Naval warfare
21st century: At the present time, large naval wars are seldom-seen affairs, since nations with substantial navies rarely fight each other; most wars are civil wars or some form of asymmetrical warfare, fought on land, sometimes with the involvement of military aircraft. The main function of the modern navy is to exploit its control of the seaways to project power ashore. Power projection has been the primary naval feature of most late-century conflicts including the Korean War, Suez Crisis, Vietnam War, Konfrontasi, Gulf War, Kosovo War, the War on Terrorism in Afghanistan, and the Iraq War. A major exception to that trend was the Sri Lankan Civil War, which saw a large number of surface engagements between the belligerents involving fast attack craft and other littoral warfare units.
The lack of large fleet-on-fleet actions does not, however, mean that naval warfare has ceased to feature in modern conflicts. The bombing of the USS Cole on October 12, 2000, claimed the lives of seventeen sailors, wounded an additional thirty-seven, and cost the Cole fourteen months of repairs. Though the attack did not eliminate the United States' control of the local seas, in the short-term, it did prompt the US Navy to reduce its visits to far-flung ports, as military planners struggled to ensure their security. This reduced US Naval presence was ultimately reversed in the wake of the September 11 attacks, as part of the Global War on Terrorism.
Even in the absence of major wars, warships from opposing navies clash periodically at sea, sometimes with fatal results. For example, 46 sailors drowned in the 2010 sinking of the ROKS Cheonan, which South Korea and the United States blamed on a North Korean torpedo attack. North Korea, in turn, denied all responsibility, accused South Korea of violating North Korean territorial waters, and offered to send its own team of investigators to "examine the evidence."
During the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, the armed forces of both Russia and Ukraine have openly targeted and destroyed each other's ships. Though many of these are supporting vessels, such as landing ships, tugs, and patrol boats, several larger warships have also been destroyed. Notably, the Ukrainian Navy scuttled its flagship, the frigate Hetman Sahaidachny, to prevent its capture, while the patrol ship Sloviansk was sunken by Russian air attack. The Russian Navy lost the flagship of its Black Sea Fleet, the Moskva, in what the Ukrainian Navy has claimed as a successful Neptune anti-ship missile strike. The Russian Navy, while not admitting to the Ukrainian claims of a missile attack, has confirmed the sinking of the Moskva.  As of May 2022, the naval war between Russia and Ukraine is ongoing, as the Russian Navy attempts to dominate Black Sea trade routes, and the Ukrainian Military attempts to erode Russian naval control.

Naval history of nations and empires: 

See also: 

References: 

Sources: Shen, Fuwei (1996). Cultural Flow Between China and the Outside World. China Books & Periodicals. ISBN 978-7-119-00431-0
Needham, Joseph (1986). Science and Civilization in China. Volume 4, Part 3. Taipei: Caves Books, Ltd.

Further reading: Holmes, Richard, et al., eds. The Oxford companion to military history (Oxford University Press, 2001), global.
Howarth, David British Sea Power: How Britain Became Sovereign of the Seas (2003), 320 pp. from 1066 to present
Padfield, Peter. Maritime Dominion and the Triumph of the Free World: Naval Campaigns That Shaped the Modern World 1852-2001 (2009)
Potter, E. B. Sea Power: A Naval History (1982), world history
Rodger, Nicholas A.M. The Command of the Ocean: A Naval History of Britain, 1649–1815. Vol. 2. (WW Norton & Company, 2005).
Rönnby, J. 2019. On War On Board: Archaeological and Historical Perspectives on Early Modern Maritime Violence and Warfare. Södertörn Archaeological Studies 15. Södertörn Högskola.
Sondhaus, Lawrence. Naval Warfare, 1815–1914 (2001).
Starr, Chester. The Influence of Sea Power on Ancient History (1989)
Tucker, Spencer, ed. Naval Warfare: An International Encyclopedia (3 vol. Cambridge UP, 2002); 1231 pp; 1500 articles by many experts cover 2500 years of world naval history, esp.  battles, commanders, technology, strategies and tactics,
Tucker, Spencer. Handbook of 19th century naval warfare (Naval Inst Press, 2000).
Willmott, H. P.  The Last Century of Sea Power, Volume 1: From Port Arthur to Chanak, 1894–1922 (2009), 568 pp. online in ebrary
Willmott, H. P. The Last Century of Sea Power, vol. 2: From Washington to Tokyo, 1922–1945. (Indiana University Press, 2010). xxii, 679 pp. ISBN 978-0-253-35359-7 online in ebrary

Warships: George, James L. History of warships: From ancient times to the twenty-first century (Naval Inst Press, 1998).
Ireland, Bernard, and Eric Grove. Jane's War at Sea 1897–1997: 100 Years of Jane's Fighting Ships (1997) covers all important ships of all major countries.
Peebles, Hugh B. Warshipbuilding on the Clyde: Naval orders and the prosperity of the Clyde shipbuilding industry, 1889–1939 (John Donald, 1987)
Van der Vat, Dan. Stealth at sea: the history of the submarine (Houghton Mifflin Company, 1995).

Sailors and officers: Conley, Mary A. From Jack Tar to Union Jack: representing naval manhood in the British Empire, 1870–1918 (Manchester UP,  2009)
Hubbard, Eleanor. "Sailors and the Early Modern British Empire: Labor, Nation, and Identity at Sea." History Compass 14.8 (2016): 348–58.
Kemp, Peter. The British Sailor: a social history of the lower deck (1970)
Langley, Harold D. "Union Jacks: Yankee Sailors in the Civil War." Journal of Military History 69.1 (2005): 239.
Ortega-del-Cerro, Pablo, and Juan Hernández-Franco. "Towards a definition of naval elites: reconsidering social change in Britain, France and Spain, c. 1670–1810." European Review of History: Revue européenne d'histoire (2017): 1–22.
Smith, Simon Mark. "'We Sail the Ocean Blue': British sailors, imperialism, identity, pride and patriotism c. 1890 to 1939" (PhD dissertatation U of Portsmouth, 2017.  online

First World War: Bennett, Geoffrey. Naval Battles of the First World War (Pen and Sword, 2014)
Halpern, Paul. A naval history of World War I (Naval Institute Press, 2012).
Hough, Richard. The Great War at Sea, 1914–1918 (Oxford UP, 1987)
Marder, Arthur Jacob. From the Dreadnought to Scapa Flow (4 vol. 1961–70), covers Britain's Royal Navy 1904–1919
O'Hara, Vincent P.; Dickson, W. David; Worth, Richard, eds. To Crown the Waves: The Great Navies of the First World War (2013) excerpt also see  detailed review and summary of world's navie before and during the war
Sondhaus, Lawrence The Great War at Sea: A Naval History of the First World War (2014). online review

Second World War: Barnett, Correlli. Engage the Enemy More Closely: The Royal Navy in the Second World War (1991).
Campbell, John. Naval Weapons of World War Two (Naval Institute Press, 1985).
Morison, Samuel Eliot. The Two-Ocean War: A Short History of the United States Navy in the Second World War (1963) short version of his 13 volume history.
O'Hara, Vincent. The German Fleet at War, 1939–1945 (Naval Institute Press, 2013).
Roskill, S.K. White Ensign: The British Navy at War, 1939–1945 (United States Naval Institute, 1960); British Royal Navy; abridged version of his Roskill, Stephen Wentworth. The war at sea, 1939–1945 (3 vol. 1960).
Van der Vat, Dan. The Pacific Campaign: The Second World War, the US-Japanese Naval War (1941–1945) (2001).