The History of Battleship: From WWI Trenches to a Boxed Classic

Where did Battleship come from?

Battleship originated as a pencil-and-paper game in the early 1900s, played by hand on squared paper, and is widely associated with the era of World War I. Long before it came in a box, it was a pastime that needed nothing more than paper, a pencil, and an opponent — which is exactly why it spread so easily among soldiers.

The game is generally thought to date from around World War I, and it was reportedly played by Russian officers before the war and became popular with both Russian and French soldiers during it. The simple materials and the naval-combat theme made it a natural fit for military life, and versions of the game traveled wherever soldiers did.

What older games influenced Battleship?

Battleship didn't appear out of nowhere — historians connect it to several earlier games of strategy and hidden positions.

• L'Attaque, a French strategy game played during the World War I period, often pointed to as a relative of Battleship.
• Baslinda, an 1890 game by E. I. Horsman, to which parallels in concept have been drawn.

These older games shared the core idea that would define Battleship: maneuvering or hiding forces that your opponent cannot directly see, turning the game into a contest of deduction and guesswork.

Why did Battleship have so many names?

Because it spread informally across many countries before it was ever commercialized, Battleship was known by dozens of different names around the world.

There was no single official title in its early decades — it was a folk game, passed from player to player. Enthusiasts in different countries called it things like Sea Battle, L'Aero Naval, Normandie, Seeschlacht (German for "sea battle"), and Affonda la Flotta (Italian for "sink the fleet"), among many others. This patchwork of names is a telltale sign of a game that grew organically and internationally, rather than being launched by one company.

When was Battleship first sold commercially?

The first commercial version of Battleship was "Salvo," published in 1931 in the United States by the Starex company.

This marked the game's transition from a hand-drawn folk pastime to a product you could buy. Throughout the 1930s, the game was published by various companies as a pad-and-pencil game — essentially printed grids in a pad, so players didn't have to draw their own. These early commercial editions kept the game's simple paper-based nature intact, just adding convenience. For decades, Battleship remained, at heart, a paper game.

How did Milton Bradley change Battleship forever?

The defining moment in Battleship's history came in 1967, when Milton Bradley released it as a plastic board game and promoted it heavily through television advertising.

This is the version most people picture today: two hinged plastic cases, each with a grid of holes, miniature plastic ships, and red and white pegs to mark hits and misses. The plastic board solved the game's one practical weakness — keeping your grid hidden and your record-keeping tidy — by giving each player a self-contained, upright "console."

Combined with one of the era's marketing innovations, TV commercials aimed at families and children, the 1967 Milton Bradley edition turned a century-old paper game into a mainstream household name and a massive commercial success. It is this version that cemented Battleship in popular culture.

How did Battleship evolve after 1967?

After the plastic board game's success, Battleship continued to evolve with electronic and digital versions while the simple pencil-and-paper original never disappeared.

Later editions introduced electronic Battleship games with sounds, lights, and automated hit detection, adding new excitement to the classic formula. As home computers and then mobile devices arrived, Battleship became a natural fit for digital and online play, where the computer can hide a fleet, track shots, and even serve as an opponent.

Through all these reinventions, the underlying game — hide your fleet, call your shots, sink the enemy — has stayed essentially unchanged for over a hundred years. And the original version endures: anyone with two sheets of squared paper and a pencil can still play exactly the game that soldiers played in the trenches, with no equipment required at all.

A timeline of Battleship history

Frequently asked questions about the history of Battleship

This is an educational article about the history of the classic pencil-and-paper grid game commonly known as Battleship. "Battleship" is also a registered trademark of its respective board-game publisher; this article describes the history of the public-domain pencil-and-paper game and its commercial editions, not any specific branded product.