Naval boarding

Naval boarding is an offensive tactic used in naval warfare to come up against (or alongside) an enemy watercraft and attack by inserting combatants aboard that vessel. The goal of boarding is to invade and overrun the enemy personnel on board in order to capture, sabotage, or destroy the enemy vessel. While boarding attacks were originally carried out by ordinary sailors who are proficient in hand-to-hand combat, larger warships often deploy specially trained and equipped regular troops such as marines and special forces as boarders. Boarding and close-quarters combat had been a primary means to conclude a naval battle since antiquity, until the early modern period when heavy naval artillery gained tactical primacy at sea.

A cutting out boarding is an attack by small boats, preferably at night and against an unsuspecting and anchored, target. It became popular in the later 18th century, and was extensively used during the Napoleonic Wars. This heralded the emphasis on stealth, and surprise, that would come to dominate future boarding tactics. An example is the successful cutting out of the Hermione which took place at Puerto Cabello, Venezuela, on 25 October 1799.

In modern warfare, boarding by military forces almost always involves stealth, and usually takes place at night. It may involve the use of small submarines or submersibles, inflatable boats, or frogmen. All involve scaling the sides of the ship. When stealth is not as important, helicopters may be used to carry troops to the deck of the ship.

Boarding is used in wartime as a way to seize a vessel without destroying it, or to remove its cargo (people or goods) before it is destroyed. It can also be used to aid in the collection of naval intelligence, as soldiers boarding a sinking, crippled, or surrendered vessel could possibly recover enemy plans, cipher codebooks or machines. For a boarding to be successful, it must occur without the knowledge of the crew of the defending ship, or the ship's defenses must be suppressed.

In modern warfare, boarding by military forces may involve the use of small submarines or submersibles, inflatable boats or helicopters to carry troops to the deck of the ship, or may simply be carried out by scuba divers scaling the sides of the ship.

In peacetime, boarding allows authorized inspectors of one nation or group, such as a coast guard or a police force, to examine a ship's cargo in a search for drugs, weapons, passengers which are unrecorded on the ship's manifest, or any other type of contraband that could possibly have been carried aboard. A nation's coast guard could also board any suspicious ships that have been overfishing in such a nation's territorial waters. Air ambulances often deploy paramedics to ships by using typical helicopter boarding procedures.

Boarding is the oldest method of securing an opposing ship, as the first cases were depicted when the Sea Peoples and Egyptians fought. For cultures that lack effective shipboard artillery, boarding is the main technique of ship-to-ship combat. However, in the modern era, boarding is still used, particularly when stealth is desired.

In all eras, boarding requires that the ship boarded be stable enough to withstand the impact of enemy personnel leaping or climbing onto the deck and a subsequent sustained fight. The target ship must also have enough deck space for boarders to be able to stand and fight effectively. Thus, Native American war canoes or New Zealand waka were not suitable boarding targets, and wars between sides equipped with such vessels have generally not seen boarding actions, or any other decisive form of ship-to-ship combat. Instead, such vessels were often used for the rapid transportation of troops and supplies, and decisive engagements were normally fought by landing forces.