Why Lissa mattered after 1866

The Battle of Lissa became a reference point for later navies much as the Falklands War became a modern design touchstone. Lissa was neither tidy nor perfectly representative, but it gave nineteenth-century officers one of the few large fleet actions involving modern ironclads. Its apparent lessons therefore carried unusual weight in doctrine, tactics, and ship design. The battle was a transitional action whose interpretation fed into thinking about Tsushima and, through it, the world wars.