I was interested to know, before cannons came into play, how were naval forces trained for warfare? Were they just made up of levied sailors who were given swords and axes to try to board the enemy ships? Were they made up of soldiers trained to row and fight in equal portion? Was it a mix of the two? Or were there specialized naval academies of some sort where they trained people?
As well, how did the two sides in a naval battle fight(since there are a lot of "age of the sail"movies about fighting with cannons and none about what came before)? Did they just ram each other? Use bows? Did they have catapults or scorpion crossbows loaded onto the ships? And did they try to shoot through the hull of the other ship to sink 'em? Or just tried to shoot the other rowers/sailors? Did they ever armour plate ships to reinforce them? Or just did it with fancy craftsmanship(think "Old Ironsides"in a later age.)
Thanks for any info in advance! Know this is a longwinded question. :)
Here's one dramatized answer linked from the FAQ! (edit: from /u/EyeStache) I think I can add some information, too.
Assuming we're not talking about Greek and Roman trireme warfare, ramming is generally out. After the trireme era, ships were generally too stoutly built for rams to be effective (excepting a brief period from 1865-1885 or so when ram fever swept everyone--that was a deeply weird period shipbuilding-wise). Funnily enough, Medieval monks recording contemporary histories still had a tendency to get caught up in classical fervor and talk about how sea battles were even then being decided by rams, because that was how the Romans supposedly did it!
In actuality, on the tactical level, it was all about boarding. Ships generally could not carry missile weapons powerful enough to damage each others' hulls, so missile fire was all about suppressing and killing personnel. English longbowmen raining arrows down upon French ships wrought havoc at the battles of Dover (1217) and Sluys (1340). (Interestingly enough, the first gunpowder weapons to go to sea were antipersonnel small guns whose inclusion did not cause any major changes in tactics; cannons wouldn't go to sea for decades afterwards.) In boarding battles, height advantage was everything, which is why big round cogs had a decided advantage against low-slung galleys. There is also mention of various nasty things to drop on the opponent's deck from a masthead fighting position--slippery soap, quicklime (to blind opponents), large spikes, caltrops...
What about siege weapons like catapults and ballistae? Same deal: they were antipersonnel. Springgalds, or large crossbows on a swivel mount, show up extensively in Medieval ship records. In fact, I've even seen some arguments that the death of the ramming galleys, a la trireme or quinquireme, was brought about by the proliferation of missile weapons and light catapults, whose fire would disrupt the carefully-timed rhythm of the rowers and make ramming impossible; the resultant evolution in ship design favored more boarding-centric ships that didn't rely so much on light construction and maneuverability. The one exception to the rule was the Byzantine use of the infamous Greek fire, but that required water conditions so calm and flat that it was only really useful as a harbor defense weapon. (This also obviated the need for armor plate, which is just as well, because large metal armor plates were only produceable after the Industrial Revolution.)
Beyond the purely tactical level, there is one very important difference in sea battles in the pre-cannon era: they almost always took place close to shore. Boarding combat out on the open sea was just too hazardous. Also, there generally isn't the administrative apparatus to keep warships (which have large crews and consequently use supplies quickly) resupplied out in open water; as late as 1700, British and Dutch fleets were being forced to return to port with their crews sickly and starving after a mere fortnight at sea. This meant little or nothing in the way of standing patrols or interdiction attempts that could bring an enemy to battle far from the land; if you fought an enemy ship, it would be close to the shoreline, and very often in or near harbor.
Sources: Medieval Maritime Warfare, Charles D. Stanton
The Safeguard of the Sea, NAM Rodgers
Papers by John F. Guilmartin, including The Galley in Combat and The Earliest Shipboard Gunpowder Ordnance
(edit: minor formatting)
