Short Wave Sportfishing wrote:
Mariners as early as 500 BC tried to protect their wooden ships by
various combinations of arsenic, sulfur, tars and oils. The British Navy
experimented with a sacrificial covering of wood covering tar, but it
wasn't successful. It wasn't until the invention of copper hull plating
that the Toredo worm became less of a problem.

Copper plating?
That would kinds dull their fangs, I'd imagine...