Flush deck is a term in naval architecture. It can refer to any deck of a ship which is continuous from stem to

stern The stern is the back or aft-most part of a ship or boat, technically defined as the area built up over the sternpost, extending upwards from the counter rail to the taffrail. The stern lies opposite the bow, the foremost part of a ship. Ori ...

History

The flush deck design originated with rice ships built in Bengal Subah,

Mughal India The Mughal Empire was an early-modern empire that controlled much of South Asia between the 16th and 19th centuries. Quote: "Although the first two Timurid emperors and many of their noblemen were recent migrants to the subcontinent, the d ...

(modern Bangladesh), resulting in hulls that were stronger and less leak-prone than stepped deck ships.. This was a key innovation in shipbuilding. The British East India Company duplicated the flush deck design in the 1760s, leading to significant improvements in seaworthiness of British ships during the Industrial Revolution.

Two different meanings of "flush"

"Flush deck" with "flush" in its generic meaning of "even or level; forming an unbroken plane", is sometimes applied to vessels, as in describing yachts lacking a raised pilothouse for instance. "Flush deck aircraft carrier" uses "flush deck" in this generic sense. "Flush deck" in its more specific maritime-architecture sense denotes (for instance) the flush deck destroyers described above: the flush decks are broken by masts, guns, funnels, and other structures and impediments, and are far from being unbroken planes. "Flush deck" in this sense only signifies that the main deck runs the length of the ship and does not end before the stem (with a separate raised forecastle deck forward) or before the stern (with a separate raised or, as seen on many modern warships, lowered

quarterdeck The quarterdeck is a raised deck behind the main mast of a sailing ship. Traditionally it was where the captain commanded his vessel and where the ship's colours were kept. This led to its use as the main ceremonial and reception area on bo ...

rearward).

Types

It has two specific common referents: *Flush deck

aircraft carrier An aircraft carrier is a warship that serves as a seagoing airbase, equipped with a full-length flight deck and facilities for carrying, arming, deploying, and recovering aircraft. Typically, it is the capital ship of a fleet, as it allows a ...

s are those with no island

superstructure A superstructure is an upward extension of an existing structure above a baseline. This term is applied to various kinds of physical structures such as buildings, bridges, or ships. Aboard ships and large boats On water craft, the superstruct ...

, so that the top deck of the vessel consists of only an unbroken flight deck. *"Flush deckers" is a common nickname for a series of American destroyers built in large quantities during or shortly after World War I – the , , and classes – so called because they lacked the raised forecastle of preceding American destroyers, thus the main deck was a flush deck.

References

Shipbuilding Naval architecture Bangladeshi inventions Indian inventions {{navy-stub