The age of Battleships spanned less than 80 years. For much of that time they were either not ready for prime time or well past their prime. Yet in their brief history they were the symbol of both national pride and national humiliation and an enormous drain on national treasuries. They provided a stage for heroes and scoundrels, the fools and the wise, while burgeoning modern states confronted the decaying monarchies on the seas. Men and ships were sacrificed on the most ill-starred objectives and through it all, barely a handful of engagements between battleships, cruisers or even destroyers produced a decisive result. This course follows the development of the Battleship from the first ironclads to the giants of World War II. It traces the development of primitive steam engines, the slow but inevitable shift from pistons and coal to turbines and oil, the early triumphs and disasters of battle fleets and the vast and far-flung engagements of the great Dreadnoughts. And we look at the big guns, with ranges so great their aim required an adjustment for the curvature of the Earth.

Battleships is based on a Power Point presentation with thousands of embedded images, videos and animated graphics. 

Buck Beasom teaches courses for OLLI chapters across the country. He has a two-track career that includes four decades in data management and applications development while he also taught courses in Business, Accounting and Economics. He also spent five years teaching History at the Middle and High School levels. He holds a BS in Management Science, with additional majors in History and Economics and an MBA in Accounting. 

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