Fireship

Fireship, a vessel filled with combustibles and explosives, and sailed, or allowed to drift, alongside an enemy, there to explode. Fireships were successfully employed against the Armada in 1588, in the destruction of French ships under Cape La Hogue in 1692, by Lord Cochrane in Basque Roads in 1809, and on many other occasions; but they were also used by the Rhodians B.C. 190. They are now obsolete.