenger steamship Columbia becomes the first outside usage of Thomas Edison's incandescent light bulb.
• 1893: The Corinth Canal opens.
• 1894: The Turbinia, the world's first turbine-powered ship, is launched.
• 1895: The Kiel Canal opens.
• 1903: The Vandal, the world's first diesel-electric ship, is launched.
• 1906
• * Roald Amundsen conquers the Northwest Passage on the Gjøa.
• * launched, commencing the era of battleships.
• 1912: The Titanic sinks in the North Atlantic. The wreck could not be discovered until 1985.
• 1914: The Panama Canal opens.
• 1916: Battle of Jutland, claimed to be the largest naval battle in history, counting tonnage of engaged ships.
• 1918: becomes the first aircraft carrier used in warfare.
• 1937: becomes the first American vessel to be equipped with radar.
• 1941: The attack on Pearl Harbor starts the Pacific War.
• 1942: The battle of Midway marks the demise of battleships and the domination of aircraft carriers.
• 1944: Normandy landings, the largest amphibious invasion in history.
• 1951: The first purpose-built container ships enter operation.
• 1955:, the world's first nuclear-powered vessel, is launched.
• 1957: Aircraft supplants shipping as the leading mode of passenger Transatlantic travel
• 1959:
• * The surfaces at the North Pole.
• * The SR.N1, the first practical hovercraft, is launched.
• 1960: The Trieste descends to the Challenger Deep.
• 1962: The Cuban Missile Crisis; a major naval confrontation between the United States and the Soviet Union.
• 1977: Russian icebreaker Arktika makes the first surface voyage to the North Pole.
• 1982: Falklands War, one of the largest naval campaigns since World War II.
• 1985: The Sea Shadow , an early stealth ship, is launched.
• 1987: The is lost, claiming 4,375 lives, the worst peacetime maritime disaster in history.
• 1994:
• *The Global Positioning System becomes operational.
• *M/S Estonia is lost in the Baltic Sea.
• 2005: Piracy in Somalia becomes an international concern.
• 2007: Arktika 2007 becomes the first manned expedition to the North Pole seabed.
• 2012:
• *M/S Costa Concordia disaster.
• *James Cameron reaches the Challenger Deep solo with the Deepsea Challenger.
• 2013: MS Nordic Orion becomes the first freighter to complete the Northwest Passage.