Tumblehome Ships - From Greek Triremes to the Zumwalt

Abstract

After almost a century the US Navy has reintroduced tumblehome into the design of naval combatants. This paper discusses some of the reasons tumblehome was originally designed into ships and why it served it owners well for many centuries. The transition from sail to steam power a little over a century ago led to a variety of problems with the combatant ships designed with tumblehome where the lack of damage stability caused a major loss of life as these ships sank so quickly. During World War I ships designed with tumblehome fell out of favor and some of the ships were actually modified to remove the tumblehome from the design. These changes in the design of tumblehome ships are discussed in this paper.