Cheers! I'm interested to know the earliest occasions when warships have been used for bombarding enemy forts or armies on shore.
I Know that in the US Civil war and in the Crimean war ships attacked fortresses.
One of the earliest naval bombardments of fortifications on land was in the siege of Calais in 1347, when Edward II of England had his ships bombard the fortifications.
The great siege of Gibraltar (during the wars surrounding the American Revolution); the British French and American bombardments of the Barbary Pirate towns of Algiers and Tripoli; the bombardment of Ft McHenry by the British in the war of 1812, which occasioned the writing of "The Star Spangled Banner"; are all naval bombardments which took place before the Crimean and US Civil Wars, and I'm sure there were many others around the world.