Those early Navies required a lot of hemp for sails, line, and Sailor's clothing. Wars were fought, countries vanquished, and people enslaved to just cultivate vast hemp fields and make those items.
Modern ships, of course, do not need as much hemp, however, they are obsolete because of China's hypersonic surface-to-surface Silkworm missile. The story is here: Thread of the Silkworm, Iris Chang, 2008. https://archive.org/details/threadofsilkworm00chan
Those early Navies required a lot of hemp for sails, line, and Sailor's clothing. Wars were fought, countries vanquished, and people enslaved to just cultivate vast hemp fields and make those items.
Modern ships, of course, do not need as much hemp, however, they are obsolete because of China's hypersonic surface-to-surface Silkworm missile. The story is here: Thread of the Silkworm, Iris Chang, 2008. https://archive.org/details/threadofsilkworm00chan
Then we have those sneaky Swedish submarines to contend with. https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/how-100-million-swedish-submarine-sunk-6-billion-us-supercarrier-208833