askhistorians

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My University's business textbook has a short excerpt on the concept of bartering in the New World, which has been extremely generalized for simplicity's sake. I would like to know how bartering worked between different colonial holdings and how important it would have been up until the early 1800s.	8
The battle tactics of large fleets of 18th-century ships of the line are generally well known (I.e. the line of battle, and crossing the "T"), but how were battles fought consisting of multiple smaller ships like frigates, brigs, or sloops?	8
Were pre-teen/teen boys in the Royal Navy as officers in training unique to the Napoleonic Era? Or does the situation of pre-teen/teenage boys entering the Royal Navy to go through similar processes of officers in training go back several decades, say, at the time of the Seven Years' War?	8
Were slave ships ever used to transport slaves from one plantation to another?	8
Dinosaur carving on wall inside Angkor Wat?	8
In a lot of fiction based on the Napoleonic Era British sailors often say they spot a French or Spanish ship by the "cut of her jib" or "cut of her sails." Just how different were the French sails cuts from British sail cuts and when did this difference become apparent on their warships?	8
Is it true that the Spanish used bows and crossbows at their ships' fighting tops as late as the 1700's?	7
I'm a pirate in 1715 operating out of Nassau. What are the smallest and biggest merchant vessels I can expect to find?	7
Why do so many portraits of military figures in the first half of the 1700's show men wearing shiny armor over their justaucorps, and when did this trend stop?	7
Who were the Bully Boys during the War of 1812?	7

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