Quote Originally Posted by Rythmic View Post
Boats. Early boats, especially continental boats where poorly set-up for combat. They used land-style cannons that made reloading near impossible, as men would have to scale the outside of the boat to reload the cannon's. The Spannish Armarda effectively fired 1 cannon shot every day because of this. Where as the English ships fired 1 shot an hour because they could be reloaded from the inside of the boats.

Also early tactics involved firing cannon on the front and rear of the boat rather than broadside.

I can't see CA getting boat battles historical in anyway.
They DID, but not in this period. In this period the main problem (esp at the start of the century) was overloading ships with so many cannons that the handled very badly even in calm weather and in bad weather were libale to sink.